In beautiful St. John, Indiana, you will find longtime staple Welch’s Stop and Shop, where they’re grilling up the goods with an award-winning assist from a special barbecue sauce: Hoosier Daddy.

Kim Foy is the proprietor behind the barbeque sauce that comes in three varieties. Kim’s father, Bill, was the mastermind behind the sauce.

Kim Foy, owner of Hoosier Daddy. (Photo: WGN)

Made from scratch at home with only natural ingredients, Bill made quite the tasty impression among family and friends. When Bill lost his cancer battle, Foy took the love of her father and his sauces to the market under the brand name Hoosier Daddy in 2011.

Foy’s brother Bill, who also passed prematurely, was an ingredient of inspiration as well.

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Hoosier Daddy was being sold online and at dozens of local grocery stores, at Sox Park and more.

“It was wonderful,” she told WGN News. “We were everywhere. We were in the ballparks in 26 states and three countries. It was going wonderfully.”

Until it wasn’t, says Foy, who, in the span of nine months, lost her husband, David, to leukemia and her mom, Billie, to breast cancer.

“It was very hard running back and forth between my husband, who was up at Rush for a couple of months and my mom. I brought her back and forth to the hospitals,” Foy said.

Left with four kids, four grandkids and managing her company, Foy said something had to give. She decided to shut down the booming barbecue business. 

“It was very hard because the whole purpose of me bringing it out was after losing my Dad,” Foy said.

So Hoosier Daddy went on the back burner. But while Foy focused on things at home, she says people never stopped knocking on her kitchen door, asking when they could get more of that special sauce?! 

“I had great success. It was a winner. There was just no doubt in my mind that I had a winner,” she said.

So came the reboot in 2019. Foy teamed up with Dutch Farms, reconnected with old retailers and some new ones, and business is steadily growing. 

“We are doing roughly 29,000 bottles a month,” Foy said.  

Moreover, Hoosier Daddy has won honors in places where barbeque is king or, in Foy’s case, queen of the castle. 

“I’ve taken it to Kansas City and Texas, where I won the National Barbeque Association Award of Excellence,” Foy said.”I’ve taken first place with all three sauces.” 

At Welch’s, a third-generation family-owned business, Ed Welch has been a believer in Kim from the get-go, partly due to her unbeatable heart. 

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“The heart of a champion because she worked her tail off and got it back going,” he said. “She’s doing really well. That set up out in front every Saturday and feature her sauces.” 

So in every bottle of Hoosier Daddy, know that there’s a story of one woman’s love of family and belief in herself that no matter how hard life got, her resolve only made her stronger.  

Now that’s down-home cooking: Hoosier style!