LIFT UP LOCAL 041
Written by Pamela Patton
📷 courtesy of Amber Rose Photography
PawPaw’s Pickles Packs a Pickled Punch!
During the COVID lockdown, many people took up new hobbies, including Toney Hines. His wife, Cynthia, was hospitalized with a non-COVID-related illness, so Toney was alone with time on his hands. He did what anyone who was in his position would do: He started making pickles.
His wife Cynthia explains, “When he’s bored, he tends to go into the kitchen and start whipping things up. He was making Danish pastries, but I told him not to make any sweets. As a kid in Arkansas, he used to hang out in the kitchen with his Grandma Martha while she cooked. And for whatever reason, his mind went back to the icebox pickles she used to make. In Michigan, they’re called bread and butter pickles, but in the south, they’re called icebox. Today they’re one of our most popular flavors.”
When Cynthia got home from the hospital, she found that Toney had gone pickle crazy. “Big jars, little jars, sweet pickles, dill pickles—he even bought a second refrigerator to keep the pickles in. I said, ‘Are you serious?’”
Toney dubbed his pickles PawPaw’s Pickles (Toney is PawPaw to his nine grandchildren), had a sticker made, and began giving his pickles to friends and family.
Cynthia noted the popularity of pickles and was inspired to bring them to the first Black Business Expo in Muskegon, held on Juneteenth in 2021. “I was selling AFLAC insurance at the time, so I thought I’d put his pickles on my table just get people come over and talk to me, right? I’d hoped to get all these small-business insurance leads. I didn’t have anyone sign up for insurance, but all the pickles were gone.”
Knowing a good thing when they saw it, Cynthia and Toney began selling their homemade pickles. “We got invited to so many events. We had big jars and little jars of whatever Toney had made, but still, the pickles were just a hobby.”
The Hines decided to participate in the first Pitch Black event in Muskegon in 2021, held for Black-owned businesses in response to the disproportionately detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for the Pitch Competition, Cynthia applied for an LLC, taking their hobby to the next level to become a business.
PawPaw’s Pickles went from being a seasonal business to a year-round venture in 2023. “We had to figure out where to get the cucumbers when they are out of season in Michigan. We knew nothing about running a pickle business or manufacturing on a large scale. I compared it to trying to change a tire when the car is moving.”
“Big jars, little jars, sweet pickles, dill pickles—he even bought a second refrigerator to keep the pickles in. I said, ‘Are you serious?’””
But as Cynthia and Toney quickly learned, there’s a lot of red tape involved in pickle processing as an acidified food. “We had to get a license through the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Then we had to get another license specifically for acidified foods through the FDA. We sent our pickles to a processing authority. We had to list all the ingredients and their amounts specifically, include step-by-step instructions, and show the jars as they would appear on store shelves. Because only a handful of people in the country do this work, there was a huge backlog. But once the processing authority approved us, then state agriculture representatives had to come into the Flint Foodworks kitchen to watch us make the pickles in a commercial kitchen. The whole process took about a year. In addition to our wholesale license through MDARD, Flint Food Works requires standard operating procedures, proper insurance, a safe food manager level certification, process control certification for Toney … my poor eyes started to glaze over. Thank goodness for the Michigan State University Product Center. They helped us out a lot.”
PawPaw’s Pickles & Things started popping up at state fairs, summer festivals, farmer’s markets, and other outdoor events. Gradually, they began selling at the Davidson Market near Flint and the Eastern Market in Detroit. “Our first business-to-business customer was T’s Burgers, a burger truck. The owner told us he was on the path to make the best burgers in the world, and he wanted to use our garlic dill pickle chips!” Soon, Rich’s Greenhouse and Farm Market, PawPaw’s cucumbers supplier in Swartz Creek, began stocking their shelves with PawPaw’s Pickles. But it was at a street fair in Muskegon where PawPaw’s Pickles first caught the eye of a Meijer Representative; three years before they actually made it on the shelf.
PawPaw’s Pickles & Things come in eight flavors: Bread n Butter (made from Grandma Martha’s recipe), Dill, Garlic Dill, Spicy Garlic Dill, Sweet Heat and Sweet n Zesty. However, PawPaw’s Pickles also creates something rarely found in stores on shelves: Cha Cha, aka Chow Chow, in some regions.
“Cha Cha is a southern condiment that goes back to the 1800s, when nothing grown went to waste. At the end of the growing season, people would gather all the unharvested produce, grind it, pickle it, and use it to flavor bland food. We had so many people, especially older people from the south, asking us about Cha Cha, especially when we were demonstrating our product at markets and fairs that we added to the lineup in 2024. Today Cha Cha is a bestseller at Meijer. I remember my mother mentioning it when I was a child, but I never tasted it until people started to request it.”
PawPaw’s Cha Cha is cabbage, carrots, three different types of onions, and five different types of sweet peppers, and available in two flavors: Green Cha Cha and Spicy Green Cha Cha. “If you’re going down south, you’d better be locked and loaded with plenty of spicy; it’s a slow burn that gradually builds the heat.” PawPaw’s Cha Cha is so popular that it’s being ordered on their website and shipped to Cha Cha cravers across the country.
What does the future hold for Toney, Cynthia, and PawPaw’s Pickles? “This is our nice retirement business and a legacy we can leave our children. Until then, we’re some pickling fools, honey. Some pickling fools.”