By Freda Freeman
Correspondent
RALEIGH – For Chef Julius West, the secret is in the sauce. The secret to turning his life around and the secret to landing him a spot on grocery store shelves across the country.
West is the founder of Sarge’s Shrimp and Grits Sauce, sold at all Harris Teeter stores and locally at Weaver Street Market in Raleigh and Mike D’s BBQ Smokehouse in Durham. It’s also available online at easyshrimpandgrits.com and on Amazon.
West said, up to this point, there has never been a premade shrimp and grits sauce on the market. Grateful for his success, West said what’s most rewarding is knowing how proud his parents would be.
“With my mother’s affinity for cooking, she would be thrilled to see our sauce on the shelf, not only on the shelf, but on the shelf in what we would consider to be a high-end store. One of the things we like doing is going around to the Harris Teeter stores introducing ourselves so they know it is a local diversity-owned company,” he said.
As the son of an Air Force sergeant, West has lived all over the world, and his mother, who loved to cook, would prepare local cuisine. West picked up his mother’s passion for cooking.
West came to Raleigh in 1972 to attend Saint Augustine’s College (now University). After meeting his wife, Janet, he decided to make it home. West has overcome many obstacles, including drug addiction and imprisonment. He started his own business because of the challenges he’s faced.
“I, like so many other Black people, have been justice impacted, so, as a result of that, work opportunities in the field that I was experienced in were limited. So, I was forced to be creative and to create for myself ways to be able to provide for my family,” said West, who’s been out of prison and drug free for 29 years.
West started a food truck operation in 2012, traveling throughout the Triangle area serving his signature shrimp and grits. The sauce was named in honor of his father, paying homage to his life in and out of the military.
Jay Jones, host of Taste of Soul NC food truck events, said West did the work to get where he is. “We all kept telling him how good it was and that he should put it in a bottle at some point. So, at some point, he went ahead and did it. It’s consistent with his truck days and, now to be on store shelves, it’s the same great case. I’m so excited that he pulled that off; he deserves it,” Jones said.
West ran the food truck for 7-1/2 years before shutting down in 2020. He had a heart attack in 2014, and when the pandemic hit, his health concerns made it too risky to continue running the truck. Thus, necessity is the mother of all inventions.
“My wife, in 2019, decided we should bottle our sauce. Shrimp and grits was the signature dish on our truck. People were always telling us they had trouble making it and asking us how did we make it, so it was my wife’s idea to bottle it,” he said. “June 2019, we received our first shipment of our bottled sauce and started offering it from the truck. When the pandemic hit in 2020, it was an easy pivot to stop operating the truck and just concentrate on the sauce.”
West recently expanded his line to include his own seafood seasoning and stone-ground grits. His goal is to leave a legacy of generational wealth.
Patrick Miller, owner of Nazz’d on Wheels, and West worked the food truck circuit together for more than seven years.
“I champion that sauce everywhere I go; every Harris Teeter I walk into,” Miller said. “I hope when he leaves this earth, we can keep his legacy running, keep Sarge’s brand out there.”
