Down Home Cookin'

Meet a man who had the dream of bringing Mama’s “Home Cookin’” to people across the country. Roy Elswick grew up in West Virginia and decided that he would produce biscuits and baked goods that gave everyone a taste of hearty American recipes. Roy’s Tasty Blend line is now a staple for some families and his story is an inspiration on American agricultural products going from field to table.

Roy Elswick will be the first to admit, he likes food, “I love food. I love how food works. I love how it tastes and I’m inquisitive.” Those ingredients are the ones Roy Elswick believes spell success. He’s the owner, president of Tasty Blend Foods in Teay’s Valley, West Virginia. 

The 53-year-old Elswick founded the business in 1987, producing a small line of dry baking mixes. Today, his company is turning out 35 to 40 tons of product a day —including his signature biscuits and gravy. They are the kind of down-home foods he watched his mother make.  As Roy tells the story, “And she would add pinches of this and pinches of that, dabs of that. She made cornbread, biscuits, gravy, just all kinds of pancakes and I just always admired that in my mother.”

As a boy Elswick spent his summers as a waiter--work that led to a fulfilling career as an executive in the fast food industry. But he longed for more he wanted to create his own food mixes for restaurants.  As he tells it, “It took me six months to do this process and I used about 200 gallon of buttermilk, two thousand pounds of flour, all kinds of salt and sugar and different ingredients to make our first product. Biscuits like Mom used to make.”

When he first started out Elswick would hop into his motor home and sell his biscuits directly to the public at a farmers market. They ate ‘em up and the next thing you know Tasty Blend Foods and The Teays Valley Label were born. Elswick built a processing plant that today blends four thousand pounds of product, including a mashed potato mix, in 10 minutes.
   
Good products sell themselves, but enthusiasm helps. He also has a folksy advertising campaign that he’s run since he started the business in 1987.   Homespun humor and Elswick’s down home food mixes have garnered him many honors.  The one he likes most is a tongue-in-cheek tribute from his staff.  He points to the award and says, We’ve got my favorite, the Kingfish Award. let me read it to you.  It says Roy Ellswick Kingfish of Tasty Blend Foods Incorporated,” The fish always rots from the head down. Your array of fish will never rot because you are the head of our fish. Great Job. Your school of Fish".

Ellswick says that motto means that the head of a company leads by example and he tries to set a good one. He gives a lot of credit to his employees for helping to build his business. Tasty Blend products are sold in 23 states.

The West Virginia Department of Agriculture rates it as one of the state’s top agribusinesses. 

But the thing that really drives Roy Ellswick is his own past.”Where
I came from, what I didn’t have and what I do have today and how I got from not having to having “

West Virginia’s Farm Fresh Facts
Chickens are West Virginia’s number one agricultural product, but the state ranks in the top ten for apple production in the United States. In fact, the Golden Delicious variety of apples was first cultivated in West Virginia. The Golden Delicious apple is also West Virginia’s official state fruit.