Oink-N-Squeel Barbecue Sauce was Steve Neumann’s dream. He owned Kwik Stop Liquors at Third and Columbia streets for 30 years and was a cook in the early 1970s while in the Army National Guard. With a friend, Steve built a large smoker in the mid-1990s and began competing in barbecue contests, creating his own sauce along the way. His wife, Joan, and their sons, Andy and Zach, were taste testers. It was 1998 when Steve perfected the recipe, registered his trademark, and searched for a bottler.
The first batch was produced in Louisville, Kentucky, but then Evansville’s Farm Boy Food Service began making it. Steve “pounded the pavement trying to convince retailers to stock our sauces and would fill their shelves before he went to work at the liquor store,” Joan says.
She and their sons have carried Oink-N-Squeel forward since Steve’s death in 2019. Farm Boy was bought by Owensboro, Kentucky’s CRS OneSource in October 2022, and after its production facility closed in March 2023, Louisville’s Bluegrass Superior Foods took over the Oink-N-Squeel brand. It’s still on the shelves of local Schnucks and IGA stores, plus a few smaller outlets. Restaurants including Bud’s Rockin’ Country Bar & Grill, 10-8 Cafe Bar & Grill, Dontae’s Highland Pizza Parlor, and Boonville’s 3rd Street Saloon cook with it.
Oink-N-Squeel took another big step in 2021 when Zach suggested a food truck; it debuted a year later. What’s cooking? Lots of barbecue, of course: pulled pork and chicken the Neumanns smoke themselves, plus street tacos, loaded tater tots (Joan says these are a fan favorite), and sides…