Eric Davis/Times-Dispatch

Frances Daniel tried to figure out one night about a year ago what to do with some leftover chicken. "There are a lot of commercial barbecue sauces out there that are good, but they overpower the chicken," the owner of Mrs. Marshall's Carytown Café said. She experimented bymaking her own sauce. She came up with four sauce recipes. She had her friends come to her shop and do some blind taste-testing on different types of chicken. "It wasn't scientific but it was helpful," Daniel said.

Her original recipe -- a Tennessee-style sauce with vinegar, mustard, some spicy tomato and a little bit of sugar -- is what her friends liked the best.

About five months ago, she began selling a chicken sandwich smothered with her sauce. Customers liked it.

She asked them if they would use the sauce at home if she bottled it. They would.

Daniel found Richard Ryder, who bottles his Flynn's Gourmet Garlic Sauce in Hanover County. He bottled 12 cases of her Aunt Fossie's Chicken Barbecue Sauce.

She sells the sauce for $3.89 a bottle at her Carytown shop, the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau gift shop, Jermie's on Grove Avenue and Mills Market in Mechanicsville. She recently added Belmont Butchery and Westwood Pharmacy.

Her initial batch is nearly gone. She had Ryder produce an additional 24 cases. If sales continue to be strong, she hopes to put her Aunt Fossie's sauce in other stores.

And the name? It came from Daniel calling herself Fossie when she was 2 because she had a hard time pronouncing her first name. The name stuck -- her nephew calls her Aunt Fossie.