In 1993 I had a small Gourmet Basket Shop in the famous tourist area of the downtown Charleston Market. As you know, Charleston is very well known for its flavorful cuisine. We would have many tourists come in that would have tasted Shrimp & Grits in one of our wonderful restaurants, and they would want a recipe to take home. At the time we carried all of the local cookbooks and none of them had recipes for that, so I knew that would be a great first product. I wanted it to be unbreakable, yet eye catching, taste as if the finest chef in town had prepared it, and be easy because I am not a cook. I wanted the background of the bags to look like newspaper print because when I was younger and you went into a seafood house to purchase fresh seafood they would wrap it in newspaper for you to take home. I also wanted to incorporate the Gullah language on the back of the bags. Gullah is a language that is a mixture of Elizabethan English and African that is spoken rapidly, in a rhythm, and is rather difficult to understand. Of course, it had to be modified, because if it were true Gullah, most people would not understand it and not be able to prepare the product. As a child I would love to listen to the Gullah language, and all of the stories and the songs still ring in my head. The language is still spoken on the outer islands around our area. It is almost a lost language, and I wanted to try to keep it alive and pay homage to the colorful culture and people. In other words, when someone buys a package of Gullah Gourmet, I not only want them to take home the flavor of Charleston, but also a bit of the culture. We went to work on this new venture in 1994 with four products and have been so blessed the whole way through. Now, fifteen years later, we have thirty-two bagged products, twenty-four bottled and jarred products, a variety of canned seafood, aprons, and T-shirts. We are proud to say that we have been featured on the Food Network many times, the first of which was the Food Finds program. The most recent production was with Paula Deen's sons, Jamie and Bobby, on their show Road Tasted. Our products are now known worldwide and are award winners for taste as well as packaging.
