Exploring Life & Business with Zaria McBride of Southern Ting

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zaria McBride.

Hi Zaria, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Our family roots start in Richmond, Virginia. Growing up we’ve always dreamed of selling our mom’s famous baked macaroni and cheese. She’s a self-taught chef and prides herself on cooking meals from scratch. She studied some of the best chefs from Julia Child and Jacques Pépin to Emeril Lagasse and applied it to our family recipes passed down in our family. Overtime, we started to notice some of her Southern recipes were impacting our gut health due to ingredients like lactose and gluten. So, eating certain dishes like her mac and cheese were saved for special occasions and holidays. In 2020, everything changed for us. I had graduated from college and was back home with my family. During lockdown, staying healthy became a priority. We researched ways we could improve our health and learned about other cultures throughout the African Diaspora and applied their farm to table concept to her recipes. This change had an immediate positive impact on our family. It inspired us to create our line of scratch-made, artisan sauces as a way to encourage other families to start cooking at home. We launched our products in 2022 and have been overjoyed with the overwhelming support we’ve received.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It wasn’t a smooth road in the beginning because we were new to entrepreneurship, but we’ve learned the key to success is to be open to making changes and pivot when needed. When we first started, we were strictly focused on selling our sauces online, but we struggled building a community, sharing our story, and brand to an audience that did not know who we were. We quickly realized we needed to get our sauces directly to people through sampling and telling our story in-person. We decided to pivot and focus on introducing our sauces to our local Columbus community and the gluten free community through farmers markets and expos. We took the boots on the ground approach which helped create online customers.

As you know, we’re big fans of Southern Ting. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a family-owned sauce company and we produce scratch-made sauces with a unique fusion of Southern and Caribbean flavors. Each sauce is curated to simplify cooking artisan food at home. We’re known for our gluten free and lactose ­free mac n’ cheese called Macaroni Pie Cheese Sauce finished with roasted red bell peppers and fresh herbs and our gluten free and vegetarian light, vinegar-based all-purpose sauce called Every­-Ting Sauce. It perfectly blends Southern and Caribbean flavors with fresh ginger, garlic, herbs, Jamaican allspice, and fiery scotch bonnet peppers. We offer this sauce in either a medium or spicy flavor and it can be used as a glaze, marinade, salad dressing, and more. We created our sauce with the intent to make them all-natural with fresh ingredients and to help people gain more confidence in the kitchen. We take pride in the fact our customers can easily read the clean ingredients on our nutrition labels. Our mission is to unify diverse groups in every community and encourage a healthier lifestyle through farm to table cuisine.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Honestly, the most important thing to our success is we prioritize details and strive for perfection with our sauces, our brand, and our customer service. The driving force behind our growth is understanding our purpose and being in service to others. We put our customers first in every decision we make as a family business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.southernting.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ordersouthernting IG handle: @ordersouthernting

Image Credits
Tyler Jamison
Quaylyn Nichelle
Akil McBride