FENELTON — A Fenelton woman's Hickey Bottom line of barbecue sauces, grilling rub and hot sauce was created through a combination of long experimentation, talk show host Steve Harvey and good aim.

Rebecca McCrea's products can now be found in stores from New Castle to Cranberry Township.

She's aided in her sales efforts by her mother, Mary Ann Pranulis, of Butler.

The Hickey Bottom line was the culmination of a long process, McCrea said.

“I started making barbecue sauce when I was 21,” McCrea said. “I'd have it at pig roasts and family functions and everybody kept telling me I needed to bottle it, and I thought I would try.”

McCrea said she started making a barbecue sauce, called The Good Stuff on her kitchen stove for sale in 2012 after her home kitchen and water supply had been inspected and certified by the state Department of Agriculture.

“It's sweet, it's not vinegary or smoky like other barbecue sauces,” she said. “It's also thick. It doesn't run.”

“It's just different. It's not the usual barbecue sauce. A lot of people like it,” McCrea said.

“The product is gluten free and MSG free, which we get asked about a lot,” McCrea said.

Then, Pranulis said, they began to drive to area stores to try and get The Good Stuff on the shelves.

Eventually, McCrea's barbecue sauce was sold at the County Line Tavern in Fenelton, the CVS pharmacy in Clarion, the Butler Farm Market, the Shop 'n Save near Kittanning and the Giant Eagle in Slippery Rock.

“We just asked and gave them samples,” said McCrea. “We hit all the festivals, too.”

McCrea is the manager of McCrea's Mini Storage in Fenelton. Her husband, Bernard, runs an excavating business.

McCrea's business drive got a boost when she was a guest on the Steve Harvey television talk show in January 2013.

“My husband and I were hunting deer in Illinois,” she said. “I had gotten my deer and was back at the camper watching the show. They had a guest called the 'Mystery Millionaire' on giving pointers on how to get a business started.

“I was e-mailing with this mystery millionaire — Debbie Wiener — and she was sharing my e-mails with the show,” said McCrea.

“She picked me and a lady who made beds for children to be on the show,” she said.

“We flew to Chicago. We met Steve Harvey, he was very nice. Everybody there was approachable,” she said. “He sampled it and we talked about it.”

Wiener, a Maryland entrepreneur who makes a paint tool and a line of furniture called Slobproof, said she offered McCrea advice on getting her business off the ground through e-mails and phone calls.

“She is on the precipice of great success,” said Wiener. “She has friends and family assisting, so she has the manpower. She has a great product that's different from other sauces I've tried. And she's got the key ingredient: the drive to succeed.”

That drive paid off in the sale of 2,500 bottles in 2013.

But McCrea said it took her and her mother up to 4 hours to make enough sauce to fill 14 19-oz. bottles using her kitchen stove.

So she entered into an agreement with Brooks Bottling in Oneota, N.Y.

After cooking and refining her sauce recipes and mailing samples to and from Oneota, McCrea was ready to sell more products under a different name.

“We just thought it would sound better under the Hickey Bottom name. And stores like more products, so we figured we had to do something,” McCrea said.

“But we decided to branch out into different flavors and different areas of products,” said McCrea.

“It took us a little while to get it exactly the way she wanted,” said Brooks owner Ryan Brooks. “We gave it a couple of tweaks to help work it out, but she's got a quite a product.”

“We make sauces for other clients,” he said. “We have clients as far away as Arizona and Vermont. We are all over the place.”

In addition to barbecue sauces in sweet, honey and hot flavors, McCrea offers a grilling rub and smoky hot sauce.

“It's a Frank's Red Hot type of deal,” said McCrea. “It just has a little sweeter taste to it than Frank's is all.”

McCrea said the label name comes from a piece of property she and her husband own on Hickey Bottom Road in Donegal Township.

Hickey Bottom's initial order was 50 12-bottle cases of the sweet barbecue, 40 cases of the honey barbecue, 20 cases of the hot barbecue and 15 cases of the hot sauce.

McCrea said a second order entailed 50 cases of each barbecue sauce, 30 cases of the grilling rub and 50 cases of the hot sauce.

“She's actually on a third order that she just gave me, and we just started a month ago,” said Brooks.

“We are planning on other products, just not yet. We are not ready for it,” said McCrea.

A website for the business is under construction and should be active by April 15.

She and her mother are often on the road working to get the sauce on store shelves throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Pranulis said she and her daughter were visiting stores and offering samples, for the last three weeks, even though recent weather certainly hasn't provided classic barbecue temperatures.

“We're trying to get a foot in the door now,” said Pranulis. “Maybe people will remember us.”