How does a Massachusetts native who played football at St. John’s Prep and Assumption University end up getting a sandwich named after him at South Carolina fast food chain Bojangles?
Just ask Peabody’s Mike Uva.
“It all started as an accident to be honest,” said Uva, who has worked as a sports anchor and reporter at WACH FOX 57 in Columbia, S.C. since 2016. “Obviously being from up in Massachusetts I had never even heard of Bojangles before I got down here, but everyone told me it was a good place to eat.”
But what really spurred on that fateful trip to grab a sandwich was an interview Uva did with Justin Stepp, the new University of South Carolina wide receivers coach. Stepp, who is a South Carolina native, kept bringing up reasons why he was excited to be returning to his home state — chief among them being that he could get his beloved Bojangles.
“The way he was talking about it, you could say that (Stepp) recruited me to Bojangles,” Uva said. “I had only had it a handful of times by that point, so I decided that it would be good to stop by one day.”
So, armed with the recommendations of Stepp and his fellow South Carolinians, Uva took a trip to the local Bojangles one day in January to grab an order. Then things got weird.
“I just ordered their cajun chicken filet on a biscuit with pimento cheese,” Uva said. “But somehow the order got mixed up and they put the sandwich on a blueberry biscuit, which they call a ‘bo-berry biscuit.’ It was just such a crazy combination that I had to tweet out a picture of it.”
And thus, “The Uva” was born.
The sandwich started exploding on Twitter, where Uva has 11,000 followers. People from around the state began ordering “The Uva” in droves, and before long the sandwich had found its way onto Bojangles’ secret menu.
“Bojangles even told me that they thought this would be one of those 24-hour social media things,” said Uva. “It’s actually crazy that people just keep ordering it and talking about it on social media.”
In the month since the sandwich found its way onto the menu, followers have been tweeting at Uva about their impressions of the sandwich nonstop. Then, about two weeks ago, Bojangles capitalized on the social media fervor and released a commercial featuring “The Uva.”
Uva points to the power of social media for the explosion of the sandwich’s popularity.
“Bojangles loved the engagement they were getting from it,” said Uva. “Honestly, I can’t thank my followers enough for all they’ve done to talk about this and make it the crazy phenomenon that it is. They’re the ones who got this whole thing going.”
As far as his work as a sports reporter, Uva says it has been basically nonstop since mid-August when football started at the University of South Carolina. He’s gained notoriety over the past several months after breaking a number of big stories in the area, including the firing of former South Carolina coach Will Muschamp back in October.
A two-time Emmy nominated sportscaster by the Southeast Chapter, Uva has been honored three times by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas with Sportscaster of the Year honors and twice by the South Carolina Broadcasters Association.
If you want to try “The Uva” for yourself, you’ll have to travel south. The closest Bojangles to Peabody is in Reading, PA. and the majority of locations are located south of Washington, D.C.