Southern Pride

Southern Pride is a dream that has developed into the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial stainless steel B-B-Q smokers. They were honored as the Industry of the Year at the Marion, IL Chamber of Commerce Annual Awards Banquet last week. I was the keynote speaker. Marion is the only Illinois agurb® that made my top 100 list in the book.

The company started in 1976 when President Mike Robertson and his dad Bert developed their first commercial rotisserie, selling six ovens in their first year of operation. This past year they made over 1,000 of their gas and electric smoker ovens selling them to numerous restaurants including Smokey Bones, Chilli’s and Famous Dave’s. They have 15 different models which can smoke from 100 to 3,000 pounds of meat at one time.

Today, they have 58 employees in their state of the art 65,000 sf manufacturing facility in Marion. They are a great example of why maintaining local control by growing your own entrepreneurs as a community is so powerful for a town.