Why Food Writers — and Corporate Marketers — Love Old Bay

Bigger than U.S. Steel, McCormick & Company has managed to make the brand feel intimate

Photo by The Washington Post via Getty Images.

Food writers love to wax poetic about Old Bay, that Maryland seafood spice that, let’s be real, tastes like orange fairy dust rising out of a Chesapeake Bay summer mist. But packaged food experts say the red-brown blend is also an important food marketing case study, a lesson in how Big Food can sell regional brands as it fends off challenges from local labels and organic rivals.

Old Bay is owned by Maryland-based McCormick & Company, the world’s biggest spice and sauce maker — though the company prefers “flavor company,” spokesperson Laurie Harrsen told me. It’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is worth almost $23 billion, over four times more than U.S. Steel. McCormick’s ever-expanding portfolio includes Thai Kitchen canned coconut milk, French’s mustard, and Lawry’s steak sauce.

And yet, Old Bay feels so much more intimate than anything else you can find at your Dollar General, like a secret message from my Baltimore grandmother’s grave, to remind me of when she used to steam crabs for my great uncle Larry, a Jesuit priest, to bless before a family feast.