Sauce czar spiels tea.

• Position: Joe King's Carolina Treet Inc. - Company profile

Sauce czar spiels tea

Barbecue baron Joe King is not out for instant success. He's concentrating on the tea business, and he thinks his new brew is sure to make a stir.

The Wilmington barbecue-sauce maker has taken his own brand of concentrated tea - sold by the gallon to restaurants for about two years - and repackaged it for grocery stores. A 16-ounce jar of the dark-brown, syrupy liquid yields six quarts of sweet tea.

In the early 1980s, Carolina Treet Inc. made concentrated tea for another company. When the contract ended, King still had the equipment on his hands, and he decided he might as well use it. He spent three years developing his own secret recipe.

When buyers at trade shows began asking to take home a jar or two, King tinkered with the packaging and emerged with Aunt Bertie's Sweet Brewed Tea, named after his grandmother. ("Granny Bertie's just didn't sound quite right," he says.)

The 13-store Fresh Market chain has begun stocking Aunt Bertie's (retail price about $2) as have the five Wilson Supermarkets in Wilmington.

King says he realizes that entering the retail tea market means challenging such corporate giants as Lipton and Tetley. But he has battled heavyweights before. "In the summertime...