Photo credit: Roger MarchandGeorge Sotiropolous with GHOP’s House Dressing, now on sale
Sometimes in life it takes patience and persistence, in addition to skill and knowledge, to develop an idea and see it come to fruition. That is exactly what it took for George Sotiropoulos of Gorham House of Pizza when he decided to take one of GHOP’s most popular items and make it available on a large scale.
Many readers will know that the dressing on the very popular chicken salad is one of GHOP’s five most popular items. Thirty gallons are made each week. Customers often requested this dressing and had it shipped to such places as Florida and Michigan.
Six and a half years ago George had the idea that GHOP should bottle and sell this popular salad dressing. As he found out, this was not going to be an easy task. Finding a co-packer, a distributor, and maintaining the integrity of the product all were issues that needed to be worked through. Also, along came the pandemic right in the middle of this process. With persistence and the help of the Food Lab at UMO, the first production run of 975 bottles of the product took place last month.
In the first 12 days that the product was on the market, 675 bottles were sold. You can find the salad dressing in a cooler at GHOP. A bottle is $6.99 or a case of six sells for $34.95, in effect that is equivalent to buying five and getting one free. Sotiropoulos’ goal is to have it distributed to larger supermarkets such as Hannaford and Market Basket as well as smaller retail outlets.
George and Angelo, GHOP’s founder and beloved community member, work side by side. Angelo continues to make the dough and sauces daily. Angelo has been a fixture at GHOP for forty-two years and developed this recipe while working in Danvers, Massachusetts, at Jimmy’s Allenhurst Restaurant. The recipe remains the same to this day. To honor Angelo, George made sure his likeness is on the bottle label.
When asked what might be coming in the future, George said that bottling and selling the chicken marinade, the pizza sauce, and the spaghetti sauce are possibilities. George emphasized that nothing will happen unless the quality of the product is maintained.