The Bad Sausage That Inspired Jimmy Dean To Start His Own Brand

You'd probably recognize the brand by its high-pitched harmonica intro, or the iconic image of a man in a cowboy hat smiling like he doesn't have a care in the world, but Jimmy Dean didn't set out to be known solely by his breakfast foods. The sausage mogul was perhaps most well known for his country music and TV show appearances, as well as being a Billboard chart home-runner and face in the Country Music Hall of Fame, long before he stepped into the breakfast world. All it took for Dean to start his new business venture in the '60s was one unfortunate experience at a local diner, and suddenly he had a point to prove.

According to Dean, "I was having breakfast at a little old diner in Plainview — sausages and eggs," he told the Richmond-Times Dispatch, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, "and [I] reached up and plucked a [large] piece of gristle out of my teeth." From that moment on, Dean set about making a better-quality and better-tasting breakfast sausage, telling his brother, "There has got to be room in this country for a good quality sausage," according to the Jimmy Dean website.

He officially founded the Jimmy Dean Meat Company in 1969, and began selling sausages and other breakfast items with great success. As a matter of fact, we have mostly high praise for 11 Jimmy Dean frozen breakfast foods that we ranked, even if there is one Jimmy Dean sausage variety you might want to think about twice before buying.

Jimmy Dean was raised on a farm surrounded by animals such as pigs and cows, and was notoriously a morning person. Born in Plainview, Texas, he grew up making fresh sausages with his grandfather in the kitchen, which is where the Jimmy Dean sausage recipe eventually originated. When Dean created the brand, he was so confident in the quality that he starred in all of its advertising and commercials, often spouting quotes such as "Get yourself a large chunk of that good morning feeling!" in his Southern-twang of an accent, further contributing to the legend of the brand. 

Dean eventually sold the brand to Consolidated Foods, which later became Sara Lee, in 1984, but stayed on as the brand's face for another twenty years, until he was supposedly dropped from the brand entirely. Sara Lee eventually divested several of its North American brands to its sub-brand, the Hillshire Brands Co., in 2012, where it remained for only two years before merging with Tyson Foods, which still owns the brand today (here are 11 other food brands Tyson owns). Jimmy Dean's breakfast sausages and other foods from bacon to biscuit sandwiches are still sold all over the country, even if the whole thing started just because Dean wanted to prove a point.