Food, Beverage Production on the Menu in the Heart of Texas
Published Dec 04, 2008
If you’ve ever ordered an appetizer at Chili’s or Applebee’s restaurants, chances are your taste buds have experienced the culinary talents of Double B Foods in Meridian.
“We make innovative hand-held food products for Americans on the go,” says Matt Goldthwaite, director of marketing for Double B Foods. “We do appetizers for popular chain restaurants, and customers think they’re made right there in the kitchen. People can also buy our products at Sam’s Club and Costco.”
Double B Foods is headquartered in DeSoto, Texas, and has its manufacturing facilities in Meridian. The Baked Goods Division produces smoked sausage rolls, empanadas and kolaches, or dough enrobed sausages, from a 65,000-square-foot facility. Double B’s Prepared Foods Division, also in Meridian, is housed in a 35,000-square-foot facility and turns out appetizers, dips, sauces, tacos, taquitos, flautas and other hand-held products.
“Kolaches are really popular in Texas. They are sausages wrapped in a sweet dough, and they come in different flavors, like jalapeno,” Goldthwaite says.
Double B Foods employs 220 people and has been in Texas since 1971.
“The cost of labor is very attractive in this region,” Goldthwaite says.
Double B Foods isn’t the only manufacturer in the Heart of Texas whose edible products are known around the country.
Sanderson Farms Inc. put more than $80 million in 2007 in a poultry processing plant in Waco that created some 1,400 jobs, a project that represented the largest investment and job creation of its type in the region’s history. Poultry processed at the 180,000-square-foot plant is sold to the casual dining and restaurant industry.
One of America’s favorite soft drinks has deep roots in the Heart of Texas. Dr Pepper was created in 1885 in Waco’s Old Corner Drug Store.
Pharmacist Dr. Charles Alderton mixed medicines at the drug store and loved the smell of fruit syrups floating in the air, says Jennie Sheppard, director of communications for the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco. “He mixed 23 different fruit flavors and finally found one he liked. The drug store started selling the drink, and it was bottled beginning in 1891. We’re proud to say Dr Pepper is the oldest major soft drink in the U.S. – it’s one year older than Coca-Cola.”
The museum is in a former Dr Pepper bottling facility and attracts about 70,000 visitors annually.
Today, Dr. Pepper owns a minority share of Waco’s Big Red Inc., the maker of the popular soft drink Big Red, which was invented in Waco in 1937. The Waco plant makes Big Red, America’s No. 1 red soda, and a family of other beverage products.
Waco is also home to one of candy-maker Mars Snackfood US’s eight domestic manufacturing plants. The Waco M&M Mars facility opened in 1976 and employs 570 people. The site makes Skittles, Starburst Fruit Chews and Snickers candy bars in several varieties, such as Sour Skittles, Snickers Almond Bar and Snickers Dark Bar.
“The Waco pride along with the Mars pride makes Waco an ideal place to work and live,” says Bertille Glass, corporate communications manager for Mars North America.
In May 2008, Mars’s Waco plant celebrated the successful completion of an environmental project that delivers methane gas from the city landfill to power the plant’s boilers. The methane will cover about 60 percent of the plant’s total boiler fuel requirements for the next 25 years, and MARS anticipates energy savings of more than $500,000 annually.
Story by Jessica Mozo
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