Bayou Sid: The Magic Man of Cajun Flavor!
You can’t throw a measuring cup down
a grocery store aisle in Louisiana without hitting some sort of Bayou Magic product. Whether it’s spices, beans or rice, Bayou Magic has been a Cajun seasoning staple since August 17, 1987. That’s when Sidney Campbell and the Bayou Magic team made their first official sale of 18 total items to the Albertsons on Southfield Road in Shreveport.
Among the items were rice mixes, jambalaya mixes and seasoning shakers.
Years before, down around Ville Platte, Bayou Sid and the gang had been getting their marketing and selling done grassroots style.
“We used teaspoons, tablespoons and cups,” says Campbell. “We went around the dining room table and put it in Ziploc bags with wrap-around labels.”
“We would have people — some friends and children who were helping us — who would take the bags home, sit on the front porch and wait for the distributor to come by and dish them out to the buyers.”
To get the word out back in the day, Bayou Sid would go from store-to-store handing out free samples of beans, rice and seasoning to the store managers.
“Here you go, I’m just going to leave
that for you,” Campbell would say. It didn’t take long for the stores to come calling Campbell.
Before he became Bayou Sid, Campbell was in the music business. “I had more fun and made less money than I ever had in my life,” says Campbell. He knew he was onto something special with his seasonings when his bandmates loved what they were always eating after gigs. “We would eat Bayou Magic after shows, and my bandmates would always tell me I needed to sell this stuff,” says Campbell. Make you wanna cut a rug!
Bayou Sid has been getting jiggy with it ever since. It takes a team, though.
Bayou Sid says he gets a lot of recipes from his wife. “The recipes come from my wife’s folks,” Campbell says. “We use authentic Cajun and Creole recipes from people who were run out of Nova Scotia in the 1800s and settled down south.”
The authenticity and integrity to the craft is what keeps people coming back
to Bayou Magic. Consumers love the product and employees love working for the guy.
“Everyone who started with us worked with us up until they died,” says Campbell. Talk about loyalty.
“I call myself the originator, and everyone else is duplicators,” Bayou Sid says. Campbell has even done cooking shows for Southern Living. They know him there as ‘The Man in the Hat.’ He would go on there and show them how to cook a five- course meal in 30 minutes. Throughout the years Sid Campbell has been cooking it up, there have been times where people wanted a piece of the Bayou Magic pie. Or the whole thing. “Marshall Bass at Nabisco offered me $8 million,” Campell says.
Whoa. That’s a lot of jambalaya! “He had stopped in Atlanta at a friend’s house and ate gumbo,” says Bayou Sid. “I turned it down. Mr. Bass said he wanted to put Bayou Magic ‘under the Nabisco umbrella.’ I told him, ‘Mr. Bass, you think it’s going to rain?’”
“I told my wife I could fly to the moon.”
Loyalty and integrity to the craft. That’s Bayou Sid for you. People trust a guy who puts out a good product. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
That’s why Campbell has been in business, officially for over 37 years. Unofficially, even longer than that. Not just in the south, either. You can find Bayou Magic products coast- to-coast now.
They started expanding early on to places like Dallas and Atlanta, but if you’re craving some jambalaya in Joplin, Mo. or some Creole flavor in Culver City, Calif., just run to the store and start working your magic.
Sid’s products are in most all grocery stores. You can also find Sid’s products online any time. And they have some exciting news upcoming. Bayou Magic is cooking up some more recipes and other options for people who may be looking for healthier options.
Stay tuned for that. Go out and buy you some Bayou Magic from Bayou Sid. Tell your friends, although they surely already know. Maybe you have relatives or friends who are not from the bayou, but you want to put them onto something special. This guy has been doing this a long time, and it shows.
I can’t help but wonder how he has been able not only to sustain a business for this long, but also to grow, adapt and soon even release new products.
Must be magic.
