Latest / BBQ Therapy / Rod Gray - Pellet Envy | The Most Powerful CEO

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Rod Gray - Pellet Envy | The Most Powerful CEO · BBQ Therapy

0:00
If you look around the country, some of the best teams in the
0:03
country, probably most of the best teams in the country are
0:05
husband and wife. So everything you just said is
0:09
true. It wasn't Sherry's thing.
0:11
She was supporting me in the beginning.
0:13
But you're right, in addition to all the all of the attributes
0:16
that you recognize, she also knew what I wanted to do, what I
0:20
was going to do next before I even did it and anticipated
0:23
that, which made us work together really well.
0:26
Same with the other way around. She was also the biggest this is
0:29
this doesn't get talked about nearly enough, but when you cook
0:32
barbecue and you have your head in the smoke for 10 or 12 hours,
0:36
it dulls your senses and you don't taste the smoke on the
0:39
food and you don't taste things as well as you would otherwise.
0:42
So Sherry being the taster for the Pellet Envy team was
0:46
probably the most critical thing and was probably what made us
0:49
the most successful. Wangle ham BBQ, Wangle ham BBQ,
0:54
wangle ham BBQ, wangle ham BBQ, BBQ.
0:57
Get your BBQ. Ever notice how the sound of
1:00
sizzling meat and the smell of smoke can silence the noise of
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If the fire moves you, like, subscribe, share and help spread
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the message. Because growth, like good BBQ,
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takes time and patience. Welcome to your therapy session.
1:20
Hi, this is special. Notice this episode I was given
1:24
30 minutes for the interview. So I tried to make it as good as
1:28
I can. So I hope you like it.
1:31
Welcome back to the BBQ Therapy podcast.
1:33
My name is Tavis Bryant, and today I'm honored to be joined
1:38
by a true icon in the world of BBQ, Rod Gray.
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From building pellet envy into one of the most decorated teams
1:46
in competition BBQ, to appearing on BBQ Pit Masters and now
1:50
serving as the CEO of the Kansas City BBQ Society, Rob's journey
1:55
covers every corner of the BBQ world.
1:59
All right, I appreciate you coming on.
2:01
I got one rule. Make yourself at home and speak
2:03
freely. I have no sponsors so we can't
2:06
get kicked off. Thank you for having me Tavis.
2:09
If you know me, I do speak freely most of the time.
2:12
All right, that's all about all right.
2:14
We're going to take it back a little bit.
2:16
Before you start at Pella Envy, where are you from and what
2:20
introduced you into a competition BBQ?
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So I grew up in central Kansas. We really didn't have a lot of
2:28
BBQ. We grilled, I think at the age
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of 12 my dad gave, I was 12, gave all of us Weber grills for
2:36
Christmas. So grilling was in my family but
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not BBQ. I went off to school and I was
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introduced to restaurant BBQ at school and it was close to
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Kansas City and we'd make trips to Kansas City and eat barbecue
2:49
and but competition BBQ. Early on I was introduced to it
2:53
by a Co worker who competed in the Great Lanex BBQ Battle which
2:57
is a full time contest in Lenexa KS 200 team contest and it was a
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blast but I didn't understand it.
3:05
Fast forward to 2001 and we had a Kansas City had a brand new
3:12
Speedway built. The Kansas Speedway never had a
3:15
race on it and they had money to spend in a community service
3:18
project and they decided on a BBQ contest.
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So Jeff Staney, the owner of Joe's Kansas City, was
3:24
approached to put on a BBQ contest and with that prize
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money. And so they set up this event
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and I was invited to come as a spectator.
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It was July and it was hotter than hot and went out there
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expecting to see 200 miserable teams and I saw folks having so
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much fun. I knew right then I had to be a
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part of it. And so that's when I was really
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introduced to competition BBQ. It was at the Kansas Speedway in
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July of 2001. Oh wow, and was that the
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American royal before the American royal?
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American Royal was still down on the West Bottoms.
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It wasn't out there yet. It was probably what, 15 years
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later that the American Royal started to host their event out
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there. So this thing, the asphalt was
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still oily. It was so fresh.
4:10
Nothing. They hadn't had a race out there
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and they had this big BBQ contest.
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And I met a couple of guys that were on the Food Network the
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night before, Paul Kirk and David close, and I just saw
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people having so much fun. It was so hot.
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They had baby pools full of ice with the lawn chairs in them and
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of course, all the misting fans. And they were having a ball on
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Friday night. And I, I left there thinking, I
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have 5:00. I've got to find a way to get
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involved in whatever's going on out there.
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So that's how it started. OK, OK that sounds good.
4:39
So once you got together and started doing your first
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contest, what grabbed you emotionally about the BBQ
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culture that made you say I want to be a part of this after you
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could competed? It's the people, It's still the
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people, but it was the people. We were all out there to win a
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prize, of course, but it didn't feel like it was competitive.
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Meaning you weren't really, I don't know how to say this, but
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you were really not competing against the guy next to you as
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much as you were competing against the scores and the
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judges in the tent to get someone to love your food.
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So the camaraderie of a BBQ contest is like no other
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experience. And you see some of those same
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people as you travel around and compete in different events,
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whether it's locally or regionally or even nationally,
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and it becomes a family. And so that's still the thing
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that gets me. And I haven't competed in six
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years now maybe, but there's only thing that what I really
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miss about it is the people. OK, OK.
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And when you first started, what kind of smoker were you cooking
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on? So I went home that night from
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that Speedway contest and got on the Internet and there was a
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forum called the BBQ Forum. It's long gone.
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And it was run by a gentleman here in Kansas City who was an
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insurance agent, insurance salesman, Ray Vasso.
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And Ray had this forum, and I didn't even realize that the
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people on that forum were some of the top cooks in the country.
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But I read that forum all night. I remember my wife was on a
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vacation with her sister, so I didn't have any responsibility.
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So I spent the entire rest of the night into the morning
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reading this forum. By the morning, I decided I
6:21
needed to own a Hasty Bake. And so they were in Tulsa, OK, 3
6:25
or 4 hours for Kansas City. Monday morning I called them.
6:29
And before the weekend I'd driven down to Tulsa and come
6:32
home with a a hasty bake. The Legacy the big hasty Bake.
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I still own it all these years later.
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It's an amazing grill. It had a little deeper learning
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curve than I expected it to. It hasty bakes were cooked on To
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win the American Royal not a little sooner than 2001.
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I thought that was what I needed to have was the same cookers
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that won the American Royal. It didn't take me long to figure
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out that it was harder for me than I thought it would be, and
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I transitioned straight to pallets.
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And so Fe 100 was my cooker of choice for a lot of years.
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OK, OK. And The thing is a lot of
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people, you're an example because a lot of people would
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downplay the pellet grill, but you showed that you could be
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successful is not what you're cooking on is the person that's
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cooking. And that's what I love about it
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because a lot of people try to downplay and say, oh, it's not
7:26
grilling and stuff like that, but that pellet grill, it gets
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the job done. Like I was telling people it
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when I got really into BBQ during COVID, I bought a pellet
7:37
grill for the purpose of I could focus on prepping the meat,
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cooking the meat, and then go back if I wanted to use another
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grill. I can learn eventually, but it
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helps me focus on one thing so I don't have to worry about trying
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to learn the grill. And it helped me to stick with
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it and not get frustrated and walk off because I couldn't run
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the grill or do the meat. That's exactly right, Davis.
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That's what I did. I, I remember really ruining a
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lot of meat early on and we tried to eat that meat the
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course of the week and then I burned some more meat on the
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weekend and we try again and a lot of trial and error.
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But then when I really wanted to ramp up my practice, I could
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actually put meat on in the morning and go to work big cuts
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and come home, wrap them when I got home and finish them up for
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the night before it was time to be done for the day.
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So I was able to practice quite a bit on a pellet pit.
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And you're right. And back then there weren't many
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of them. In fact, we mounted 2 of them on
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a trailer and people had no idea what they were.
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They wanted to know if they were pizza ovens or incinerators or
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colic dorm fridges. No one knew that they were
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actually grill smokers. And the nowadays they're
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incredibly popular. They're on everybody's back
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deck. But and yeah, they're still the
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guys who say that's cheating, but those are the guys who
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usually got their butt beat by somebody cooking on pellets at
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some point, and they're still hurt about it.
9:00
Exactly. Exactly.
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All right, so we're going to move on.
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Pellet MV is one of the most recognizable names in BBQ.
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What do you think made your team different from others back at
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that time other than the pellet grill?
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I have a degree in marketing and this was always going to be a
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hobby when it got started for me.
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But when I realized that I was decent at it, we put a lot of
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effort into a brand, the brand Pellet Envy.
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And I got my good friend Chris Capel from Disney pig involved
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and he designed my logo way back then.
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And Chris put a lot of thought into it, a lot of care into it.
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And then we just used that logo to brand everything we did.
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And I really honestly and truthfully, I think the biggest
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part of of the success of the Pellet envy brand was the fact
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that we did some winning. And when you win, someone takes
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more notice. Believe me, I had a lot of
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content. I did.
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I let's see, there are a lot of dry spells.
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We talked about the winds, but just like anybody out there are
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a lot of dry spells. But though the Pellet Envy
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brand, we worked really hard on it.
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In fact, I switched over to a Jamie Gear built pit.
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They call them Jambos, of course, but they were just
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called Jamie Gear Pits. When we started.
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He wasn't doing it for a living and I wanted to change my team
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name and my wife said, oh heck no, you're not changing your
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team name. You've got too much brand equity
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in Pellet Envy. So we just kept it.
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Oh, wow, I didn't know that. And Speaking of your wife, was
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your teammate through your whole, how was that experience
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being able to compete with your wife?
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Because I said to me that's the best person that you can cook
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with is your spouse because they know you the best.
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They know when you're upset, they know what can calm you
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down. They know when to tell you to,
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hey, go take a break, come back and stuff like that.
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How was that dynamic and how did it feel being able to compete
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with your wife? If you look around the country,
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some of the best teams in the country, probably most of the
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best teams in the country are husband and wife.
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So everything you just said is true.
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It wasn't Sherri's thing. She was supporting me in the
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beginning. But you're right, in addition to
11:12
all the all of the attributes that you recognize, she also
11:16
knew what I wanted to do, what I was going to do next before I
11:19
even did it and anticipated that, which made us work
11:21
together really well. Same with the other way around.
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She was also the biggest. This is this doesn't get talked
11:27
about nearly enough, but when you cook barbecue and you have
11:30
your head in the smoke for 10 or 12 hours, it dulls your senses
11:35
and you don't taste the smoke on the food and you don't taste
11:37
things as well as you would otherwise.
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So Sherry being the taster for the Pellet Envy team was
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probably the most critical thing and was probably what made us
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the most successful. I was able to win.
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This is what I say. My wife had a real job so I
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didn't have to grow up all those years.
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She couldn't be there all the time because she only had so
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much vacation. But we got her to the big ones
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and I know that I cooked better and was more successful when
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Sherry was there than when I cooked up cooked solo.
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Yeah, yeah, definitely. It makes a big difference.
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So that support system, because when you got somebody else
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there, they don't know you as well so they don't know what's
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going on inside your head versus having that companion to make
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you snap out of it. Get out there and get it.
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You know what we come here for? And it'll boost your morale and
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see the fire in the eyes that boost you up or vice versa.
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And I love it because Reuters and tutors, Old Virginia smoke
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and stuff like that, Triple H BBQ, all those that you could,
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the results show from those spouses.
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I know a lot of people do it just to get out the house away
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from their spouse, but I think it but the most I think it's,
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it's good when you have that spouse cuz then also you don't
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have to rush coming back. Oh, I got to get home to my wife
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or anything like that. So I think it's very helpful and
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I love seeing it myself. I appreciate that you
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participated in almost 500 contests.
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What's the key to keeping motivated and not getting burnt
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out doing that many contests? So early on it was chasing team
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of the Year was my motivation and lucky enough, horribly hard
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fought battle in 2009 with Steve Farron for my smell smoke and
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Darren Worth from Iowa Smokey D's.
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And I was just lucky to come out on top of that and be the
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national champion in O 9. And then you do it and then you
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say I want to prove to everybody it wasn't a fluke.
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So you try to do it again and that's probably the year I did
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burn out. I ran just as hard in 2010 as I
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did in 2009 and in addition to all the contests, I had major
13:53
sponsors who's I had to satisfy some requirements with all of
13:56
them. It made for some really serious
13:59
time on the road and things. And so in 2010 I came up just
14:03
short and was second in the nation behind Mike Wozniak from
14:06
QL, which what a great champion Mike was in 10.
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But at that point, after those two hard years, I was starting
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to feel the burnout then. And so I did coast for a while,
14:18
11. We were still pretty competitive
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in 11, but we're teaching more classes and a less time focused
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on it. And so the competitive nature of
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trying to earn points for Team of the Year probably was a thing
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that kept me from burnout for so long.
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The idea that I had, I had requirements from sponsors to
14:38
satisfy kept me focused on the things I needed to do, meaning I
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needed to get to the contest. I needed to get us to get set
14:45
up. I needed to fulfill those
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requirements at an event and compete.
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And the reason that those sponsors had found me was
14:51
because my success. So that kept me motivated.
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But there, there did come a time where I started to feel some
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burnout. And if you compete as long and
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hard as we did, then more power to you if you don't.
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But it's pretty easy to start to feel burned out.
15:05
Oh yeah, definitely. And during your career, you've
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earned more than 20 plus perfect scores across all four meat
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categories, which is crazy. What's the key to getting those
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perfect scores? Consistency.
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Here's the thing, when I the first year I cooked, there were
15:25
a couple other guys here in Kansas City and the three of us
15:28
were a team and two of us were type A personality.
15:31
And in that early first year, we were really successful at
15:34
chicken. But those two guys like to have
15:37
a good time on Friday night and I was a little more
15:40
conservative. So it was my job to get up at
15:42
5:00 AM and brine the chicken. And every time I pulled this tub
15:45
of brine up out of the ice and the cooler, it was a different
15:49
color. We were winning chicken.
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We were doing so well in chicken, yet things were
15:54
changing every week. And I finally asked my
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teammates, I'm like, hey, what's going on here?
15:58
And he's, if I have to cook the same every weekend, I don't
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think I, I could do this. We only lasted a year and then
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it was Sherry and I going forward.
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And honestly, it's consistency. It's staying in the groove.
16:13
You're not there to cook what you like.
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You're there to cook what the judges like.
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You're there to cook it. You're there to, to pay
16:19
attention to every detail of it. You're there to realize when
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it's not the same and what to do to fix those things.
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And it really, it's competition BBQ to be good at it.
16:30
It's a lot. But the short answer to my
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perfect scores is consistency. And I will tell you by the way,
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that number is so small today compared to what folks are doing
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on the circuit in terms of perfect scores.
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You can't see it. And I don't think I can move my
16:45
camera. But just over my shoulder, I
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have a jersey from the year we won team of the year 2009 and
16:51
it's lined with a dozen gold stars for perfect scores.
16:55
And I took that out to the 2000, I think the All Star game was in
17:00
Kansas City on 2012. And so KCBS had three of us out
17:05
there, four of us out there, Andy Groenemann and Todd Johns
17:08
and Rob McGee. And I put that on a on an easel
17:11
and Andy and Todd were like, whoa, because a dozen perfect
17:15
scores was a big deal back then. We we've got more people scoring
17:19
better than ever before right now, so it's probably not much
17:22
of an accomplishment these days, but we were definitely proud of
17:25
it. Yeah, back then, it's that that
17:27
was amazing. That's unheard of.
17:31
That was through that point in my career.
17:33
Oh. They they were one 80s were were
17:36
much more rare in the old days. Yeah.
17:39
And let's talk about teaching classes because from what I I
17:43
mean from when I'm researching stuff you like, you were one of
17:46
the first ones out there just teaching classes to everybody.
17:51
What kind of made you go against the grain and start teaching
17:54
classes where it wasn't done that much?
17:57
I'm going to. So First off, there were people
18:00
teaching classes before me. I'll give you an example.
18:03
Ray Lampe, Doctor BBQ, taught classes.
18:05
In fact, he let me come wash his dishes at his class he had in
18:10
Effingham, IL early on. And it's funny, the people that
18:13
were in that class, some of the great crooks, Darren Worth was
18:17
in that class. I think Mike Waznik was in that
18:19
class or a bunch of cooks in that class.
18:22
It was so early but I owned my own company and was cooking BBQ
18:26
with the hobby and I made a decision that I wanted to do
18:30
this BBQ thing full time. Knowing that you can't support
18:34
yourself based on winnings at a BBQ contest. 1 you can never
18:38
expect them and two, they are never enough to support what
18:42
you're the expenses involved and what you're doing.
18:44
So I wrap my head around a business idea how I would make
18:47
money at this. And one was to teach classes.
18:49
And so we started teaching in O 7 and it was really early and I
18:55
decided if I'm going to teach a class, I'm going to tell
18:58
everybody exactly what I do every weekend.
19:01
And so we even set up the format, which I know a lot of
19:04
people do now. We set it up in a way that it
19:07
was like being at a contest with us in real time from start to
19:10
finish. That was the idea.
19:12
So that it wasn't switching out a raw brisket that you trimmed
19:16
for a cooked brisket that came out of nowhere and you it was up
19:20
on your plate to show how to trim it and get it in the box.
19:22
We trimmed the meat, we prepped the meat, we cooked that meat.
19:26
We brought it in the next day, we sliced it, got it in the box
19:28
and everybody sampled it. So you saw it in real time.
19:31
That was really important. But I want to tell you a really
19:33
quick story. So not long into doing that,
19:36
probably less than a year, I got a phone call from a fellow
19:40
competitor and it was on a Sunday, which means they had
19:43
competed somewhere. And he said we were talking at
19:46
the contest we were at and we just want to know why you're
19:49
teaching classes. And what he was implying was why
19:52
are you giving away all your secrets and making it harder for
19:55
the teams with the knowledge to win?
19:57
And I said I'm doing it for the money.
19:59
And he couldn't say a word to me.
20:01
I was doing it. But honestly, funny enough, a
20:04
few years later he listed his first class for.
20:07
He advertised his first class and I did not call him.
20:11
It took about nine months for me to see him on the circuit.
20:13
When I saw him on the circuit, he said I've been waiting for
20:16
your call and I said I know you have and that's why I didn't
20:19
call you. So he came full circle and he
20:22
was teaching classes. Yeah, yeah.
20:24
Because I mean, based on a lot of people I talked to, they've
20:28
taken your class and I was like, he was out there doing it way
20:32
early and I also rave was doing it.
20:35
So he was ahead of the curve on that and he probably was ready
20:39
to take you out because you're causing other people to win also
20:44
people. Said that because I taught
20:46
classes then I didn't win as much, which isn't really true.
20:49
I started teaching in those seven.
20:51
We were national champs in O 9 and runner up in 10.
20:54
We had a brisket national champion, rib national champion
20:57
in there somewhere too. After that, yeah, maybe.
21:00
I don't know if that was the reason or people just got
21:02
better, but a lot of people we're teaching classes.
21:05
Not long after I did, they'd come to my class and realize if
21:08
you could set it up in that format, it wouldn't be it that
21:11
hard to do. So a lot of really great classes
21:14
for a lot of years. Yeah, yeah, OK, let's switch
21:18
over real quick now you're the head of KCBS.
21:21
My question for you, but I always wanted to know as far as
21:25
records like in a sport like you're, you've been cooking
21:30
since O1 and barbecue data only starts at O 7 and a lot of those
21:38
records where you hear like Darren Worth and all that he's
21:41
done and all that you've done. It only tells part of the story
21:45
when you research. Are those records around that
21:49
predates and are they available to be seen or anything like that
21:54
for y'all True that we could tell.
21:58
You ask a really great question. The records that are available
22:02
are the old bull sheets, the monthly publication for the
22:06
organization. And we have every bull sheet
22:09
that has that we've ever published from 1986 on.
22:13
And in those are contest results usually for the previous month,
22:18
but they only list the top five. So they don't, they only go top
22:23
five and our even our Hall of Fame point system goes deeper
22:26
than top five. But we do have those records and
22:29
we're in the process of finding a way to scan all of those bull
22:35
sheets in and use software that makes them searchable.
22:39
So we can at least retrieve all of that data in a way that isn't
22:43
manual because that would be a lot.
22:47
But we have them here. I've been through them.
22:49
We just went through them a month or two ago to verify some
22:53
finishes for a team that is in line to be in the KCBS Hall of
22:57
Fame, be inducted in the 2026 class.
23:01
And that team had provided us with some results that predate
23:04
the digital data that we have and, and we went in and
23:07
confirmed those wins for that team.
23:09
So it's here. It'd be incredibly tedious to go
23:13
through every single one and do an overall tabulation.
23:16
We're working on digitizing all of our bull sheets so they can
23:20
easily rescan. OK, that's.
23:23
Very purpose. That's good to hear because when
23:25
you it like everybody, when I came in the BBQ, I went off
23:30
based on when I seen on TV, Internet and stuff like that.
23:33
And but then when I got around competition start walking around
23:36
and all that talking to people, they started talking about
23:39
Darren Worth. But when you go and look online,
23:42
you can only see a little bit. So it doesn't, it kind of
23:45
distorts what people saying and they don't know the full story
23:49
of how you doing it and how he's doing it 'cause BBQ Dad only
23:54
have you at 300 contests instead of 500.
23:58
So it kind of distorts people's kind of like baseball, football.
24:04
You can go back and look at everybody's numbers and stats
24:07
and stuff and do the research and stuff like that.
24:10
And but that what you're talking about, it'll be very helpful
24:15
because I like history. I like people origin and where
24:17
they started from. So I appreciate that because
24:21
that's one of the main questions I had because I wanted to see
24:24
people's stats and I like looking up and see people
24:26
numbers and stuff like that. There's a whole bunch of teams
24:30
that I remember from when I got started that that don't get a
24:34
lot of credit these days because they've just been forgotten. 3
24:37
Little Pigs and USA Smoke and even Mike Davis, Lot of Bull.
24:41
A lot of his success was prior to the digital age, so a lot of
24:46
his wins don't show up in there. Johnny Trick.
24:48
Johnny's in our Hall of Fame based on merit.
24:51
We know he had the success, but it's a lot of that success is
24:56
buried in those archives and there are so many others that
24:59
are that are that way as well. Darren.
25:01
Here's the crazy thing about Darren and Sherry Worth They're
25:06
in the Hall of Fame and they're missing a whole bunch of their
25:08
results. So imagine, just imagine we
25:11
just, once they reach the threshold of points, we don't
25:14
tabulate them anymore. But I can't imagine all the
25:17
additional points we would find for Darren once we get all this
25:20
digitized and done. If that's what we're after, it'd
25:23
be incredible. Yeah, that's definitely crazy.
25:26
Let me ask you a couple more and to get you out of here, you went
25:28
from chasing calls on Saturdays to run in the largest section of
25:32
body and BBQ. What mindset shift did you have
25:35
to make to step up into that CEO role?
25:40
Tavis, you asked some great questions because this is
25:43
serious. I came into this.
25:45
My experience was as a cook. I still view things as a cook,
25:49
but realize that we're a 15,000 member or organization.
25:54
We're a nonprofit member based organization and if you had to
25:57
break down that 15,000 numbers, I'd say that 4000 of us are
26:03
cooks, 10,000 of us are judges, and 1000 of us are just
26:07
enthusiasts. My point being, the vast
26:11
majority of this organization are folks who are certified BBQ
26:14
judges, not pit masters. We always champion the pit
26:17
masters here at KCBS, but the truth is we need to represent
26:21
the entire organization. And so that was the first thing
26:25
I had to wrap my head around. And Carolyn Wells, soon after I
26:28
got here, walked into my office and she said, you realize that
26:31
KCBS is A4 legged stool. It's teams, it's judges, it's
26:37
reps and it's organizers. And if we lose any one of those
26:41
four legs, then our stool is no longer stable and it falls over.
26:44
She's absolutely right. Granted, organizers and reps are
26:47
a much smaller number. They're still the very important
26:49
part of KCBS, but that was the mindset that I had to I had to
26:53
change was that we have a lot of cooks and the cooks are very
26:57
visible out there and we can easily track their success.
27:02
But there are a lot of other people who make up this
27:04
organization who are equally as important, and they should be
27:07
represented. Definitely because probably in a
27:09
couple weeks I I got a interview with Artie Davis.
27:13
So I look forward to that and hear his story and talk to some
27:17
of the stuff that he got the witness and stuff like that.
27:20
So I look forward to that. Make sure Artie tells you he's
27:24
CBJ #2. Wow number.
27:27
Two, we're currently, we're currently in the, in the six
27:31
digits first when we assign CBJ numbers.
27:34
And he's #2 and he's, yeah, Artie's an amazing guy.
27:38
Artie was very influential in how this organization got
27:42
started. We already so much for all of
27:45
his help and input. Dear Definitely.
27:48
All right, I got one more question.
27:49
I'm going to get you out here because I know you pushed for
27:51
time and I'll try to get you on some time later on the year.
27:55
If you had to construct an All Star team with four people, you
27:59
and three other people to cook a contest, what meet you'll cook?
28:04
What meet they're cooking? What three people you'll pick to
28:06
cook with you? Oh my God, we've gotten through
28:12
this whole interview and I haven't mentioned Brad Laniger
28:15
and Brad is going to he's set. He's on pace to to win KCBS Team
28:20
of the Year yet again, which he'll be a four time KCBS Team
28:23
of the year winner. No one, no one to my knowledge
28:26
has done that. I think we have some, I think we
28:28
have multiple three times, but we don't have a four time.
28:30
So I'd be remiss if I left Brad off and Brad can cook any
28:34
category he wants to. I don't care.
28:36
He can pick, you know, Beyond that, I'm going to dig into the
28:41
archives a little bit. I'm going to bring on Johnny
28:43
Trigg to cook ribs. I'm going to bring on Tuffy
28:46
Stone and he's going to cook chicken.
28:49
And I guess that leaves me with either pork or brisket,
28:51
whichever 1 Brad doesn't want. That's a good team.
28:56
All right. I appreciate you coming on and
28:59
if you have any shout outs or anything you want to promote or
29:03
anything, you can do that at this time.
29:06
If you don't mind, I'd like to talk a little bit about KCBS.
29:09
So we're gearing up to to go to the American Royal, the world's
29:13
largest BBQ contest, and officiate it.
29:15
It's the second weekend in November and then after that we
29:18
have the KCBS Hall of Fame induction and the annual awards
29:22
banquet here in Kansas City, February 20th and 21st of 2026.
29:28
And then of course the next biggie is the World
29:30
Invitational. It's going back to Lebanon, TN
29:34
Memorial Day weekend of 2026. And Friday night of last year we
29:38
had this year we had a one meat chicken and A1 meat ribs
29:42
category. Those are going to turn into
29:43
invitationals. If you win a chicken 1 meat or a
29:47
rib 1 meat, or if you win the chicken category or the rib
29:50
category of the contest you're in, whether that's Backyard or
29:54
Masters, you will be invited to compete on Friday night at the
29:58
World Invitational. And we're announcing it live
30:00
right here. We've handed around about it,
30:02
but we're just getting ready to start promoting it and it not a
30:05
lot of people know just yet, but we're going to have an amazing
30:09
Friday night event with this, with a special Invitational for
30:12
those two categories and crowns them crown some world champions
30:15
in those categories on Friday night at Lebanon, TN.
30:18
That's. Probably enough.
30:20
I really do appreciate you having me on, it's been a blast.
30:23
Oh, I'm glad you appreciate it. I'm going.
30:25
I'm in Georgia, so I'm, I got my tickets.
30:28
I'm going to come walk around the American Royal.
30:30
So if you're going to be there, I'm going to look for you,
30:32
introduce myself so I can meet you.
30:34
Do that come so, so we work out of the end of one of the,
30:37
there's 4 garages in the infield.
30:40
Private parties make up, I think the other three, maybe all four
30:42
of them. But at the end of one of those
30:44
garages is a space where we check in all the teams.
30:48
And so that's home base for KCBS.
30:51
And then of course, Saturday and Sunday will be in the judging
30:53
area most of the time, which is garage number one.
30:56
It takes up the judging. But yeah, come by.
30:57
I'd love to, I'd love to shake your hand.
30:59
OK. I appreciate it.
31:01
Thank you for coming on. Yeah.
31:03
Thank you all. Right, you have a good day.
31:05
You too. We just wrapped up another
31:07
session of BBQ therapy. Remember, stay patient, stay
31:11
passionate and keep that fire burning.
31:13
Hit subscribe, share the good smoke and pay the secretary on
31:17
your way out. Have a blessed day.