How Duke’s Mayo got cooking with restaurants to grow retail sales

In 1917, during World War I, Eugenia Duke began making sandwiches in her kitchen in Greenville, South Carolina, to sell to nearby Army canteens. Thanks to demand for the mayo, she began bottling it in 1923.

Duke’s Mayo became popular in the Southeast over the next century, but in the last couple of years the brand has endeavored to expand nationally, and earlier this year Duke’s did exactly that, gaining national distribution at Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Dollar General.

In the second quarter of this year, Duke’s rose to second in dollar sales in NielsenIQ’s US retail category for mayonnaise and sandwich spreads, behind Hellmann’s/Best Foods—the same Unilever mayonnaise sold under different regional names—according to data Duke’s provided to Retail Brew. Just a year earlier, in Q2 of 2025, Duke’s ranked fifth.

While Duke’s yellow-lidded jars are familiar in the South, it’s a newcomer these days in many supermarket aisles. So to boost its name recognition and get consumers to taste it, Duke’s is expanding its effort to be highlighted on restaurant menus.

“We’re really trying to drive more partnerships across the restaurant scene in order to drive more brand awareness and trial,” Brad Wile, chief growth officer at Sauer Brands, which owns Duke’s, told Retail Brew. “The more we can get people to try it, the better chance we have of converting consumers.”

Beginning in mid-August, Cracker Barrel will feature Duke’s branding on four menu items. In 2025, the brand’s barbecue sauce was name-checked as the dipping sauce on a Hardee’s limited-time offer for a chicken tender platter.

Food brands have long treated food service as a revenue channel, but Duke’s latest effort reflects a broader trend of brands using restaurants as a platform to get diners to sample their products—and then put them on their shopping lists.

Trial by fryer: Mike Kurtz first encountered honey infused with chili peppers as a topping for pizza while studying in Brazil in 2003, he told Business Insider in 2024. He began making Mike’s Hot Honey mostly as a hobby until 2010, when he was working as an apprentice at Paulie Gee’s, a Brooklyn pizzeria, where he introduced it to the owner, who liked it and started drizzling it on pepperoni pizza.

The rest is swicy history, with the brand partnering on menu items with chains including KFC and Dunkin’ while also pursuing retail distribution, which the company projected would account for 60% of its 2025 revenue, Kurtz told Business Insider in 2025.

“Mike’s Hot Honey is a fantastic example of a brand that is doing food service the way we want to be doing food service,” Wile said. “They’re using food service to drive overall brand awareness, trial, and hopefully drive more consumers to the brand.”

Restaurant partners that call out Duke’s can receive reduced prices and co-marketing support.

“We will give favorable pricing terms” and “we’ll invest our marketing dollars into their co-branded deals if they want to call out Duke’s on the menu,” Wile said.

The brand also highlights the restaurant collaborations when making its case for shelf space with supermarket chains.

“It’s part of our overall sales story to retailers on how we’re driving national awareness and are going to bring more people into their stores and to their shelves to buy our mayonnaise,” he said. “And it resonates with retailers.”

Spreading the word: North Carolina-based Biscuitville Fresh Southern, which Food & Wine called a “long-running, breakfast-centric treasure,” is partnering with Duke’s on summer BLT items, available July through September, that name-check the mayo.

Jim McCurley, Biscuitville’s chief restaurant excellence officer, said he’s participated in tastings where he’s sampled a dozen mayo brands, and he gives Duke’s high marks.

“It has the right amount of fat, the right amount of acid and salt, and ultimately it holds up and it creates a good structure within the sandwich,” he said.

Biscuitville is serving the sandwiches with the mayo already spread on them rather than on the side to ensure the proper ratio and coverage.

“You have that layer of mayonnaise on there that’s coast-to-coast,” he said.

McCurley said the partnership’s value also goes beyond economics.

“Duke’s carries the local affinity in the South,” McCurley said. “For us, it’s not just selling a sandwich…We’re trying to sell a story.”