NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) – Patti LaBelle, a two-time Grammy Award winner known within the music industry as the “Godmother of Soul,” is 79 years young and just getting started. Using her music royalties, she now has a best-selling brand at Walmart – Patti’s Good Life.
Fifteen years ago, LaBelle started Patti’s Good Life in Philadelphia, her lifelong hometown, to sell a line of hot sauces. She has since expanded into several different comfort foods: peach cobbler, sweet potato pie, chicken and biscuits, mac n’ cheese and more – with each dish based on one of her own recipes.
According to Forbes, LaBelle started cooking when she was 10 years old, escaping to the family garage to whip up her signature spicy ketchup. She never gave it up. Throughout her performing career, she cooked for Elton John, Prince and the Rolling Stones, going as far as labeling the tinfoil trays with her name so there was no mistaking her food for the catered food.
Her first cookbook, Labelle Cuisine: Recipes to Sing About was published in 1999 – followed by Patti Labelle’s Lite Cuisine: Over 100 Dishes with To-Die-For Taste Made with To-Die-For Recipes (2003), Recipes for the Good Life (2008) and Desserts LaBelle: Soulful Sweet to Sing About (2017). “Friends of mine would always say, ‘Why don’t you open a restaurant or start your own line of food?’ ” she says.
Forbes reports that Patti’s Good Life gross sales hit nearly $200 million last year. It’s a royalty deal, meaning LaBelle pays a factory to bake her goods, then sells them to America’s largest grocers, including Target and Walmart; the latter alone accounted for $85 million of 2022 sales.
