Jim Millican was expecting some interest in his product when his segment first aired on television shopping channel QVC (NYSE: QVCC), but he wasn’t prepared to sell six months worth of orders in less than eight minutes.
Millican’s company, Raleigh-based Big Delicious, is a direct-to-consumer food brand selling pre-made dips. The three products – Carolina Sausage Dip, Original Hot ‘Cue Dip and Pineapple and Country Ham Spread – are sold online and in local stores. Millican secured the company’s spot on QVC by winning a competition put on by the network called The Big Find.
The locally made dips will be broadcast to living rooms across America for the second time on Jan. 26 on QVC’s Gourmet Holiday show. Millican is expecting the products to sell well again, with the appearance falling just before Super Bowl LVI and the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Millican is the sole employee at Big Delicious. He sources his ingredients from across North Carolina, including pulled pork from Chatham County and country ham from Wilkes County. The dips ship frozen and can be thawed or warmed in the microwave.
“I tell people, if you can operate a microwave or boil water, you can look like a five-star chef in 10 minutes,” Millican said.
Millican declined to share specific revenue and expense figures as well as investment costs for the company. He did say that his revenue doubled in 2021 from 2020 and that his goal is to hit $1 million in revenue in 2022.
All three dip recipes were formulated by Millican. A fourth product is likely coming in Q1 of 2022, and Millican promises it will feature pork. Millican calls himself a cook, not a chef. He learned the art from his father, who picked up his skills from Millican’s grandmother. She ran a boarding house in Atlanta and passed down her Southern cooking.
Millican graduated from N.C. State University and worked in the banking industry for a while before deciding to go into business with his brother. After throwing around several ideas, the pair landed on opening a juice bar, called Smoothieville, in Chapel Hill. The first store opened in 1996.
“At that point, smoothies were coming along,” Millican said. “We had a pretty good run at it. We grew to four locations.”
However, trying to expand from one location to four within about four months turned out to be an unsustainable rate. With labor issues added to the mix, the brothers decided to shutter the stores and go their separate ways.
Passionate about food and drink, Millican bounced around a few ideas in the space. He took the equity they had in the smoothie bar and began attempting to develop products. Jumping on the spouted pouches wave, one of Millican’s trials was a pouch for kids filled with a juice product.
Not finding much success in his attempts, Millican pivoted around 2017 to address lifestyle changes he was seeing.
“People either don’t know how to cook or don't have time to cook,” he said. “Prepared meals were becoming more and more popular, and I knew I wanted to somehow be a part of that.”
Millican rented space in Hillsborough and began making products that could be sold directly to consumers. His sausage dip was a hit, so he ran with it, naming the company Big Delicious. However, meat products that are sold wholesale must be made in a USDA-inspected facility.
“I didn't invent sausage dip, I don't claim to,” he said. “But there wasn't one on the market at the time.”
It wasn’t easy for Millican to find a place to copack his products, but by the end of 2018 Big Delicious had dips ready to be sold. In 2019, the brand was sold in specialty food stores, gift shops and small grocers. At the start of 2020, Millican was ready to build on the growth from the year before.
When the Covid-19 pandemic began, that growth was halted. During 2020, Millican applied for a contest at QVC, not thinking much of it.
“Frankly, I'd forgotten about it until I got an email and that said, ‘Congratulations you've moved on to the next stage,’” he said.
Millican and Big Delicious were chosen to prepare a 15-minute presentation for the second round. Out of a few thousand applicants, 270 were chosen to present and then 90 total winners were selected across all categories. In the food category, about 20 winners were selected – Millican was one of them.
Big Delicious wasn’t featured on the channel until September of 2021, so Millican spent the time in between redesigning labels and planning to scale. The brand currently sells in stores from Richmond, Virginia, to Atlanta and ships online orders nationwide.
When it came time for his segment, Millican was on the show "In the Kitchen with David.' Cookbook author and UNC Chapel Hill grad David Venable liked the sausage dip so much that he did his famed “happy dance.” Big Delicious sold to every state in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.
QVC reached approximately 218 million households worldwide each day in 2020, according to the company’s annual report. Based in West Chester, PA, QVC recorded a net revenue of $11.47 billion in 2020, SEC filings show. The company is owned by Qurate Retail Group.
Big Delicious was also recognized by the N.C. Specialty Foods Association in October, with Carolina Sausage Dip winning the category of Deli/Dairy for 2021.
Looking to the future, Millican hopes to get his product into grocery stores. Big Delicious has not had outside investment from any firms or funds, but Millican did do a small friends and family funding round after he was selected for the QVC opportunity.
“There's a high probability that we'll be doing that again in 2022,” he said.