New Brunswick Sauce Blends The Best Of Patio, Beers, And Barbecue
MONCTON–As New Brunswickers crack their first patio beers and fire up their barbecues, a new product that blends the best of both those words is on the market across the province.
MadQ Sauce, a line of beer-flavoured barbecue sauces, has vastly exceeded founder Christian Landry’s expectations.
The original plan, when Landry launched MadQ Sauce in summer 2021, was to sell about 1,000-1,500 bottles. Landry ended up exceeding that, selling 8,400 bottles last summer and, at the time of writing, he’s sold between 12 and 13,000 bottles.
Landry, an Edmundston native, teamed up with microbreweries from all corners of New Brunswick to create his signature barbecue sauces, integrating the flavours of the province’s many beers.
Mad Q Sauce has partnerships with seven different New Brunswick microbreweries: Les Brasseurs Du Petit-Sault, Picaroons Brewing Company, Four Rivers Brewing Company, Foghorn Brewing Company, Brasseux d’la Côte, CAVOK Brewing Co., and Big Axe Brewery. The company also brews up a maple-flavoured sauce and a special edition cranberry-maple sauce for Christmas, as well as a spice rub.
The company brews its barbecue sauces in batches of about 205 bottles, in Moncton, selling them at 35 different locations across the province.
Landry told Huddle he “flips between” Edmundston, where he owns an audiovisual tech company, and Moncton, where MadQ Sauce is based.
Covid-19 was Landry’s inspiration to launch a line of local-beer-flavoured barbecue sauces.
When the pandemic hit, Landry said he had a lot of time in his hands and began to ideate. Drawing on his culinary roots as an instructor at the Edmundston CCNB branch, and owner of the former Christovino Sushi & Grill in Saint Jacques, Landry brainstormed a blend of barbecue sauce.
“With everything shut down, I started to think about what I could bring to the table and what I can do with local products and microbreweries – and I initiated the project,” he said.
His original aim was to integrate the flavours of beers from all corners of New Brunswick into his sauces.
Now, Landry notes, “the timing is absolutely perfect, especially since there’s demand for local products and people have really embraced the buy local movement.”
His only concern is that rising grocery prices and increasing customer frugality may make people hesitate to buy his sauces.
“People may end up cutting down on specialty items. I hope they don’t, but time will tell.”
Landry says the process of brewing his signature sauces requires “a pretty big reduction, when you start the process.”
“A bottle of sauce is 12 ounces, and that’s the equivalent of 12 ounces of beer, so when we use (breweries’) products, we use a lot of it,” he said.
“We start with the beer and build the recipe, following the original taste of the beer, making sure it stands out.”
When asked about expanding the number of venues where Mad Q Sauce is sold, Landry said “we can never have too many partners.”
That being said, he noted he’d like to keep sales local, and isn’t on a mission, by any means, to get Mad Q Sauce onto the shelves of larger grocery chains.
“We want to keep it to small shops and breweries and a few co-ops, but we’re not aiming for Superstore as of now – but the future will tell.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].