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Joyce’s Supermarket “We use a rice called Toro [in our boudin]. It’s a breed of rice …Most people use medium-grain rice. We use a long-grain Toro, so it’s one of the things we do different to try to set it apart.” – Harvey Gauthier The motto at Joyce’s Supermarket—“Where Prices are Born Not Raised”—is as unorthodox as its sausage selection, and it points to the good humor and ingenuity of its proprietor, Lowell Gauthier. Approaching his 70s, Lowell still has a hand in every aspect of the business that he and his estranged wife, Joyce, founded in 1969. Several of their five children also work at the store. Ginger Gauthier happily spent her childhood at Joyce’s, napping on 50-pound sacks of rice in a back room when she tired. By the time she turned 12 or 13 years old she was at the check-out counter, calculating sales tax in her head. Today, she can’t imagine working anyplace else. Ginger’s younger brother, Harvey, recalls watching his father break down whole sides of beef with just a handsaw and a clever. They didn’t sell fresh sausage at Joyce’s back then, but with seven mouths to feed his parents always had a pot on the stove. These days, Harvey cooks Joyce’s plate lunch specials on Mondays—usually red or white beans, and perhaps beef and gravy, chicken fricassee or smothered potatoes. Harvey and his father look to tradition and the Food Network when creating new sausage recipes. Along with regional specialties such as chaurice, andouille, and pork boudin, they make a salt meat sausage, a Hawaiian pork with pineapple sausage, a honey-lemon sausage, and several variations on boudin, to name just a few. All of which adds up to roughly 1,000 pounds of sausage sales per day. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subjects: Ginger & Harvey Gauthier ----- Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Wednesday, August 20, 2008. I’m in Saint Martinville, Louisiana, with the Gauthier siblings. And could I get you both to introduce yourself and say your birth date? Ginger Gauthier: I’m Ginger Gauthier, and my birth date is September 27, 1969. Harvey Gauthier: Harvey Gauthier, March 17, 1976. All right. We were talking earlier and we had to start over, but we were talking about your family history and you had an idea of where to start with that. GG: Actually, it starts with my grandparents, my mother’s parents, Artie and Tick (given name Reginald) Buck….Ricohoc, Louisiana, which is very near Patterson and between Centerville and Patterson—Franklin and Patterson. They—my grandfather had his own tugboat, and eventually my grandmother decided to open a café, and she did very well with it. They served hamburgers and…sold gas, boiled crawfish and actually, you know my—my uncle, who passed away a few years ago, continued on with that café. But from there, that’s where my dad met my mom and they married. And of course my dad was from Saint Martinville, so they ended up moving back here. And eventually my—you know my dad was working at the sugar mill, and they decided to open a little convenience store right next door to the house. And actually, my dad and one other man—was it Mr. Lavergne? HG: No, it was Chiclet Thibodeaux. GG: That actually built the building. HG: Well no, the first building was a little pavilion that was attached to a house and they—they moved it to the road. The first little part was actually attached to the house, and him and Mr. Chiclet Thibodeaux moved it to the road and kind of converted it just into a little mom and pop with—with a refrigerator for a cooler and some milk and candy and whatnot—and gas. GG: Yeah, eventually they had gas and they pretty much—the local sugarcane farmers and— people because we were in the country, they you know—they supported the little store and eventually it grew. And actually that was in 1969, the year I was born. I have two older siblings and—but once that got going— HG: They added onto that building and turned it into more of like—not modern by any—any—any means, but into a little bit bigger store, you know, with more items and—and more stuff. He even sold clothes and—and bullets and whatnot, you know. And what year did they move into Port Street? Like [nineteen]’74…And that store used to be long to Millard Sagura. GG: Yeah, they rented from Millard Sagura, and Daddy [Lowell Gauthier] quit his job at the sugar mill…And they made a go of it there on Port Street, and they did great. HG: They couldn’t handle the business in the small store to start with. Only like thirty by thirty, if that, you know. Small building. GG: And I remember—I’ve got to tell this story. [Laughs] I remember as a child, they would get such a large order of items in on their truck, but the back room we would climb over sacks and we thought it was so much fun. You see, Harvey is eight years behind me, and I have another brother fourteen years behind me, but the two older siblings and I are each two years apart. And I can remember it was so much fun. HG: Well actually, I’ve heard that they used to leave groceries outside on the sidewalk because there was no room to put it in the store…And like they would slowly just bring it in throughout the course of the day, and if it rained or something it was just a bad time. And actually their first employee was my mother-in-law. ----- What about your slogan on your sign? That’s what brought me in here the first time. Who is responsible for that? HG: Mom and dad were riding back from somewhere and they saw it on the lumberyard that was closed down. And it just kind of stuck in my dad’s head and— GG: And it just so happened Harvey was, you know, born that year, and actually the baby is supposed to represent him. Can you tell me, for the record, what it is—the slogan? HG: Yeah, it’s “Where prices are born and not raised.” GG: My dad was very good with—with slogans and names. If you noticed the—the meat specials, you know, they all have catchy names. HG: Doctor Boogey and Sugar Daddy and Tax Plan…Well, it’s just bulk packs with, you know, a variety of meat and grocery items that we have for a set price, you know. Somebody can just walk up and say, “I’d like the Cajun Survival Special,” and it’ll have like so much meat and so much rice and potatoes, you know…Yeah, they can come in and shop in five minutes. GG: It’s easy. It’s convenient, you know. And actually, Dr. Boogey, we often have is a buy one get one free, you know, so you get two specials for the price of one, and it gives you enough of a variety to, you know—. HG: It gives us something to compete with the chains, you know, because you can't go to Wal-Mart, you know, or to Super One or anything for this kind of stuff, you know. So it gives us a niche, you know. GG: And actually, the four-to-eight-pound specials, as well, you know, the single price is one and the more you buy, the little bit cheaper it is, you know. Four pounds or less you get—four pounds or more you get it a—a little bit cheaper and eight pounds or more you get it a little bit cheaper, and my dad came up with that concept himself, so. And the—and the bulk meat specials, as well, so it makes us unique among other stores. And it’s convenient for someone who is looking, you know, to do a quick shopping and get fresh—freshly daily cut meat and fill up their freezer for the week. ----- When you were growing up and it was on—well both in the country and on Port Street, did you sell fresh meat then? GG: Yes, yes. Actually, Daddy had to learn to cut meat. He…had absolutely no experience in the grocery business. HG: A friend of his had a little experience from two chains that he had worked for. And he was shrimping or crabbing at the time, so he would go do his—his shrimping or crabbing or whatever he was up to at that time, and at night he would come into the store and show my dad how to cut, you know, pork chops or, you know, chucks or whatever it is. And they actually started with a handsaw and a clever, you know, just—no meat saw. I don't think we got a meat saw until we came here, you know. We done been through about thirty of them…Because we used to get the whole sides of beef, and they’d break it down. ----- And so do you raise the animals or your dad does or the family does? HG: We all do kind of—me and my dad and my brother. And then do you slaughter your own animals? HG: Not for the store…Every now and then, if his herd is getting too big, which happens often because they’re very happy cows [Laughs]; he keeps them happy. When he—when he sees that he’s getting too many, you know, he’ll—he’ll slaughter one or two, and it’s personal. ----- GG: I remember as a child what we’d do is we had—in the meat department here we had an area. That’s where we’d serve boudin. We’d slice cold cuts and hamburgers. HG: Uh-hmm. And what happened was—and this is just from my dad telling me. I don't remember any of this. But it was so busy at this meat case with plate lunches and—and then business for fresh meat it was just mass confusion. So he built a facility back here in like [nineteen] ’80 or ’81…And they served lunches in there. You know, plate—plate lunches, you know, Cajun-style lunches until about five years ago. And we closed that, and now we serve plate lunches in the front of the store. We have a deli where we cook fresh homemade meals every day. ----- Can you tell me a little bit about your sausage production? You have so many sausages. When and how did that start? HG: Well it started with just three sausages, really: pork, mixed, and chaurice, which is not like chorizo which a lot of people—but chaurice is a local sausage here and normally it’s a pork sausage that’s ground coarse and contains garlic. And there’s variations from store to store but you know we’ve always—that’s one thing we’ve always made was the chaurice…And from there, with those three sausages, we would do a hot pork, an all-beef sausage, or a pork sausage with green onions, you know, and it just kind of kept growing and growing, and now we have sausages with—we have an apple pork, we have a Hawaiian pork with pineapple, we have a honey-lemon that’s just excellent. There’s a honey-lemon that’s really good…Most of our specialty sausages are pork-based. The only beef sausage we have is a green onion mix, which is fifty percent pork and fifty percent beef and we have a—a hot beef and a mild beef. And those—those are the only sausages that contain beef. I personally don't like beef sausage. ----- Are you the one doing like the recipe development? HG: My dad and I work on it together a lot. I’ll see stuff somewhere, or I’ll go to a camp or to a friend’s house and they’re cooking something, not even a sausage-type dish, like—we haven’t made it yet, but I do pork ribs with a fig glaze. And we’re going to do a pork sausage with figs in it. So we have to wait for fig season to come back around, though, but—stuff like that, just yeah a little bit of Food Network, a little bit of friends and family, you know. ----- GG: We kind of—our sausage maker is a little overwhelmed, so we’re not making all of them right now, but at some point we have the white bean boudin, chow-chow… chicken boudin, chow-chow boudin, shrimp…crawfish. HG: We even had a crabmeat one, but it wasn’t very good. [Laughs] The shrimp boudin, the crawfish, and the regular pork boudin are by far our—our big three, you know. And the white bean boudin, it’s kind of like a play on the bean soup and the white beans that are very popular around here, you know. And it is pretty good but it—it—it didn’t really catch on, you know. But we—our pork—regular pork boudin, I’ll backup and tell a story that my dad—when he first opened up the street—the store on Port Street, there was a lady. I can't remember her name, but she would buy the stuff...My dad would sell to this lady her ingredients for boudin, and the lady was very, very poor and had a bunch of kids and it was—I think her husband might have passed away or something. So he’d sell it to her at cost, and she would buy pork fat, pork liver, onions, rice and bell (peppers)—and green onions—no meat whatsoever. My dad used to say, “Well this has got to be the most horrible thing,” you know. I couldn’t imagine—and she would bring it, you know—bring him a couple links as a thank-you for selling everything at cost, you know. And one day they—she had brought some and he’s like, “We’ll heat that up. Let’s try it.” And it was like the best boudin. And I’m sure it wasn’t very good for you, but he said it really had the original boudin flavor, you know, which was the pork liver and pork fat. I mean that’s what boudin is: what you got left, you know, grind it up and stuff it into some casing. But our boudin has kind of evolved over the years to less liver, more lean pork, less rice. It’s—it’s more like—it’s a meatier product, you know. But they still—if you find a little store in the country somewhere, sometimes you’ll find that original, you know, pork fat, pork liver type thing, you know. And did the recipe evolve because of just more modern tastes? HG: I think so. I—a little bit because people became more health conscious, and it made a prettier product and we’re trying to improve the looks of it and—and a lot of the things—any time we do something over here, we always have input from all our employees. If we make a sausage, we cook some that day, cut it up and have everybody try it. And they’ll say, “Look, you need more jalapenos” or “you know don't put so many of this or that,” you know, whatever it is. So the boudin has really probably just as much to do with all the input from the employees as us, so—. Well I was thinking, you know, with all those—with all your different sausages and the different boudin, I would have to really trust someone to even try it, like a sausage with pineapple in it or something. HG: Yeah, that’s like our number one item. ----- So today you just have the regular pork boudin and not any of the special stuff? HG: No, we probably have some crawfish boudin right now. Crawfish season just ended, so we’re still making it. Oh, okay. Yeah, so you make that in season pretty much? HG: Well the crawfish now, they freeze enough crawfish that we can have crawfish year-round. So we do continue making the crawfish, you know, and if we see it slows down or stops selling, we’ll stop making it. But the pork boudin is a constant thing. That’s twenty-four/seven. ----- What about for your crawfish and your shrimp boudin, is that a pork based or is it all seafood? HG: All seafood because this a big Christian—Catholic community, so come Lent and whatnot you would be persecuted if you had pork and something that day, you know, because it’s a very, very strong Catholic community. ----- Well what about like the boudin part of your business here—well, compared to the sausage is it—how does the boudin sell, I guess? We’ll sell 200 to 300 pounds of boudin a week on a good week. On a good week we’ll sell 1,000 pounds of sausage a day…So that’s the ratio there, you know. Now that would be a good week, but [Lisa Hebert] makes pretty much—she’s off one day, and she’ll make between 800 and 1,500 pounds of sausage just about every day, you know, except for her day off…The way we have it set up, it goes quick. We have someone that will help her grind everything and you know and whatnot, but the actual production of the sausage in the stuffing machine, she does everything. And do y’all have a recipe book for all the sausages or—? HG: More or less. A lot of it is upstairs, though. And so does she have a hand in the development? HG: Yes, because Lisa is a real good cook and Cajun heritage and family. They speak French in that family…So when she says, you know, “We ought to try this,” we go with it. GG: And she’s worked with us on and off for many years, and she’s always worked in the meat department and, yeah, she’s very, you know—and she actually—she recently took classes in cake decorating and stuff so we—we can pop her in any department. Last week she was making sausage and helping—she took our bakery manager’s place last week while she was on vacation so she—she made sausage and decorated cakes last week. ----- For the boudin do you use like a shoulder or a butt? HG: We use a butt—pork butt, pork liver, onions, bell pepper, celery, garlic, onion tops, red pepper, black pepper and salt. That’s the whole recipe, you know. I can't give you the amounts…But that’s it and we also—we use a rice called Toro. It’s a breed of rice. Years ago the rice families in the area would grow that certain rice… ----- I could talk to y’all forever, but you’ve given me so much time…So thank you—unless there’s anything—. HG: We—we talked more about family history than food…But—but it all ties in. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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