Custard Stand Food Products

  Custard Stand Food Products is first and foremost a family operated business that began as a take out dairy bar and has expanded to a USDA approved meat processing facility. We got our chili recipe from our Great Aunt Lucile. Lucile managed the famous Elsie's Dairy Bar, nicknamed "The Custard Stand" for years in down town Webster Springs. Aunt Lucile cooked the chili there beginning in the early 1960's. She thinks the hot dog chili recipe is a slight variation of a recipe that was originally our grandfather's. When we decided to open a restaurant I asked Aunt Lucile if she would give us the recipe for their famous chili. She did, with the agreement that we would not give it to anyone else and we have honored her request. We are not positive about the origins of the recipe for the chili but believe it has been in our community for the last 80 years.

   We worked with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors who examined our facility and helped us with remodeling plans. We began looking into permits and certification programs as well as obtaining a label and logo for our product, all of which had to be approved by the USDA. To aid us in packaging designs, we sent out surveys to friends and family members with lots of questions about container sizes and colors. We contacted Berry Plastics to produce our containers. We traveled all over West Virginia and Ohio to to purchase equipment. Next we traveled to Huntington, WV to meet with our meat suppliers and tour their facilities. While in Huntington we found a local company to produce our boxes for all of our shipping needs. Finally we attended events sponsored by the WV Department of Agriculture including a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) seminar and we now have our HACCP certification, which is required by all USDA approved facilities.

   Custard Stand hot dog chili is currently available in over 200 locations across West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. Eventually we hope to expand both our product line and our employment base. We envision a much larger facility with several delivery trucks and a mail order/internet business that we can one day hand down to our children if they desire. With help from the WV Department of Agriculture we would like to build not only a national, but an international business involved in exporting our products!

Owner/operators: Dee and Angie

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