This is one of the most serendipitous events that I have ever encountered. My wife recently asked for relish to put on hot dogs. I really don’t care for relish much. Years ago, I made zucchini relish and I thought that was pretty good, but that is long gone. When I went to the store, I deliberately sought out something different that what normally is purchased in a squeeze bottle.

I picked out this Wickles brand in a specialty area of the store. I actually thought that it was pretty good, very close to my zucchini relish. The fourth of July came around and we had a few hotdogs but we also had a ton of buns left over. So, I have been eating a bunch of hotdogs lately that include this relish on it.

Now for the serendipitous part. A few days ago I saw an article on MSN that I had to read. It was something along the lines of ‘The most famous food brand of each state’ I am a sucker for these kinds of articles because I am always interested in what a likely non-resident thinks of my state and other states that I am familiar with such as South Carolina.

Most of the time, I can pretty much guess what the choice is for Oregon. I will get to that in a minute. But, it just so happens that Wickles is the most famous brand in Alabama. Before I purchased this jar, I had never heard of or seen Wickles before let alone ever read the label.

The other night, I was eating a couple hotdogs and thinking about this article. I couldn’t remember the state and so I flipped the jar around to look at the label. Low and behold it said Made in India on it. What? I cannot think about the last time I saw Made in India on it. Even more than that, why relish?

As I went through the the article, I guessed correctly that Oregon’s most famous brand is Tillamook cheese. If you are not familiar with the brand, it is pretty good cheddar cheese. We of course grew up with it but it has gotten pretty big in the last twenty years. I remember seeing it in one grocery store for the first time when we lived in South Carolina, it was a big deal for us. There was a time when my wife’s family sent us a care package. It contained some Tillamook cheese and some wine and a few other things. It was in an insulated box but it was warm outside and I remember the cheese being soft. It was still good though.

Tillamook is a town on the Oregon Coast and the cheese is a farmer owned coop. It was traditionally made in a factory along the coast. But, about 25 years ago, they built a second plant along the Columbia river gorge. It doesn’t even have a visible sign on it. But, it is that plant that produces about 75% of the overall volume. In fact, there was even a lawsuit over this “It claims the creamery’s marketing led consumers to believe its milk is sourced from small, family-owned, lush-green pasture-based dairies in Tillamook County, when in reality, the case alleges, it sources two-thirds of its milk from one of the country’s largest dairies with cement floors and barren feedlots and over 28,000 cows east of the Cascades near Boardman.”

Without that plant, there would have never been Tillamook cheese in South Carolina grocery stores. Now that I am back in Oregon, I could really care less if Tillamook has distribution on the east coast. It is however quite the double edged sword. Are you willing to let your small, hometown favorites compete against the likes of one of the seven large food companies? And if they can’t compete, eventually they become acquired. This happens over and over.

End Your Programming Routine: I know a lot about the food industry, most of which doesn’t impress me very much. I cannot say why relish is made in India. That being said, it probably has to do with product cost and distribution. They are clearly very small, they have 82 followers on LinkedIn. There is a separate LinkedIn page for Wickles that has 125 followers. I mean, I have more than that without too much effort at all.