Get a taste of Fayetteville with these locally made foods like cheese, sauce and chocolate
Fayetteville’s busy restaurant scene gets much attention from area foodies — for good reason — but the food products made and sold here are sometimes overlooked.
Here’s a look at some of the locally crafted sauces, cheese, chocolate, beef jerky, honey and coffee that offer a taste of the Fayetteville area, the people who make the items and where to buy them.
Know of a local food product we should feature? Email food reporter Taylor Shook at [email protected].
Flip Flop Sauce
Affectionately known around Fayetteville as “Uncle Carl,” Carl Pringle has long hosted free community cookouts through his organization, 1 Big Family. It was at one of these events a few years ago where his now-popular barbecue sauce was born.
Pringle was making Mumbo sauce, a staple sweet-and-sour condiment popular in his native Washington, D.C., when he realized he was missing a few ingredients and had to improvise, he told The Fayetteville Observer in 2022.
He happened to wear flip-flop sandals to the cookout. When attendees asked him what the sauce was, he replied, “flip-flop sauce, so good you could put it on a flip-flop and eat it.”
Pringle said he kept making more batches and soon started selling bottles of the sauce to fund community meals. It came to a point where many attended his cookouts just to buy the sauce, he said.
He said he never planned to be an entrepreneur, but he knew turning the sauce into a business meant he could help locals even more. Before long, he developed spicy and sugar-free varieties and got on the shelves at Pate’s Farm Market, Kinlaw’s Supermarket and Food Lion stores in Fayetteville, Hope Mills, Raeford and Stedman.
Previously: You can now buy 'Uncle' Carl's Flip Flop Sauce at this Fayetteville area grocer
Danny B's Pimento Cheese
The man behind Danny B’s Pimento Cheese is South View High School graduate and longtime butcher Danny Barnes.
Sometimes referred to as the pate of the south or Carolina caviar, he said pimento cheese can cause confusion for those from north of the Mason-Dixon. Put simply, “it’s cheese with peppers in it,” Barnes told The Fayetteville Observer in 2022.
He prefers it with crackers, but people eat it on sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, quesadillas, eggs, grits, chili or “just with a spoon,” he said.
In addition to the original pimento cheese, Barnes also offers a hot variety made with a small amount of Carolina Reaper peppers, which are known to be some of the hottest peppers in the world. He said the dip isn’t “novelty”-level hot, but it is for “people who like spicy foods.”
Barnes’ cheese is available in 247 Food Lion stores across eastern North Carolina, where customers can find it in the deli aisle. It’s also available at independent grocers like The Downtown Market of Fayetteville, Pate’s Farm Market and Gillis Hill Road Produce.
Related: Carolina caviar and scratch-made sauce: Two Fayetteville products are now on grocery shelves
CW Dressings
As the former senior culinary management noncommissioned officer with the 20th Engineer Brigade at Fort Liberty, who also ran the post's Smoke Bomb Hill dining facility for several years, Chris Whitehurst is no stranger to food.
The Army veteran and CW Dressings owner developed a balsamic vinaigrette sweetened with dates as an alternative to supermarket dressings, which often contain added refined sugars. Later, he added a hot sauce to his line of naturally sweetened offerings.
Made with cayenne, scotch bonnet, chipotle and guajillo peppers and black peppercorn, the sauce gets its sweetness and depth of flavor from deglet noor date syrup, Whitehurst told The Fayetteville Observer in 2022.
Find CW Dressings at Pate's Farm Market, LeClair's General Store, The Downtown Market, or online at cwdressings.com, Amazon and walmart.com.
Paratrooper's Chocolate Bar
Army veteran and Fayetteville resident Jazlyn Ortiz specializes in single-serving treats for people who have a sweet tooth but want to enjoy dessert in moderation, she told The Fayetteville Observer in April.
Ortiz’s business, Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar, started as a hobby in 2018 and took off online during the pandemic. Now, her products are sold at The Sweet Factory candy shop in Fayetteville, alongside handmade treats from several other local women confectioners.
Among her signatures are the cheesecake-stuffed strawberries, tres leches cake slices, cake pops and mini cakes.
Related: Sweeter with chocolate: Veteran to launch chocolate bar in Fayetteville candy shop
Uncle Zip’s Beef Jerky
Uncle Zip’s Beef Jerky was born when the late Ken Howell began selling his father’s beef jerky recipe at bars, bowling alleys and businesses around town.
“Zip” was the nickname of Howell’s father, Bill Howell. His wife, the late Peggy Howell, drew the caricature of her husband with thick-rimmed glasses, beard and blue coveralls that graces every Uncle Zip’s vacuum-sealed package.
Now, Ken Howell’s childhood friend Jeff Harris operates the jerky-making operation and shop on North Main Street in Hope Mills, which still serves the original recipe jerky, along with seven house-made spicy and smoky flavors, and 120 jerky varieties from around the nation.
Uncle Zip’s is also known for its hand-dipped chocolate-covered apples, which come in flavors like Oreo, apple pie and s’mores.
Related: Fayetteville is nuts about this jerky shop's candy apples. What makes them so delicious?
Secret Garden Bees
Just north of Fayetteville in the town of Linden lies Secret Garden Bees, a veteran-owned farm that produces thousands of pounds of raw honey each year.
The one-man force behind the operation is Jim Hartman, 48, a former Army explosives disposal officer whose 10 years of service included two tours in Iraq.
He said he started beekeeping about four years ago to manage his post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time, he was a manager at defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. It was a high-stress job that required frequent travel — a combination that worsened his disorder.
His beekeeping hobby helped, so he stuck with it. Since discovering the peace that comes with beekeeping, his PTSD has continued to improve.
Hartman tends to 30 hives housing about 600,000 bees, which produce light and mild clover honey harvested in the spring, and darker, more robust wildflower honey harvested in the fall.
It’s sold in glass bottles at a self-service store on the bee farm at 6930 Moray St. and at all 130 The Fresh Market locations nationwide.
Related: Beekeeping helped Linden Army vet recover from PTSD. Now his honey is in stores nationwide
The Morning Jump Coffee Company
The Morning Jump Coffee Company, a drive-thru coffee stand and independent roaster, has been a popular Spring Lake stop since it opened in 2013.
Army Special Forces veteran Erik Brinkman owns the shop with his wife Danae. Their daughter Katelyn Bartlett manages the Bragg Boulevard operation while their son Tyson Leavitt heads up coffee roasting and quality assurance.
You can buy coffee to brew at home at themorningjump.com/shop or in-store.
Food, dining and culture reporter Taylor Shook can be reached at [email protected]. Want weekly food news delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Fayetteville Foodies newsletter.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: What foods are made in Fayetteville, NC?
