Hollywood’s Presidential Birdcage; A Reset and a Real Commitment; The Mayo Bat-Signal; Creating New River Stewards; Big Bad Roy Burger.

RVA 5x5 ALT 5 - July 23, 2024

No algorithms. No content filters. No A.I. — Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

You can find the main stories from last week’s issue here, and today features the “ALT 5” stories for a nice, leisurely, read. Enjoy!

This week check out our five stories on:

• A local collective of creative minds and firms takes on the Goliath of Mayonnaise, and they are having fun with the Mayor Wars during the Hot Tomato Summer.

• America’s 5th President is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in a “birdcage” that is also a National Historic Landmark overlooking the James River.

• There are a lot of great burger joints in this region, but Roy’s in Lakeside still conjures up days gone by and is sustained with generations of loyalty.

• Some hard hitting quotes from the RTD editors about the City Hall cesspool and the need for a reset and real long-term commitment to fix it. Will anyone step up?

• A reason to celebrate on the riverside as a new education center opens in the new Dock Street Park that will educate generations of youngsters from across the region the importance of learning about and protecting the James River.

THE ALT 5

ALT #1 — OFF THE BEATEN PATH: The Mayo Bat-Signal
In the middle of Richmond’s Hot Tomato Summer, the delicious ten-day event where you can enjoy local tomatoes paired with Duke’s mayonnaise on special plates at more than 100 local restaurants, Rich Griset at Richmond Magazine goes deeper into the River City’s obsession with the ubiquitous condiment for BLT’s, pimento cheese, and deviled eggs (among many other things). Duke’s is owned by the Sauer company on West Broad Street but still made in South Carolina (where it was concocted by a woman named Eugenia Duke), and loyalty to Duke’s runs deep.

There’s the tale of the mother of the bride who requested four glass Duke’s jars to use as centerpieces for her daughter’s wedding (Duke’s switched from glass to plastic containers around 2005). There was a man who requested a tomato sandwich made with Duke’s on his deathbed. And there was a woman in North Carolina who requested three glass jars for her cremains.

And in recent years a new creative team has been tasked with (and succeeding) at broadening the popularity and mystique of Duke’s across the country and beyond the South, where it has more or less dominated the egg and vinegar crowd for decades.

The creative team bought the sponsorship of a bowl game in Charlotte, N.C. in 2020 (the Duke’s Mayo Bowl) where the winner gets five gallons of mayo dumped on them like a Gatorade shower coaches usually get after a big win. They also invented a mascot named “Tubby” to bring his own brand of “mayohem” everywhere he goes. And now the Hot Tomato Summer is in its fourth year.

Bob Kelley, an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at VCU’s School of Business said the loyalty to Duke’s is off the charts. The day his MBA students delivered their presentations, lines were drawn.

The division was largely geographical, with Southern students repping Duke’s and Northerners preferring Hellmann’s. One young woman voiced her love of Miracle Whip, a condiment that was launched as a cheaper alternative to mayonnaise during the Great Depression. “I thought war was going to break out,” he said.

“I thought they were going to boo her out of the room. She stood up and started yelling. It was unbelievable, the passion towards mayonnaise.”

One of the main differences between Duke’s and its main competitor Hellman’s is that Duke’s does not use sugar because it was rationed when the recipe was first devised during World War I. While other parts of the country and even some people here swear by Hellman’s mayonnaise, they are wrong. Hellmann’s and Best Foods mayo are both owned by conglomerate Unilever and own 98% share of the market. Duke’s may be in a distant third, but David had a slingshot.

A few years ago, local ad agency Familiar Creatures was brought on to broaden Duke’s appeal and were known for their reputation in helping non-market dominating products gain market share. Previous marketing efforts for Duke’s included taglines such as “The Secret to Great Food” and “It’s Got Twang.”

We are “taking a brand that is thought of as cool and nostalgic and not ruining it with a corporate sensibility,” said Dustin Artz, co-founder of Familiar Creatures. “That Duke’s fans are unapologetically fanatics over a mayonnaise is kind of absurd, and we lean into that.”

Artz credited Rebecca Lupesco (“Duke’s brand manager of ‘mayohem’” and Sarah DiPeppe (Digital Content Manager) for much of the brand’s recent success. The team also uses another local firm, Golden Word, for Duke’s public relations work.

“There’s a deeper partnership that can happen when we all share the same city and know the same folks,” Lupesco says. “It’s just a testament to the creative talent that Richmond has.”

That strategy included two of Richmond’s signature strains of DNA — dining and tattoos. Hot Tomato Summer was based not only on raising brand awareness and loyalty but getting people intro local restaurants and getting chefs to get creative and daring.

As Richmond has been ranked as the third-most tattooed city in America — and as chefs are one of the most tattooed professions — paying for Richmonders to get Duke’s tattoos just made sense. Over the course of two tattoo giveaways, Duke’s has footed the bill for more than 150 people to get Duke’s tattoos at Yellow Bird Tattoo.

They even use local artists and craftmakers to produce merchandise like Duke’s jar earrings, plus other merch for sale on their website like hats, keychains, bumper stickers, cast iron skillets, candles and even custom-made pants.