Shop local: You can now buy 'Uncle' Carl's Flip Flop Sauce at this Fayetteville area grocer

Carl Pringle, affectionately known around Fayetteville as “Uncle Carl,” said he never planned to run a barbecue sauce business, let alone for his products to be sold in grocery stores.

When he made his first deliveries for the shelves at Food Lion on Friday morning, he couldn’t stop smiling.

“I’m so thankful, I’m so blessed,” he said.

Pringle's Original and Fire Flip Flop sauce varieties are now sold in 20 Fayetteville-area Food Lions, a project he said has long been in the works. It was slated to be sold in Food Lion starting in June, but a few hiccups along the way caused a delay. As Pringle said, “It came on its own time.”

Josh Adams manages the Food Lion at 3308 Bragg Blvd., and Pringle said he was instrumental to getting his product on the grocer's shelves.

"Our community is our family," Adams said. "Food Lion is beyond blessed to support our brothers."

Rooted in community

The Flip Flop sauce's beginning came at a time in Pringle's life that some might consider an ending. Multiple shoulder surgeries and knee problems while working at the Goodyear tire plant had rendered him disabled, depressed, and unable to work, he said, but feeding the community and developing his sauce, turned his life around.

About six years ago, he started a group called 1 Big Family, where members do whatever is needed in the community, including providing meals to those in need.

“My thing is feeding the community. From feeding the community came people loving the sauce, which is going to help me give back to the community,” he said.

A portion of the proceeds from sauce sales fund community meals for those in need, and will finance a forthcoming Bonnie Doone neighborhood recreation center, Uncle Carl’s Safe Space, where kids can play sports, learn trades and enjoy a space that makes them feel at home, he said.

Humble beginnings

His sauce was born four years ago when he was preparing food for a community cookout. He said he was making Mumbo sauce, a staple sweet-and-sour condiment popular in his native D.C., when he realized he was missing a few ingredients and he had to improvise.

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 even more. Before long, he developed more varieties and got on the shelves at locally owned Pate’s Farm Market and Kinlaw’s Supermarket.

Enjoyed coast to coast

Now that Flip Flop Sauce is sold online at flipflopbbq.com and on Amazon, Pringle has customers far beyond the Fayetteville area.

“I laugh at some of the places we get orders from,” he said. “I don’t know anyone from Wisconsin.”

But indeed, folks from America’s Dairyland have ordered the sauce, as have Floridians, who Pringle said dip sushi into it, and customers in the West, who use it on boar and elk meat. It goes far beyond barbecue, he said, it's an "everything" sauce.

Pringle plans to expand his offering to include T-shirts, mustard, a barbecue spice rub, and Flip Flop Free, a sugar-free version of the sauce. Pringle’s son was diagnosed with diabetes last year, he said, and he wants as many people as possible to enjoy his sauce without worrying about the health effects.

“It’s the everything sauce for everyone,” he said.

Find Flip Flop Sauce at flipflopbbq.com, Amazon, Pate’s Farm Market, 6411 Raeford Road, Kinlaw’s Supermarket, 1802 Sapona Road, and select Food Lion stores in Fayetteville, Hope Mills, Raeford and Stedman.

Food, dining and business reporter Taylor Shook can be reached at [email protected]. Want food news in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up for the Fayetteville Foodies newsletter.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: You can now buy Carl Pringle's sauce at this Fayetteville area grocer