Toby Keith's Premium Foods online store launches, featuring catfish, burgers, cups

Before he died in February, Oklahoma country music superstar and business mogul Toby Keith spent more than 18 months developing a new brand of high-quality foods sourced in the United States.

With the blessing of his family, Keith's team announced Wednesday that Toby Keith Premium Foods has officially launched, with the online store at tobykeithpremium.com featuring a line of sauces, burgers, catfish and Toby Keith Collector's Edition Big Daddy Cups, with more items to come.

Select products will be available at major retailers soon, according to a news release.

"This is something he was super passionate about," Toby Keith's Premium CEO Winston Tucker said in a statement. "He and the family wanted this to go forward and that's why it is."

How does the Toby Keith's Premium brand reflect the late superstar's passions for food, fishing and business?

Although he was best known as a celebrated singer, songwriter and entertainer, Keith, who died Feb. 5 at age 62 after a multiyear battle with stomach cancer, also made his mark as a businessman, patriot and philanthropist. A 2013 cover story in Forbes proclaimed him "Country's $500 Million Man."

In 2005, he opened his first Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Oklahoma City, and at one time, restaurants in his name were in business across the nation through a licensing venture. Three locations — operated by Hal Smith Restaurants — are in business in Oklahoma: the original in OKC's Bricktown district, one in his hometown of Moore and one in the Chickasaw Nation's WinStar World Casino in Thackerville.

In 2015, Keith bought Hollywood Corners, a historic 1920s roadhouse and service station in north Norman, and revamped it into a roadside deli, bar and music venue.

An avid outdoorsman and golfer, Keith owned Belmar Golf Club in Norman and was a longtime race horse breeder and trainer. He announced last year that he had hooked a big deal in acquiring famed fishing brand Luck E Strike.

"They're such a good company. They've got such a good upside to 'em. Obviously, I'm excited," Keith told The Oklahoman of his Luck E Strike venture in a June 2023 interview. "It's as much fun as I've had in a long time."

What foods and other items can fans expect from the Toby Keith's Premium brand?

In its online store, Toby Keith's Premium has several items available for pre-sale and set to "ship as soon as available." Based in Thayer, Missouri, the company is led by Tucker, and its 100% U.S.-sourced meats and other food products are packaged and distributed by the family-owned Rastelli Foods Group out of Swedesboro, New Jersey, and Pier Fish Group out of Bedford, Massachusetts.

The brand's offerings reflect Keith's songs, tastes and interests, including his love of fishing.

Among the Toby Keith's Premium offerings available for pre-sale is a 32-ounce bag of Wild-Caught Blue Catfish Portions for $34.99.

"He didn't like farm-raised catfish," Tucker said, adding that he and Keith became friends over their shared passion for fishing. "His exact words, in fact, were, 'I don't want any of those farm-raised catfish that taste like mud.' Quality was his first priority."

As opposed to channel catfish – often farmed overseas and found in many restaurants and stores – Toby Keith's Premium sources blue catfish from the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay, where they are an invasive species.

"These are a super clean, freshwater and brackish water fish that feeds on the sweet blue crab – proteins and quality comparable to wild-caught Alaskan salmon," Tucker said. "We will be the first to bring blue catfish to retail in volume."

Also available for pre-sale in 32-ounce bags are 100% All Beef Smash Burgers for $19.99.

"He'd say, 'If you're hungry, just stack a few of them up,'" Tucker said.

Priced at $32, the Sauce Sampler includes three varieties of Toby Keith's Premium Getcha Sum! sauces, named after the Oklahoma Hall of Famer's 1998 hit "Getcha Some." The sample pack comes with 10.5-ounce bottles of Creamy and Tangy Burger-N-Dog Sauce, Zesty Tartar Catfish-N-Shrimp Sauce and Sweet & Smoky Chicken-N-Tater Sauce. The sauces are sold separately for $12.99 each, too.

In addition, the online store is offering on pre-sale two-packs of Toby Keith Collector's Edition Big Daddy Cups for $34.99. Manufactured by Grizzly Coolers, they vaguely resemble the "Red Solo Cup" of Keith's 2011 smash, but they are made from 18/8 gauge, 304 stainless steel with a double-walled, vacuum-insulated design.

Listed as "coming soon" in the Toby Keith's Premium online store are two varieties of boneless baby back ribs, three kinds of beef jerky and four types of "How Do You Like Me Now?" catfish batter.

The "coming soon" Bona Fide Big Dog patties were inspired by the Fried Bologna Sandwich that the superstar insisted was a must-have on the menu for his restaurants.

"Catfish and fried bologna sandwiches are the top two selling items at Toby's restaurants," Tucker said. "And Toby loves hot dogs, but he'd say, 'I don't want 'em with the throw-away beef and pork parts and all those additives.' So we created the Big Dog, which is a 3.5-inch round like fried bologna that tastes more like a hot dog and fits on a hamburger bun. Nothing but real beef and chicken breast."

Along with a logo that depicts a smiling Keith in a white cowboy hat, Toby Keith's Premium products feature a red, white and blue color scheme that aligns with the country hitmaker's patriotic reputation.

"All these products come from the USA, so that was important to him," Tucker said.

How does the launch of Toby Keith's Premium reflect the ongoing strength of his legacy?

The roll-out of the new Toby Keith's Premium brand is coming as the Oklahoma native's legacy continues to flourish.

During his three-decade music career, Keith amassed 42 Top 10 hits and 33 No. 1 singles, sold 44 million albums and earned more than 10 billion streams. In May, his family announced that his chart-topping 2008 compilation album "35 Biggest Hits" had spent a milestone 150 consecutive weeks on Billboard's all-genre Top 200 chart.

Keith's daughter and fellow Oklahoma singer-songwriter Krystal Keith told The Oklahoman that it's a testament to the strength of her father's catalog that his music has been played and purchased so widely since his death.

"I think that people started going back and realizing how much of their lives had a soundtrack of him behind it," she told The Oklahoman.

Due to be posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame Oct. 20 in Nashville, Tennessee, the Norman-based superstar was recently celebrated with the star-studded NBC concert "Toby Keith: American Icon," which was viewed by millions and became the network's most-watched special of the year when it debuted Aug. 28.

Available to stream on Peacock, "Toby Keith: American Icon" was filmed in July at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena, where it drew a sold-out crowd. All of Keith's catalog saw a nearly 150% increase after the special, according to a news release. Proceeds from the event benefited the Oklahoma City-based Toby Keith Foundation’s OK Kids Korral, a cost-free home-away-from-home for families of children with cancer.

Keith has two posthumous albums coming out Oct. 4: The newly compiled hits album "13 Number Ones" and the remastered and expanded "Christmas to Christmas." Plus, his "Greatest Hits: The Show Dog Years" marks the fifth anniversary of its release on Oct 25.

Posthumously awarded an honorary degree from the University of Oklahoma in May, Keith is being honored with sing-alongs between the third and fourth quarters of OU home football games this season. At the Sooners' Aug. 30 season opener vs. Temple, Krystal Keith helped kick off the sing-along to "Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Toby Keith Premium Foods launches online