June 30, 2021

A customer’s boast that he could make a good bloody mary mix has turned into a successful venture for a bar in the small town of Hudson.

Waddy’s Bar & Grill recently started taking online orders and shipping bottles of The Chief’s bloody mary mix, and owner Adam “Waddy” Waterman plans to have a bottling line operating this fall in a building he recently purchased.

The goal is to get the mix, which doesn’t include alcohol, on shelves in retail locations, mostly in Sioux Falls. After that, Waterman dreams of The Chief’s going nationwide, replacing the No. 1 seller, Zing Zang, “on every shelf.”

There is, of course, a great bar story for the origin of The Chief’s, which Waterman managed to tell without any embellishment.

“When I first bought the place 20 years ago, I met ‘The Chief,’ a guy that hangs out in here,” Waterman said of Larry Plendl. “We decided to open on Sundays, and he said he had a good mix and would work Sundays and make those. It was one or two (drinks) at a time at the start. Then, it went to a gallon at a time and built up from there. We sold over 10,000 gallons last year in-house and to go. To this day, he still makes every gallon. … I pay him well and treat him right.”

Larry “The Chief” Plendl and Adam “Waddy” Waterman

Those first to-go offerings were sold in “random ranch (dressing) jugs and jars … whatever container we could find to put them in,” Waterman said. Eventually, they started using 1.75-liter bottles with an actual label.

“I would say 2005 it started doing pretty good. We were up to 500 gallons a year. In 2015, it was 1,000 gallons a year,” said Waterman who also owns a bar in Hawarden, Iowa, and a video lottery casino in North Sioux City. “We peaked out last year at over 10,000 gallons. Our to-go sales were huge. Our sales in that April last year were our highest sales ever. Everybody was sitting at home, and with the to-go package, it was huge.”

To satisfy Sioux Falls customers during the pandemic, Waddy’s made a few road trips to the city 40 miles to the northwest and sold bottles of the mix from parking lots.

But now, crowds are returning to the bar on Hudson’s main street. At peak times, customers might have to wait an hour for their food, but the drinks come quicker. The bloody marys typically are served in a glass pint, but when it’s busy, a plastic red cup will have to do.

Some of that popularity came from the attention Waddy’s gained two years ago when the progressive jackpot for a fundraiser reached $321,208 before the winning card was drawn. People would come into the bar in the morning to save seats for the drawing that evening, Waterman said. It’s still the host site for the Southeast Area Pink Ladies’ “Chase the Queen of Diamonds.”

In the summertime, Waddy’s is a popular destination for motorcyclists out for a ride. Year-round, it’s a meeting place for people “from all over,” Waterman said.

“You’re in a town of 300, and in order for it to be as successful as it is, they have to come from all over,” he said. “You can talk to people from five different towns in here.”

He attributes the success to “a great atmosphere, a great staff. The food is a big draw, burgers, steak tips.”

When Waterman bought the bar, it was a 20-by-100-foot space. He has added on to it five times and bought The Buckaroo steakhouse next door in 2012, keeping the name but merging the kitchens and menus.

Waddy’s is a gathering place for dart leagues year-round and sand volleyball leagues in the summer. Every July, Waddy’s organizes the town’s street dance. This year, Judd Hoos plays at 9 p.m. July 24; admission is $10, and all proceeds go to the volunteer fire department.

Plendl likely will put in some extra hours mixing up his blood mary recipe before the street dance. Typically, he works a couple of hours a day, Waterman said. Once the bottling begins, “obviously, he’ll still be doing all the mixing and probably we’ll have to get some help with the bottling side of it.”

For anyone worried that the bloody mary they make at home with The Chief’s won’t be as good, here’s how Waterman said Waddy’s serves it:

“What we do is take a cup of ice in a 16-ounce glass and shake a little salt on top the ice, pour The Chief’s mix in — ours already has the vodka in it. Give it a dash of pepper, a dash of celery salt and serve it with a pickle and celery.”

Customers can get a beef stick “straw” and pickled asparagus as add-on garnishes.

But don’t expect a “meal” as part of your bloody mary at Waddy’s.

“Everybody wants to stack a bunch of sh** on top of that and to cover up the bad blood mary,” Waterman said. “We leave the meal off because it’s a great bloody mary.”