At the corner of West Main Street and North Walnut downtown, there is a historical marker honoring B.B. Morris, the first BBQ restaurant in Statesboro. Opened in 1920 by A.F. Morris, a meat cutter, and his son B.B. Morris, the restaurant boasted locally-sourced fresh produce and meat from farmers in the area.
In 1923, these “restaurant specialists” developed a barbeque sauce that is still remembered by Statesboroans long after B.B. Morris closed. Matt Price, whose ancestors started the business, explains the family lineage that once built a Statesboro icon.
“B.B. Morris was my grandmother’s father, and he had a grocery store on West Main Street," Matt Price said. "And he also sold meat and made the barbeque sauce.”
A family tradition
Even though the restaurant was closed by the time Price, who now lives in Virginia, was born, he remembers making the sauce as a child with his grandparents, Clark and Jane DeLoach, from around 1986 until 2006. They made the sauce upstairs in the building on West Main Street, where the marker now stands in silent observance of the BBQ empire that once was.
“Many weekends were spent cooking and bottling, upstairs on West Main Street. We usually cooked 2-3 large pots at a time,” Matt recalls. “The open flame of the cooker made for especially hot summer days. We often enjoyed listening to Car Talk on NPR while bottling.”
These delicious bottles were sold in local grocery stores for $2.88. Inevitably, spending weekends creating the vinegar-based condiment got to be too much, and the DeLoaches halted production. Once they stopped making the sauce, Statesboro residents clamored for more.
“People all over Statesboro started asking, ‘When can we get some more sauce? When is somebody going to make it?'" said Matt.
100th Anniversary Batch
After almost a 20 year-hiatus, Matt Price, the owner of the beloved recipe along with his brother, Ryan Price, acquiesced. “Let’s go ahead and make it. There’s no better time than the 100-year anniversary.”
Matt did some research about current requirements to make the unique sauce, and he and his brother returned to Statesboro to make the anniversary batch.
“We found a certified kitchen, and my brother and I took a trip down to make it in April. Once we tasted it, we were determined it was right. We then got in touch with the farmer’s market, and they were super helpful and made it easy for us to do a one-time trial run of it," said Matt Price.
It took two days to make the 150 bottles that were offered to the public, and nearly all were sold.
The sauce was dedicated to the memory of the Price’s mother and the DeLoaches' daughter, Bonnie DeLoach Price, who passed away in 2021.
While full production of the tasty sauce is doubtful for the future, Price gives hope to the Bulloch BBQ connoisseur. “I think we will do an occasional batch again," said Matt Price.
