Made in Tarrant: With ‘Calibama’ background, Keller’s Chef Lorious finds her way to Walmart shelves 

Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your business here. 

Product Name: Jam Vino 

Website: https://jamvino.com/

Thousands of small businesses apply to participate in the annual Walmart Open Call, yet only 92 brands received the golden ticket this year. Keller-based Jam Vino was one of them.

Lori Rogers, also known as Chef Lorious, is the culinary creative behind the gourmet wine-infused jam that received the coveted golden ticket after the team’s one-on-one pitch meeting at Walmart headquarters on Sept. 25. Rogers is also the author of “Calibama Cooking: Classic & Contemporary Comfort Food,” which was published in 2019.

As a result, Jam Vino will find its way to Walmart shelves starting in June 2025. Until then, jam lovers can find the company’s flavors — Blackberry Merlot, Raspberry Moscato and Strueberry Blanc — online at Walmart.com or online at Jam Vino’s website. 

Fort Worth Report’s Bob Francis talked to Rogers about her journey to the shelves of the nation’s largest retailer. 

Bob Francis: How did you get involved in cooking and, in particular, making these jams?

Lori Rogers: I’ve always loved family. I grew up really a church girl, so I grew up in and around lots of church mothers who cooked all the time. My grandmother cooked and my mother cooked as well and my dad really enjoyed cooking. So I’ve always just loved to cook. But it was never something that I thought would turn into what it has become for me. But I’ve always loved to stand there with my grandmother when she’d be cooking. I’d say, “How do you know when it’s good? How do you know when it’s ready, Grandma?” She would say, “Taste it, baby.”

I’ve always been the one that hosted Thanksgiving, always hosted the parties. One day my husband said, “Your friends and people are always asking you for recipes, maybe you just put it on a YouTube channel and let people see the different things you do.” So I did. And the channel kind of started taking off and people started watching it, and then I started cooking live on Facebook weekly. All of a sudden I had a following. Then I was doing cooking demos at Williams Sonoma, then my followers were asking me for a cookbook. 

Being from California and being a church girl, though my family’s roots are from Alabama. I ended up with this really interesting mixture of influences, the innovation of California, the wine of California, of course, but then also a lot of Southern influences, and that’s where the jam making comes in. 

I used that to make this little wine jam at home. I love grilled cheese sandwiches and my children love them. Just to make it interesting, I always amp everything up. I would make this little wine jam with fruit and cook the alcohol off. I was doing cooking demos at Williams Sonoma, and I put the jam in the grilled cheese sandwiches, which is what I did at home. I just thought I’d make it interesting. People kept saying, the sandwich is so good, but asking what that was in the sandwich. I’d tell them it was this wine jam. We realized after several people asked us about it, and then they were asking, “Do you sell this?” There was all this buzz about it. We said, “I think we have something here.”

It was really just a mixture of who I am, being from California and those Alabama roots. My husband calls it Calibama, because I have this mixture. It just kind of came natural to combine the two and see what would happen. And it was magical. It’s just kind of grown. I started having it at some of my parties and asking people what they thought. People were just loving this. 

So we really dealt with pairing. We didn’t just want to take wine and gel it. We really wanted to pair the flavors so that the berries actually went with the wine that I selected. So it really was this California essence in there because I had carefully selected the wines. The Southern aspect is there because I am using fruit. It really is a mixture of fruit and jams, fruit and wine together. I love them.

Lori Rogers and her husband, Shane Rogers, show off their products and the golden ticket they received from Walmart. (Courtesy photo | Jam Vino) 

Francis: The photos look terrific, from the fruit surrounding the jars of jam to the grilled cheese. 

Rogers: I have to have the grilled cheese on there, because it’s kind of like, that’s what started it all. It wasn’t just regular cheese. I think pairing is such a big deal. I would pair it with one of my favorites and and a favorite around my home is havarti with blackberry merlot. It just takes it to a whole ’nother level. It just works. 

There’s so much you can do with these jams. You can use them as a glaze on meats. I love grilling salmon and putting some raspberry moscato on it. It’s just the flavor is beautiful together. There’s so much you can do with it until it actually becomes a pantry item. And, of course, there’s the ice cream that it goes on.

Francis: And you’re in Texas now? 

Rogers: We’ve lived in Texas for two years. We’re proud Texans, I have a segment on “Good Morning Texas” called Taste Texas once a month, and I love it. 

Francis: When did you actually set up a company to do this?

Rogers: Once we got here to Texas. When COVID struck, the cookbook tour got cut short. All those things happened. But once we moved here, I really wanted to turn it into a real product. We are incorporated here in Texas. We are proud, proud Texans now as well.

Francis: Tell me about the process of where you sell and then how you got involved with Walmart. 

Rogers: Last year, we were at the Keller Farmers Market a lot. We also did some events in Southlake and we did the Dallas Farmers Market and then some individual sales. We did have it online as well. Everybody loved it. People came back for it. That was kind of a proof of concept. We knew we had something. 

So we said, let’s go all in. So we got on the Walmart track, looked into that, and ended up at open call. Open call was tough to get through. They start with thousands of submissions. They narrowed it down to about 500 vendors that they invited, and there were 90-something golden tickets given out. It’s very competitive. Your product has to be innovative. It has to really fill a need.

For us, Walmart just made sense, because our goal is everyday luxury for everyday people. We think everyone should be able to have a little bit of luxury in their life. That’s what this jam does. It really just gives you some luxury. You’re eating this luxurious wine jam. We want everyone to be able to enjoy it — not just a few, everyone.

Francis: How much does a typical jar cost?

Rogers: A 7-ounce jar runs around $10. So it’s very accessible, but it is a little bit more than your typical jam because it does have real wine in it. Also, our product is all natural. There’s no artificial preservatives, no artificial flavors, no colors, none of that. It is five ingredients. You got fruit pectin, lemon juice, jam, wine and sugar. That’s it. 

Francis: When will it be available in Walmart stores?

Rogers: Probably in the second quarter, so about June of next year. But it is available now online at Walmart.com and also on our website. 

Francis: Do you have some advice for other entrepreneurs?

Rogers: The thing I would say to an entrepreneur would be, be authentic and be yourself. Stick to who you are and follow the market. Those two things almost sound contradictory when you say, follow the market, but be yourself, because the market may not be yourself. But the truth is, when there’s something that you love and you have a passion for it, it’s going to show. It’s also going to show how you create your product, and if you are authentic to that market, the people that feel the same way, or that are drawn to that, will find you. You’ll find your tribe. You can’t just try to move with where the weather is or where you think the money is. You need to love it, because it’s gonna take everything out of you. 

It’s a lot of work. I love to cook. I love to create. I love to feed people. My father used to say, cooking is a way of taking care of people. I love doing that. So the fact that I enjoy what I’m doing makes it so that I found the need. There is a need in the jam market for innovation. So I think, be authentic, be who you are, and you’ll find the need, and your tribe will find you.

Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.