Shoup's Country Foods, headquartered in Frankfort, Indiana, now includes a country store featuring quality meats and Indiana Grown products, online sales, catering, an event venue and much more.

But it all began when Tom and Carol Shoup, who at that time raised Hampshire hogs, started cooking pork chops for church suppers and county fairs. It was in 1973 that they made the decision to pre-mix their special blend of seasonings, which they started selling as Shoup’s Pork Chop Seasoning when their retail store opened in 1978.

The retail shop began as a small meat processing plant, bought because hog buildings affected Tom’s asthma and he needed to find another source of income. Eventually, they left the slaughtering business to concentrate on retail meat sales and catering.

Tom died in 2009, but Shoup’s continues with Carol and their daughters: Cindy Shoup Cacy, director of Shoup’s Catering & Events; Amy Shoup Mennen, director of operations for Shoup’s Country Foods;  and Cheri Shoup Jones, director of Shoup’s Signature Products. Other family members are involved, too.

“It doesn't matter how old you are. There's always a job,” said Carol.

The company now has approximately 18 full-time and 150 part-time employees. In addition to its retail and online sales, it has Shoup’s Catering & Events, which started as a catering service in 1985 but now does just about everything involved in putting on an event – “from barbecues to very formal affairs,” Cindy said. Their services include food, tableware, linens, menu cards, tables and chairs, flowers, drinks and so on.

“About the only thing we don't have on staff is a pastor,” she said.

The company’s biggest event of the year is assisting with the food and beverage management for the Super Bowl tailgate party. The 2020 game will be in Miami, and it will be Shoup’s ninth year participating at this event.

Two of Shoup’s recent initiatives are online meat sales and selling products through Kroger supermarkets. Shoup’s has been selling seasoning mix and barbecue sauce for a long time, but they started selling meat online this fall (at www.shoupscountry.com) – just in time for the holidays.

“We’ve shipped the meat products out as far as California and Connecticut,” she said. “Even though we've had that going for just a few weeks, we've already kind of hit both ends of the country,” explained Cheri.

Pork burgers are “our No. 1 product,” Cheri said. “You don't find them in the grocery store very often and when you do, they're usually a sausage product rather than a regular burger product.”

"We're really proud of our labeling because it's just one ingredient: pork, P.O.R.K.,” Cindy said.

Like the seasoning mix, Shoup’s Barbecue Sauce is now produced commercially using Shoup’s recipe, but it started out as a family project.

“Mom and Cindy developed the barbecue sauce,” Amy said. “They originally canned it, too. We'd make a 50-gallon vat of it and put it in our Ball canning jars.”

The largest catered event they’ve ever done was for about 12,000 people. The company caters to about 90,000 people per year.

"People say, ‘How do you feed 12,000 people?” Amy said. “I say, ‘You just keep doubling the recipe.’ We used to do baked beans a pan at a time, and now we have to load them with a forklift.”

“I think the reason we've been successful is we just do not throw up road blocks and rarely say no. We just believe that we can do it and find a way to make it happen,” Amy said.