Evander Holyfield meets and greets the folks at Albertsons in Spring Valley
Saturday afternoon, at the Albertsons Grocery Store in Spring Valley, CA, the customers were lined up as if the store was giving something away, perhaps a free tenderloin with each $100 purchase. Well, it wasn’t a giveaway, the store’s patrons were awaiting the arrival of a boxing legend, a national hero, an ex-Olympian, the former WBA, IBF and WBC Cruiserweight champion and only five time world Heavyweight Champion, Evander Holyfield. The same man who defeated the likes of Mike Tyson (twice), George Foreman, Riddick Bowe, Larry Holmes, Hasim Rahman and John Ruiz.
The 48 year-old Holyfield, who’s now training in Los Angeles for a fight in Copenhagen, Denmark, against Brian Nielsen on May 7, 2011, was coming by car from Los Angeles to help in the launch of a barbecue sauce that’s bares his name. The Spring Valley Albertsons was to be the very first store to offer the product to the public.
Where did this idea come from? Well, George Foreman has his Grill and actor Paul Newman had his salad dressings, salsa, sauces, popcorn and cereals; why not have someone with Holyfield’s wide appeal get behind a product that everyone will grow to love – a barbecue sauce par excellence.
For years, a family by the name of Jones, living in Little Rock, Arkansas, was getting rave notices from family and friends about their great tasting barbecue sauce. They were urged to can it and get it out on the open market. Since most barbecue sauces like Newman’s Own Steak Sauce sell in the neighborhood of $5.89 a jar, they were urged to produce their delicious barbecue sauce and undercut the competition by selling their’s for $4.99. Then, you get someone famous to endorse the product, someone with wide appeal – someone the people trust, and simple enough, you’re in business.
Who better to pitch The Real Deal Steak Sauce than Evander “the Real Deal” Holyfield. First, they test marketed the product at a local restaurant, On Hit Barbeque with their world famous smoked barbecued ribs and yes, the restaurant patrons loved it. Next, they had Holyfield test it out and he too gave it his thumbs up. From that point on, it’s been full steam ahead.
Saturday, the Real Deal Barbecue Sauce company had several ladies handing out samples of the product, and as expected the product received rave notices.
The following are photos of the wonderful people who waited an hour and a half for Holyfield and his people to circumvent the unanticipated Saturday afternoon traffic snarl that bottled up the I 405 as they tried to make their way south to Spring Valley.
