More than 80 percent of Doux South’s pickle business typically is done with restaurants—in its home state of Georgia as well as Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey and Colorado.
With restaurant orders temporarily down due to Covid-19, co-founder Mark Hungarland and his team have seven SKUS of 16-oz. glass jars of its award-winning pickles that it is supplying to retail stores and Amazon.
Founded by Chef Nick Melvin, an Atlanta-based chef, Doux South pickles use fresh ingredients like onions, garlic, dill, celery seed, peppers, turmeric and more in a vinegar brine to make flavors that usually are only found in restaurants. These herbs also boost the health supportive nature of Doux South’s pickles—garlic and onion have been shown to increase the bioaccessibility of iron and zinc from food grains and turmeric is known to have antioxidant, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. All of Doux South’s pickles are made without artificial flavoring, emulsifiers, calcium chloride or preservatives.
Each jar is hand-packed in Doux South’s 6,000-s.f. facility in Atlanta, using only natural ingredients and no preservatives. Each product is vegan, Non-GMO and packed in glass Mason jars, which are easy to recycle or reuse.
Doux South Specialties’ retail line now features seven varieties of pickles, three varieties of whole-seed mustards and two pepper relishes. Doux South’s foodservice division provides an even broader line of fresh pickled vegetable selections in bulk to grocery olive and salad bars, as well as restaurants through its distribution network that now covers most of the lower 48 states.
Some of Doux South’s pickle offerings include:
- Sweet Soulshine—Sweet Soulshine is packed with the flavors of celery seed, mustard seed, onions and garlic, and have a soulshine yellow coloring from turmeric, which also boosts healthy benefits.
- Angry Cukes—Angry Cukes take farm-fresh cucumbers and brine them in a bath of vinegar, toasted chili flakes, garlic, sweet onion, fresh dill and yellow mustard seeds to create a dill pickle with layers of flavor.
- Chow Chow—Chow Chow has paired longer cuts of crisp green cabbage with sweet red peppers in distilled white vinegar and spiced with celery seed, sweet onion, garlic, mustard seed, turmeric and toasted chili flakes.
- Little Rock Caviar—Little Rock Caviar is made with black-eyed peas, a plant-based protein source, yellow onions, red and green bell peppers, distilled white vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic, molasses, anchovies, cloves, tamarind extract and aged cayenne red peppers.
- Drunken Tomatoes— Plump cherry tomatoes in a mix of organic distilled white vinegar, red wine, fresh basil, dry basil, yellow onion, sugar, garlic, salt, mustard seed and celery seed.
Doux South’s brine also can be used in cooking to add flavors of garlic, onion and vinegar to an assortment of dishes.
