Jamie Wright and Scott Clabaugh stand behind the bar of Stinky’s Bar in Oskaloosa, the place where GJ’s 1 Shot Bloody Mary Mix all began.
by Bridget Weishaar
Red Snapper. Virgin Mary. The Caesar. Michelada. No matter how you slice the tomato, it all boils down to one thing, the mix!
While there are many different combinations of a bloody mary mix, there is only one GJ’s Bloody Mary 1 Shot and it’s right here in Oskaloosa.
What is 1 Shot, you ask? According to co-owners Scott Clabaugh and Jamie Wright, it’s one of the three ingredients needed to make the perfect bloody mary. The other two, vodka and tomato juice.
A typical bloody mary mix usually consists of such things as hot sauce, garlic, spices, salt, pepper, etc. Getting the “perfect” combination can be difficult and time consuming. Buying a bottle of GJ’s 1 Shot concentrate eliminates the guesswork. A little dash of Worcestershire sauce here, a sprinkle of garlic there, toss in a few “off the record” secret ingredients, and bam, FLAVOR EXPLOSION! Wright did all the hard work for you. Just add vodka and tomato juice and the toughest decision after that is how many bottles to order.
The back history of GJ’s is simple. Clabaugh owns Stinky’s Bar on the south side of the square and Wright is his bartender. She perfected the mix and he found someone to bottle it.
Wright has been employed by Clabaugh at Stinky’s for just over seven years. While working behind the bar, she has been toying around with a recipe to serve the locals but it never really took off. Night after night of throwing away a product no one was ordering and Clabaugh found himself looking for a way to give the mixture a shelf life with the vodka and tomato juice to be added later.
One summer night while sitting around a campfire with friends, enjoying the mix themselves, Wright said, “We should just bottle this.” Clabaugh said “OK.” Within one week’s time, he had obtained a tax identification number and an LLC was born.
Pooling their sources, they turned to Spicin Foods with Wright’s recipe and the blueprint of GJ’s was laid.
Spicin Foods manufactures and sells gourmet hot sauces, condiments, spices, and snacks. Clabaugh became familiar with the Kansas City business many years ago when Oskaloosa native Don Haynes ran Chunkie Dunkers barbecue out of the back of his bar.
Bottled as is, GJ’s is a mere concentrate that can be used as a marinade or added to hamburger meat for grilling. Wright swears it also makes the best deviled eggs.
“It’s so versatile. Refridgerated or not, it would take over two years for it to go bad,” Clabaugh said. The actual “bloody mary” doesn’t come into play until vodka becomes involved.
It took many trial runs at Spicin and approximately six months for the teams to come to a happy compromise, and the company went to bottling.
Being in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a slow start for GJ’s, but the group didn’t give up.
October 2020 got the ball rolling when a Universal Product Code (or UPC) was acquired and a label created for bottling. By November, the initial batch of 800 one-litter sample bottles were manufactured, and in December they hit the shelves in Oskaloosa, both at Stinky’s Bar and Westside Liquor Store.
Now that they had 800 bottles, what next?
The team enlisted all the help they could find and hit the ground running. They starting knocking on the door of every retail liquor store they could find to get their product out there.
Samples were dropped and businesses invited to give the product a try. One business led to another, which led to another, which then led to bigger orders and eventually to on-location tastings.
Today, 405 gallons compromise one batch of concentrate. One batch is equal to 1,620 bottles. At just a single, one fluid ounce shot per drink, each bottle makes 32 bloody mary drinks.
Clabaugh and Wright aren’t on this journey alone. Many hands go into making the business a success. The duo credits Kansas State University for the nutritional content of the concentrate. The name hails from Wright’s granddaughter dubbing her GJ. Clabaugh himself designed the logo and friend Lynn Heinen helps with the promotional aspect, delivering and orchestrating on-location tastings and competitions. Turner Designs, Valley Falls, gets the credit for GJ’s swag.
Currently, GJ’s is sold in 25 locations all over the state of Kansas and has one retail location in St. Joseph, Mo.
Inside Jefferson County, the product can be mixed into a drink at The Elevator, Valley Falls, or Lago Vista, Ozawkie. It can be purchased by the bottle at Reel Liquor and Bernie’s, Perry, the Oskaloosa Thriftway, Westside Liquor, Oskaloosa, and, of course, Stinky’s Bar offers both options.
Just down the road in Shawnee County, GJ’s can be found at Barrel House Liquor on Northwest Lyman Road or Stumpy’s Smoked Cheese on Northwest Topeka Boulevard.
Currently all aspects of the business are handled by Wright and Clabaugh themselves. They do all the marketing and selling, pick up the product from Spicin after bottling, store the cases themselves, process all the online sales orders, and deliver to their retailers.
The hardest part thus far, and the next goal on their list, is to find a distributor. The business has approached popular distribution centers such as Coors and Budweiser and just can’t get their foot in the door as of yet.
Wanting to get their product known outside of the county, GJ’s jumped on the flavor bandwagon and hit the competition circuit by storm.
They researched competitions online, paid the fees out of pocket, loaded up the trailer and hit the road. February 2022 saw them at their first tasting competition in Austin, Texas. They served up 700-plus cups and used over 11 gallons of GJ’s mix, bringing home a second-place win in the People’s Choice Award for Best Bottled Product.
The competition was tough. GJ’s was pitted against multi-million dollar established companies such as Demitri’s Bloody Mary Seasoning, Seattle, Wash., and Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix, Chicago, Ill.
Bitten by the bug, they headed off to the Bloody Mary Festival in Denver, Colo., in early December. This time they came away with two wins. The first, a second-place Judge’s Choice Award for Best Bottled Product. The other, a duplicate win of the People’s Choice Award for Best Bottled Product.
While the duo was satsified with a pair of first-time wins, they are eager to get back into the competition groove again this year. First on the list, is The Bloody Mary Festival in Denver this September followed by the Twin Cities, Minn., in October.
Clabaugh is a native of Batesville, Ark., but moved to the Oskaloosa area in the fourth grade. After a four-year stint as a Marine in the 1980s, he took a job at Hallmark Cards, Lawrence. “I just got tired of working for other people,” he said. He purchased Stinky’s in 2003, and has operated on the south side of the square for 19 years.
Wright hails from Denver, moving here in 2008 when she began her military career. Basic training sent her off to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. In 2009 she was deployed to Egypt for a peacekeeping mission. She was medically retired in 2014. The duo prides themselves in being 100% veteran owned and operated.
GJ’s can be purchased by visiting any of the local retailers listed above, and found on Facebook or on the web at http://gjsbloodymary.com.