McClure's Pickles: How a Great-Grandmother's Recipe Built an $8 Million Food Business

Every year, starting when they were toddlers, brothers Bob and Joe McClure would wake before dawn to help their father with an annual family tradition: pickling day. Ten hours of cutting cucumbers, peeling garlic, and jarring pickles using their great-grandmother Lala's secret recipe. The reward? Sixty quarts of homemade pickles to give away as holiday gifts.

Neither brother imagined this childhood ritual would eventually become an $8 million business processing 8,000 pounds of cucumbers daily. But in 2006, a combination of nostalgia, entrepreneurial instinct, and fortunate timing transformed a family tradition into McClure's Pickles—a brand now sold at Whole Foods, Williams Sonoma, and retailers across three continents.

Their story offers practical lessons for anyone considering turning a family recipe, hobby, or passion project into a legitimate business.

The Unlikely Founders

Bob and Joe McClure didn't fit the typical food entrepreneur profile. When they started the company, Bob was an actor living in Brooklyn, working temp jobs at Condé Nast between auditions. Joe was pursuing a PhD in physiology at Wayne State University in Detroit while also studying classical guitar.

Neither had business training. Neither had manufacturing experience. What they did have was a recipe that had been perfected over generations and a growing realization that they missed the family tradition that had shaped their childhood.

"We weren't trying to build an empire," Bob recalls of those early days. "We just thought it would be fun to make some extra money doing something we already knew how to do."

In 2006, the brothers decided to dust off Lala's recipe and give it a shot commercially. Joe took jars to Michigan farmers markets. Bob distributed pickles to bars in Brooklyn. The initial goal was modest—earn enough to justify the time and effort.

Starting with Almost Nothing

The McClures launched with minimal resources. Their parents contributed $50,000 from a home equity loan on their condo—not a gift, but a loan that represented real financial risk. The brothers bought all their equipment on eBay and refurbished it themselves. A friend designed the label. Another friend built the website.

"We did farmers markets just to get the name out and get some foot traffic," Joe explains. The operation was deliberately scrappy. When production needed to scale beyond the family kitchen, Bob rented time in a commercial facility.

This frugal approach taught them an early lesson about food manufacturing: environment matters. Bob's first attempt at commercial-scale production took place in a tofu factory. The healthy bacteria in the air from the soybeans' fermentation process ruined his entire batch. Starting over cost time and money, but it reinforced the importance of controlling production conditions.

The New York Times Effect

Three months after launching, McClure's Pickles received the kind of publicity most food startups only dream about. Food writer Florence Fabricant of The New York Times happened to visit the Brooklyn Kitchen—a small store where McClure's was the only food product on the shelves. She tried the pickles, loved them, and wrote about them.

The resulting article changed everything. Orders flooded in from across the country. What had been a side project suddenly required serious infrastructure.

But the timing created its own challenges. Demand outpaced their ability to produce. The brothers had to scramble to scale operations while maintaining the quality that had earned them the review in the first place. They learned that publicity without operational readiness can be as problematic as obscurity.

Scaling Without Compromising

By 2009, the McClures made a strategic decision: consolidate manufacturing in Detroit rather than continuing to split operations between Michigan and New York. The choice was practical—Michigan is one of the largest cucumber-growing regions in the country, providing reliable access to fresh produce.

In 2010, they moved into a converted factory on St. Aubin Street, a former American Axle building. As Joe put it, they went "from gears to gherkins." The facility gave them room to grow while keeping them rooted in Detroit, a city both brothers felt committed to supporting.

Growth came steadily—10 to 25 percent annually. By 2017, after years of renting, the company purchased its 20,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for $750,000. Today, 25 employees work with 8,000 pounds of cucumbers daily, hand-filling 6,000 jars.

The commitment to hand-cutting and hand-filling has remained constant even as volume increased. Workers, including Bob and their mother Jennifer, still physically pack each jar. This labor-intensive approach limits how fast they can scale, but it preserves the artisanal quality that differentiates their product.

The Family Business Dynamic

Working with family presents unique challenges, but the McClures developed structures that made it work. Clear role definition proved essential. Bob handles business development, administration, and leads the sales team. Joe runs operations and production, managing floor teams and daily manufacturing.

Their parents contribute too. Mike McClure, their father, invested the initial capital and remains involved in the business. Jennifer, their mother, works on the production floor. The company is genuinely a family operation.

"Without distinct responsibilities, complications inevitably arise as the company scales," Bob observes. Each family member staying in their lane prevents the conflicts that derail many family businesses. They're not a "reality show" family that argues at the workplace—they complement each other's strengths.

Innovating Within the Category

McClure's strategy avoided the trap that catches many food entrepreneurs: trying to reinvent an entire category. Pickles are a commodity product with massive established players. Competing on price against industrial producers would be suicide.

Instead, McClure's innovates on quality within an established category. Their pitch isn't "here's something completely new." It's "here's something familiar, done exceptionally well."

This approach extended to product line expansion. Rather than jumping into unrelated categories, they stayed within the condiment and specialty food space. Relish came first, then potato chips using their pickle seasoning, then pickle brine sold on its own, then a bloody mary mix (essentially pickle brine and tomato juice) that became so popular it's now sold by the gallon.

Each new product leveraged existing expertise and brand equity rather than requiring them to build credibility from scratch.

The Power of Authentic Storytelling

The McClure's brand succeeds partly because consumers connect with its authenticity. The story of brothers making great-grandmother's recipe resonates with people who have their own family traditions, their own treasured recipes, their own nostalgic food memories.

"The great thing about a story is that everybody has one," Bob notes. "Our supporters like our story because it connects them to their own—their own history, family recipe, or family business."

This emotional connection creates loyalty that established corporations struggle to replicate. A hundred-year-old pickle company can't manufacture the authenticity of two brothers hand-jarring their great-grandmother's recipe. The brand story isn't marketing spin—it's genuinely how the company operates.

Lessons for Food Entrepreneurs

The McClure's journey offers several transferable insights:

Start small and validate demand. The brothers tested their product at farmers markets before investing in commercial production. They learned what worked and what didn't with minimal financial exposure.

Use constraints creatively. Limited capital forced them to buy used equipment on eBay and recruit friends to help with production. These constraints kept overhead low during the uncertain early period.

Control your supply chain. Moving manufacturing to Michigan—near cucumber farms—gave them reliable access to fresh ingredients and reduced transportation costs.

Define roles clearly in family businesses. Overlapping responsibilities create conflict. Distinct domains let each person own their area completely.

Innovate on quality, not category. Entering an established market with a superior product is often more viable than creating an entirely new category.

Seize unexpected opportunities. The New York Times review wasn't planned—it resulted from Bob bringing pickles to a dinner party where he met the founders of the Brooklyn Kitchen. Being present and sharing the product created the opportunity.

Scale deliberately. Fast growth sounds appealing, but outpacing your operational capacity damages quality and reputation. The McClures grew 10-25% annually for years, maintaining quality at each stage before pushing further.

Beyond Wildest Dreams

Mike McClure, the brothers' father, describes the company's trajectory as "beyond our wildest dreams." From a family tradition to an $8 million business exporting to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada—the scale of transformation is remarkable.

Yet the fundamentals haven't changed. The recipe is still Lala's. The pickles are still hand-cut. The family still works together. The commitment to quality remains non-negotiable.

For entrepreneurs considering whether to commercialize a family recipe, passion project, or hobby, the McClure's story suggests that success doesn't require abandoning what made the thing special in the first place. Sometimes the authentic, handmade, story-rich approach is exactly what the market wants—even in a category dominated by industrial giants.

Track Your Food Business Finances from Day One

Food businesses face unique financial complexity: ingredient costs fluctuate seasonally, production batches tie up capital, and scaling requires careful cash flow management. The McClures' measured growth partly reflected their need to maintain financial stability while expanding.

Beancount.io provides plain-text accounting that gives food entrepreneurs complete transparency over their finances—track ingredient costs, monitor production expenses, and maintain the clear financial records that banks and investors expect to see. Start free and build the financial foundation your food business needs to scale sustainably.