Latest / BBQ Therapy / #48 Paul Buob - Smokin Ghost BBQ | Why Great BBQ Put the Team First

Transcript

#48 Paul Buob - Smokin Ghost BBQ | Why Great BBQ Put the Team First · BBQ Therapy

0:00
He sent me a picture of four trophies, one of them including
0:03
first place ribs at the royal, and he goes.
0:06
Here's my feedback. And I'm like.
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OK. And the way I work, most people
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know I was a master black belt at Caterpillar.
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So I'm about process and you don't make a change without.
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How do you assure that's the only variable you change things
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like that. And so I'm just, it's going to
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take me till next year before I can incorporate it because I'm
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running with this recipe. Lego Ham BBQ.
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Lego Ham BBQ. Lego Ham BBQ.
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Lego Ham BBQ. Ever notice how the sound of
0:41
sizzling meat and the smell of smoke can silence the noise of
0:45
the world? Now that's BBQ therapy.
0:48
If the fire moves you like subscribe, share and help spread
0:52
the message because growth, like good BBQ, takes time and
0:56
patience. Welcome to your therapy session.
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Welcome to the BBQ Therapy podcast.
1:04
My name is Tavis Bryant and today we have a guest, the
1:10
founder of Smoking Ghost BBQ, Paul Bouav, a brand that started
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from a concession stand fundraiser and has grown into a
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respected name in competition circuits, a line of
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award-winning rubs and sauces, and a company that gives back to
1:26
the community with every bottle sold.
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We're going to talk about how Smoking Ghosts began, the grind
1:32
of building a BBQ brand, the highs and lows of competition,
1:36
and of course, dig deep into his products that pit masters and
1:40
backyard cooks alike are raving about.
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Paul, welcome to the show. I got one rule, make yourself at
1:45
home. I have 0 sponsors so speak
1:48
freely all. Right.
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No worries. No worries.
1:51
Thanks for having me. All right.
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I appreciate you coming on. All right, let's take it back.
1:55
And you said you were from your profile, you were born in
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Peoria, IL How was that growing up and what was the BBQ scene?
2:03
Is that big city or no? Yeah, Peoria, IL was about
2:07
100,000 the city, maybe about 300 in the metropolitan area.
2:12
Home a Caterpillar corporate headquarters Caterpillar over
2:15
the years before they moved to Chicago, then to Texas.
2:19
But yeah, the BBQ scene wasn't great.
2:22
You go up to Chicago to get really good BBQ.
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Big John's BBQ was the place to go downtown Peoria and it was
2:29
it. Your other people did BBQ, but
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if you came in and out of Peoria, it was Big John's and
2:34
you went to go get his ribs and young at the time to understand
2:37
why it went away other than I was disappointed.
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And then, you know, probably about a decade ago, his sibling
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or descendants started it up again and it it didn't launch as
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well. Some of those things in the
2:50
genre that goes with the original memory just can't be
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reproduced and modernized. And yeah, so in Peoria now we
2:58
got a bunch of BBQ restaurants. We got a couple really good ones
3:01
and some OK ones. We got a couple chains but
3:04
there's some really decent ones doing craft barbecue in the
3:07
area. OK, OK.
3:09
And did your family BBQ growing up or you didn't only ate out or
3:13
when you. Got Yeah.
3:14
So my dad was a chef. Chef.
3:17
When he was in the army, he was cooking.
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I don't know that they would call him a chef.
3:24
You would have probably thrown something at me if I called him
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a chef. But I cooked stuff on the grill,
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I cooked stuff, etcetera. But yeah, he was a big when
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there was a centerpiece of a meal at our house, 90% of the
3:35
time that was my dad. All the other stuff my mom would
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do, she was big in the fried chicken, chicken and dumplings.
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Big thing was on your birthday, you get to pick what you want.
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And for me it was my mom's chicken and dumplings.
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My dad loved steak and burgers and tried to get me to love
3:50
steak. And then I was a burger guy.
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Bacon, throw some cheese on it. Just eat it like that.
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No ketchup, no pickle, no mustard.
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Just burger, cheese and bacon. And probably about over six
4:02
years, he really got me an old steak.
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And I'm like, why would you do that?
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That's going to cost you money. But anyway, yeah, my dad was
4:09
really the cook and he was, he would let you know if you're
4:12
doing things wrong. He didn't hold back.
4:15
But why are you flipping that burger 4 times?
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You flip it once, you know you're going to ruin it.
4:19
But yeah, no, my dad was probably the influence in
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cooking in the family and BBQ. So did he teach you and you kept
4:26
practicing or did you do it when you got out the house?
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Or how did you do it? Yeah, and I would say there was
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probably during I was into sports in high school, probably
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sports led the way and everything else was second.
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I didn't really have any steady girlfriends because that would
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interfere with sports and everything.
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And as I got towards the middle of college, I started looking at
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other things because I realized my sport career was going to end
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and started playing around with things and started getting into
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Italian food and there was just nowhere to go.
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It was well before a lot of the podcast and the Internet.
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So I'd go hang out at restaurants, stores being a
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closing, and just start asking questions.
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That was one of the things I really enjoyed.
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Now, mind you, in Peoria, it's not a giant Italian restaurant
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area. There's a couple of decent ones.
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But yeah, I'd say my locality kind of limited my my ability to
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learn more. OK.
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OK. And I guess when let's take it
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afford a little bit. So I guess when you got married
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and you moved to a different area and you said I guess 25
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years ago that you that's when the whole concession stand thing
5:31
started where they bartered. How did that barter come about?
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Because we're the blackmail. I lived in Peoria, went to
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school at in Decatur, IL, then went down to Houston, TX
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thinking I wasn't going to finish college.
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Did some installing alarms in the ceiling in the attics.
5:50
That was in the summer. That wasn't going to happen.
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Came back and went back to college, got my degree, then
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went to Cedar Rapids, IA work for Rockwell where I met my
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wife. He moved back to Peoria when
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Caterpillar was hiring in the early to mid late 80s.
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And then we got broken into several times.
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And so my wife's go, we got to move somewhere safer because she
6:10
was expecting. So she's I gave her the little
6:13
catalog. Back then you had to go through
6:15
a book to look at homes and all that on the place.
6:17
It was a ranch. It was a very affordable for us
6:20
and had about two acres and we we kept driving trying to find
6:24
it because it was in Chillicothe, IL and I know
6:27
Chillicothe because it's on the way to Chicago.
6:30
That's all I knew about it. And then get gas there and get
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candy at the gas station. So I and I worked in Mossville,
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Illinois. So it's in my mind trying to
6:37
design how many miles I want to come.
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But anyway, we found a place that I said, you know what,
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let's just turn around here. Let's give up on this one, turn
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around here and we'll head back. Where we turned around was the
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place we bought and and then our kids came up in that school
6:52
district and I became the baseball commissioner, the boys
6:56
commissioner. Baseball did that for probably
6:59
about 10 years. And I knew it was time to get
7:02
out a when it was the second year after my kids were all gone
7:05
to baseball and everybody's like, why are you still doing
7:08
this? I like it.
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And we had a really prodigy, Zach McAllister, who ended up
7:14
playing for the Cleveland Indy, One Indians, drafted by the
7:17
Yankees, played for the Cleveland Indians, played in the
7:20
World Series. I knew once he got through was
7:22
over. For me, there's no higher note
7:24
than a kid ends up like that. But he did well.
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But so my kids started getting into the high school.
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My oldest got in high school, eventually got into to soccer
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and the uniforms they had were just horrible.
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They looked like Speedos from the in the swimming room.
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Embarrassing. And so I went to a booster
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meeting and complained about the shorts for the guys in kind of
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the old guard athletic director and his hierarchy is boys
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football, all the other boys sports, then boys soccer and
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then girls sports and then the last thing on the end of the
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girls sports is girls soccer. We got to know all the soccer
8:04
parents, and they had to translate the game for me, a
8:07
football guy. But we got into it.
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We're doing stuff and went into the meeting and asked, hey, can
8:13
we get shorts to fit our boys or I'll buy them if you want me to.
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And a little bit of a clash between the old culture and
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let's just do the right thing. So the president at the time,
8:24
Kim Robertson, came in and said, Paul, just back off, we'll get
8:27
your shorts. But you need to do me a favor.
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Could you help us in the concession standard?
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And I said, if you get the shorts, yeah, I'll be there.
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And as, as that kind of barter came along, I said, oh, by the
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way, can we get the girls sweats?
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The girls soccer team sweats because in Illinois you're
8:44
playing outdoors in March, which is like 28 to 40° and sleet,
8:49
snow, rain, whatever. And I go, the boys basketball
8:51
has two pairs of sweats and they play indoors.
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How about the girls soccer? And he goes get in the
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concession, stay, have a work. So.
9:00
We got in there and the next thing, because I'm trying to
9:03
organize things, trying to figure out everybody tell me
9:05
what we do, how we do it. And there's a lot of Joe does
9:08
that. So and so does that.
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So I'm at well, how much margin we make on these things?
9:12
No, I don't know. You don't know how much I just,
9:15
everybody calls me that corporate asshole kind of thing.
9:18
All I'm doing is just looking at it, trying to figure out what's
9:20
going on. They had rib eyes, which were
9:22
delicious and Oh my God, that was meat prices go up, come
9:26
back, that went up. This is one of those big up
9:28
years and I figured out we're asking for $6 for that sandwich
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and we're making $0.50. And I'm like, guys, that ain't
9:36
right. We're not here to employ the our
9:38
suppliers to make money. We're here to make money.
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And I eventually got rid of that sandwich and of course all the
9:45
coaches hated me. That was a great sandwich.
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We're not making money. We went back to the pork chops
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and a buddy of mine that does a lot for Saint Jude has a meat
9:56
house, Dave Allman, Echo Valley Meats.
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And he says, Paul, I can, you can buy it for me and I'll
10:03
double tenderize them. I'll just meet you at my house,
10:06
bring it from the shop. You just drive up, save yourself
10:08
1/2 hour. So we did that for a couple
10:10
years and then one night I pulled in and my CEO of
10:14
Caterpillar pulled in and we had a little chat and he goes, you
10:18
got to buy a bigger smoker. And I'm like, oh, I don't know
10:20
if I can afford that. I have to run by that wife and
10:22
all that stuff. And then Dave goes, oh, by the
10:25
way, here's where you can get yourself a tender.
10:27
You don't need to come here. So move on your own, do your own
10:30
thing. And that took off a little bit.
10:32
So we started doing all our own tenderizing and the salts, the
10:36
rubs we're using were the Lowry ish stuff and very salty.
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And so I'm like, let's come up with something a little more
10:44
purpose, a little more savory, balanced.
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We played, I played around with that for a couple years and just
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before I went and took it to a Co pack or we did a BBQ
10:55
competition, somebody was like, hey, you're barbecuing because
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we ended up doing pulled pork. Somebody says there's a better
11:01
margin on pulled pork to pork chop, thought why not try that?
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So we did and we didn't do well at all.
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And they get out of 45 teams, we were like 40th and our pork was
11:13
like 29th. That was the highlight, right?
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Me being the competitor, the hook was set.
11:19
Not because I got a call, but because I can do better.
11:22
My teammates, they, they enjoyed the environment and there was a
11:27
crap beer show there and everything.
11:29
So pretty quickly I realize you can either drink a lot or you
11:32
can score well. You can't do both.
11:35
And so over time, I really went, bought a trailer, bought the
11:38
Jambo that my CEO was talking about, actually got to cook with
11:43
Duffy Stone and Jamie Gear down in Houston.
11:47
And that was pretty awesome. And the hook was set there.
11:50
And then I started going out with this rub.
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I worked with Excalibur and the Food Scientist, and I knew
11:57
nothing about bringing anything to market.
12:00
And oh, by the way, I'd never had a BBQ call, right?
12:05
Not a top five, not a top ten in anything and yet I have a BBQ
12:09
rub right. I can tell you how not to do
12:11
that right. This is the podcast how to do
12:16
BBQ right. I can tell you how to do BBQ
12:19
wrong right coming out of the gate it just wasn't right.
12:22
Things aren't there We finally, so I just started giving my rub
12:26
away to people near me at a BBQ contest.
12:28
Hey, try this. Let me know what you think
12:29
etcetera. Ran into a buyer at Kroger that
12:32
was next to me in Indianapolis and two months later I'm in
12:37
Florida and I get a call, hey, we'd like to bring this in.
12:39
I'm like, are you serious? Really.
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So then I get on the phone and I call a couple of buddies in the
12:45
industry. What do I do?
12:46
Tell me what I'm about to learn. And they gave me the lowdown and
12:50
distribution. Heath Hall was one that kind of
12:53
sat down and ran through here's the numbers, here's this and
12:56
he's oh, ask your Co Packer for a discount because he got this
12:58
coming work with everybody. And then I realized it's a lot
13:02
like what I did at Caterpillar was suppliers.
13:04
I went, I actually know this, I just don't know the category.
13:09
So we got into that. Next thing we're pushing the rub
13:11
around. And then we started to get a
13:13
little bit better, took classes, went and took razor racks and
13:17
heavy smoke. Travis Clark, probably the one
13:21
that I leaned on the most was Steve Hayden with 1-2 BBQ.
13:26
But they we get they get my texts, they get my calls at the
13:29
contest. Hey, why this?
13:31
Hey, why that? So yeah, we eventually got
13:33
better. It was an interesting journey
13:36
and when you started on as far as pork chops, it seemed like I
13:41
would have loved to come to y'all because at the most you
13:45
get nachos or a hot dog or something like that and y'all
13:48
selling pork chops and I'm like, how much are y'all selling the
13:51
pork chops for? My frustration was you go to a
13:54
football game, you get a pork chop on a bun.
13:56
That's like a hockey puck, right?
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It doesn't have to be that way. It is not hard.
14:02
It really is not right. We were selling them at the
14:04
time, I think pork chops for $5 and I think our cost was like 79
14:08
cents. It wasn't too long before
14:11
people, we had money. We're doing things.
14:13
All of a sudden people forgot about the rib eyes and that and
14:18
they started. That's where they came back and
14:19
said, hey, we should do pulled pork.
14:20
It's got a better margin and I looked around and go who knows
14:23
how to do pulled pork. Nobody raised their hand.
14:25
So I'm like equally as good or equally as bad.
14:27
That's where the pulled pork started before the eat, well
14:30
before the competitions. And yeah, I was out there just
14:33
Googling and playing around early on.
14:35
I had well before Mr. Jordan was around, I had a master built
14:41
cabinet that had three legs that worked and a block of wood that
14:45
I put on the other one. But I have it up in the rafters
14:48
up here as a showpiece, the original Yankee leg.
14:52
But that's, we started with all that.
14:54
We eventually got the pulp work in and we learned how to quench
14:58
it, re thermalize all those procedures.
15:01
The folks at the National BBQ Association, I went there one
15:04
year trying to learn more and I, I was sitting next to Dave
15:08
Anderson and Dave Raymond and they weren't wearing like famous
15:11
Dave and Sweet Baby Ray's. They're dressed up and they were
15:15
hitting me up with questions. Why are you here?
15:17
What are you doing? And you need to come out with a
15:19
rub. And I'm like, oh, I'm not that
15:20
guy. Oh, make some sauces.
15:22
Oh, that's not me. And there's enough rubs and
15:24
sauces in the market. I don't need to add anything.
15:26
If I need anything that's out there.
15:28
And they're telling me all this stuff.
15:29
And then Stewart Meyer comes over and he goes, what do you
15:32
think? I go, Oh my gosh, this is it's
15:34
overwhelming this conference I went to.
15:36
And he goes, what do you think of Sweet Baby Ray?
15:38
I go, oh, is he here? Oh, you were talking to him for
15:42
45 minutes. That was sweet, Baby Ray.
15:46
I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't know.
15:47
And he goes, what about Dave Raymond?
15:49
I go, is he here, too? He goes, Paul, he was on the
15:51
other side of you. I was like, I didn't know.
15:53
And they did. They weren't wearing their
15:54
badges or everything, so I didn't know.
15:57
And yeah, I mean, I'd met the BBQ Brass, MO Caison, Kel
16:01
Phelps, Myron Mix and all those guys.
16:03
And, you know, it was just relaxed right there, telling you
16:06
things and giving you tricks and stuff like that.
16:09
So it was quite like this and then and then it was the hook
16:14
was sat long before I got a call.
16:16
What year did you go to the NBBQA conference?
16:21
I think it was there in 20/17/2018 and 20/19 and then we
16:25
didn't have it in 2020. OK.
16:29
And can you tell a little bit about the NBBQA conference?
16:33
I'm trying to go, I'm going to try to go this year and see what
16:36
it's about, but I'm in Georgia. I've met killed this year and
16:40
real nice gentleman and stuff like that, and I'm going to try
16:44
to go to the conference this year to see what it's about and
16:46
what I can learn because I know it's in Tennessee this year.
16:49
Yeah, and that I haven't gone because of conflicts the last
16:54
couple of years. This.
16:55
And one of the conflicts is my good friend Jason Cole and Eric.
16:59
And those guys have the Smoke on the Shores BBQ contest in
17:03
Lebanon, TN. And that's also home where KCBS
17:06
houses the World Invitational. So unless I'm dead or my
17:13
daughter's having a baby or my sister or something's having a,
17:17
then I'm going to be there. And the MB BQA was always on top
17:21
of that. This year it's not.
17:23
Yeah, I believe it'll be a long couple of weeks in Tennessee.
17:28
But yeah, the National BBQ Association, I know it's changed
17:31
over the years, but they do much like the American Royal, they
17:34
host grubs and sauces. The best of and we got, that's
17:39
the first year that I had the product and a label.
17:41
I've submitted it and it finished 6th.
17:44
And I was like, I was like, that was when I thought, wow, I might
17:47
have something here. And I used to call it a beef and
17:49
steak and beef rub. And everybody was telling me,
17:52
Paul, it's really good on this, good on that.
17:55
And the next year I submit it to the seafood category because my
17:58
buddy goes, if you tried it on salmon, I'm like, man, it's a
18:01
steak and brisket rub. And it won the seafood category.
18:05
So I had 10,000 labels that I basically had to set aside and
18:09
we switched it to all-purpose rub because everybody's telling
18:13
me about a, if you have a seafood rub, they'll grab it
18:15
when they're cooking seafood. If you have a beef rub, they'll
18:18
grab them when they're cooking beef.
18:19
The general consumer now, BBQ guys, I got beef in my chicken
18:24
for sure. But yeah, so I learned a lot
18:26
right off the bat. Operational definition of the
18:28
sunk cost, right, is you got to pivot this and call it
18:31
all-purpose. And we did.
18:32
So I got a lot of things I can tell people coming out with the
18:34
product for the first time and I have shared it with Brad Cox and
18:37
those guys coming out with theirs and Chris Schaefer with
18:40
when he came out with his stuff, of course, he was a world champ
18:43
before he came out with the products.
18:45
I was the opposite. I was swimming uphill.
18:47
But yeah, the NBBQA, they had special interest groups for
18:51
retail, they had special interest groups for restaurants.
18:55
They had a little bit everything marketing, social media, and
18:59
you've had the Meet Church, Matt Pittman, those guys are there,
19:02
the heavies in the industry there.
19:03
And it's much like your BBQ family.
19:07
There are no secrets. In fact, that's where I met the
19:10
shed, right? Mama Shed and Papa Shed and Brad
19:13
and Brooke. And we won't see them this
19:15
weekend at World Food. And their, their, their energy
19:19
levels are still off the chart. Brad's bouncing off the walls at
19:22
6:00 in the morning and that's 11 at night.
19:25
I don't have that energy anymore that he does.
19:27
But yeah, all those guys are out there helping you.
19:29
And there's a, they have the steak cook off.
19:31
So they have a Friday night rhinestone cowboy cook off for
19:34
steak, and then they have another one on Saturday and all
19:37
the heavies are there in the steak world.
19:39
So it's really a good time. And if you want to figure out
19:43
what's going on and get up to date, if especially like back
19:46
then, I was a newbie. So I'm meeting people that I've
19:48
seen on TV and can't believe this.
19:51
And you can end up picking up the phone and give them a call.
19:54
Yeah. So it's a really, it's a really
19:55
good conference. And I know a couple years ago it
19:58
pivoted where Cal took over just like anything in the industry
20:02
got. Beat down during COVID and they
20:05
had to pivot one way or the other and Kel was the guy and he
20:08
is the guy and his wife. Don't get me wrong, she does a
20:11
ton. So it ain't just the Kel Show.
20:14
But yeah, it's. A great conference if you can
20:16
get there. It's not like 100% competitive
20:20
BBQ, it's a little bit of everything.
20:22
I'm trying to get there. This year it's in.
20:25
I think they're having it in March and it is the 35th
20:27
actually the 35th anniversary. I think they celebrating the
20:31
next year. But I definitely look forward to
20:34
it. But I definitely wanted to know
20:35
how to do it and do they split off into groups and talk about
20:40
specific areas and stuff like that.
20:42
Because I'm trying to what I'm doing, I'm trying to get better
20:45
and in order to get better, you got to learn how to get
20:49
instructions from other people that's successful doing it.
20:52
And then I'm going to enter my show into the little, I guess
20:55
competition to see how it pans out and go from there.
20:58
But he's doing a lot of good things with the magazine and all
21:03
the live fires at the smoke slam.
21:06
And he's going to have one in American role.
21:08
So as I like definitely support him because he gives back to the
21:12
community. So you know, I say keep the
21:15
magazine alive because I'm an old school.
21:17
I like reading the magazine, all the digital stuff.
21:19
They can have all that, but. Kel's on the good dude train for
21:25
sure. Exactly.
21:27
All right, let's talk some more about your products.
21:29
So you got the all-purpose and then you got the next level.
21:33
What's the difference between next level and the all-purpose?
21:38
About $5, Yeah. No, seriously.
21:41
So the original product was the one at collaborating.
21:45
Yeah, that one collaborated with Excalibur here.
21:48
And it's 30 minutes, 40 minutes from my house in Pekin, IL and
21:54
they don't have the larger bottle sizes.
21:57
And I really wanted to get in what I call the industry
21:59
standard, the 12 to plus oz bottle.
22:03
And I didn't want to own the inventory of bottles.
22:05
I've spent too much money on other things already.
22:08
I just came back from World Foods with another smoker and I
22:11
had to tell my wife this morning so waited for her to be in a
22:16
good mood. But so the original though, was
22:19
really the one that I was targeting for beef and steak.
22:22
And again, we use it on the pork chops and eventually became the
22:26
all-purpose rub. But it was a collaboration
22:29
design with Excalibur and I learned, really learned the
22:33
basics of how to do work with food scientists.
22:36
I'm trying to and I read, I actually listened to a video on
22:39
YouTube and it says talking with food scientists.
22:42
You point to your tongue and I'm like, I'm either going to go
22:45
over there and they're going to laugh at me or it's going to
22:47
work. We got, I don't know, 3-3 people
22:51
in the room and all of them probably about 1/3 my age.
22:55
And I'm like, oh boy, I'm over my head.
22:57
And we got it close and they put 3 examples out there and I
23:00
pointed that says the last one is real close.
23:03
It's just missing right there on the tongue, just missing a
23:05
little bit sample. I give you had that yours
23:08
doesn't and it was the celery salt.
23:11
And I'm like, if that's what I said, OK, I I don't have that.
23:15
I can discern a difference. I just can't communicate it.
23:18
And so they came back with the final sample.
23:21
And the one thing I didn't realize working with the Co
23:24
Packer is when you give them something, I'm thinking, man, if
23:26
you can only get like 90% of close to that, I'll be good.
23:29
What I wasn't expecting, it would be like 130% better than
23:32
when I gave them and they their ingredients are fresh, they're
23:37
coming in, we're buying stuff in bulk off the shelf.
23:40
We don't know how long it's been.
23:41
So the whole supply chain for us is a question mark where they're
23:45
managing that all the time. But yeah, that was the first
23:48
product, the all-purpose and that was really, we still use
23:51
day one. I use it on pork, on brisket,
23:54
still on brisket, still on pork. I dabbled with it on chicken.
23:59
I like it as a base, but I use a whole bunch of other stuff on
24:02
chicken than that. I know there are people that use
24:04
it on chicken. A couple of them are beating me
24:06
usually with it. Figures.
24:09
But then came the all-purpose next level.
24:12
I ended up working with McCarthy on this one.
24:15
They had the bigger bottles and I had some friends that went
24:18
there and had positive experiences and we got into the
24:21
development of it and working with my buddies at the
24:25
Superstore and trying to speed the process along from their
24:29
experience and everything. How do I say it?
24:32
A lot of times what you're trying to do is not what you end
24:34
up with and that's the use of this one.
24:37
I was trying to really get similar in a bigger bottle and
24:40
it came out different and I was getting a little frustrated and
24:44
it was probably the first one took three months to develop the
24:48
original OG and the next level was probably about a year and I
24:52
was frustrated. Color wasn't the same, taste was
24:56
different, right? And so I started handing out
24:59
some bottles to friends of mine that I trust.
25:02
And I'd say, hey, try it, let me know, try it, let me know.
25:04
Paul Keltner was one of them. Jason Cole was one of them.
25:08
And I'm telling, hey, do not use it in competition.
25:11
I don't want to be accountable for anything goes wrong.
25:15
Try it in your practice or somewhere else.
25:17
Don't make me the reason you don't do well.
25:19
And I think it was Jason, I said just give me some feedback
25:22
afterwards because I wasn't getting payments or anything.
25:25
So I just tried. He sent me a picture of four
25:27
trophies, one of them including first place ribs at the royal,
25:31
and he goes. Here's my feedback.
25:34
And I'm like. OK.
25:38
And the way I work, most people know I was a master black belt
25:41
at Caterpillar. So I'm about process and you
25:45
don't make a change without. How do you assure that's the
25:49
only variable you change things like that?
25:52
And so I'm just, it's going to take me till next year before I
25:55
can incorporate it because I'm running with this recipe.
25:58
And it was up at death's door in Wisconsin.
26:01
The cheese curd cartel had poked because I didn't bring my steak.
26:04
Cooker and Death Story used to be a double BBQ contest and then
26:08
an SCA contest. And a lot of the SA cooks would
26:11
get together and compete in the barbecue and do damn well.
26:15
And they were poking at me because I wasn't cooking steak.
26:17
And there's some of my sponsor teams.
26:19
I said next year if I'm here I'll cook steak and I packed the
26:23
PK, but I packed it in the secret spot and I was hoping
26:27
they wouldn't remember because I hadn't cooked this competitive
26:30
steak in two years. I was never what I would call a
26:33
leader in steak. I was a field filler in steak
26:37
and I tried to run Tim and Sandy's recipe in the first
26:40
practice cooks. I didn't like it.
26:43
Conversely, the judges didn't like it was Dal in the first
26:46
round. So in the second round I just, I
26:50
said, you know what, I got this new rub.
26:53
I want to get feedback from the judges on the new rub.
26:55
At least I'll come away with something.
26:56
So all I did on the the last practice take was use the new OG
27:01
the next level rub and it it the practice went.
27:05
I just need a little more sweetness on it.
27:07
So I on the spinel of the second stick.
27:09
I put a little simmer on docks with it and we ended up getting
27:13
a golden ticket and the cheese curd cartel was all over me
27:17
saying I told you I'm still not a great cook right That day I
27:21
did. I got lucky.
27:22
But the big difference is I think there's if the original,
27:26
if you do like a kibiat chart where the center is 0 and you
27:30
have spicy up here is 10 sweet and you do all the salty and all
27:35
that. The original was probably like
27:36
5555 balanced. Just what if you go out to a BBQ
27:41
pro shop and look at the smoke freaks flavor?
27:44
Flavor Guide pretty much says that, but the next level
27:50
actually moves that up to 6-7, so it pushes it in a little more
27:53
direction. I still use them both
27:56
interchangeably. Like on vegetables I tend to use
27:59
the original because small food, small shaker is the way I look
28:03
at it. But on pork and brisket, it's
28:06
the next level. And ribs, yeah, just a little
28:09
more spicy as a little more in each direction.
28:13
The colour is a bit different coming out.
28:16
And this you got the spooky sweet and the honey heat.
28:19
Let's go over some of the awards that were won 2021, you got the
28:23
NBBQA, you got the 1st place marketing.
28:26
What was that in detail as far as the marketing material award
28:31
that you got? Yeah, so and that you asked
28:34
about MB, PQA, they have a lot of categories which is great.
28:37
You can put things out there to see where you fit, you know what
28:39
adjustments. So they had a marketing
28:42
category, they had a label category.
28:44
So the product label they had, the marketing is material.
28:48
I have a flyer that I send up to all the stores when I'm
28:50
soliciting and it's got the product and it shows all the
28:54
details of it, where to use and all that.
28:56
Really trying to entice them to bring our product in.
29:00
I just sent that in as the marketing material and I work
29:03
with a graphics designer for everything I do.
29:05
I'll tell them what I want and they make it better.
29:08
Much like Co Packer. So that was what won that one.
29:11
That year. The OG won the seafood.
29:14
I think in 20/20/2019, whatever the.
29:16
I'm no longer can remember anything.
29:18
I just remember something happened.
29:20
I can't tell you when I can tell you.
29:21
The Cubs won the World Series in 2016.
29:23
I remember that. But yeah.
29:25
And then let's see, the sauce won one year.
29:29
Yeah, we have seven of those. I think that one in various
29:32
categories, and when it was in Kansas City, they had a People's
29:35
Choice where the people coming in were trying the rubs and
29:39
sauces and we won that. And I'm like, that's more
29:42
important to me than maybe a bunch of judges in the backroom.
29:45
I want to people on the street liking it.
29:47
So that was pretty exciting. But that was those national, the
29:51
national BBQ. So really the national awards.
29:54
It wasn't until a couple years ago I submitted in the American
29:59
Royal and the first year I think we were mid pack on the rub,
30:04
nothing noteworthy. And I didn't submit the sauces.
30:07
I forgot really, to be honest with you.
30:10
So the next year I came and left and I missed the deadline.
30:14
So I'm like, OK, put it on the calendar.
30:15
We're going to get in this year. And I sat there trying to figure
30:19
out where to put the, the this haunted heat because it's really
30:22
not a spicy sauce and it's not a sweet sauce.
30:25
I'm like, what do I do? I'm going to put in the special,
30:27
the specialty category and it's a bit of a risk because there's
30:31
so many things, so many diverse things in the specialty.
30:34
But I thought it wasn't sweet and it wasn't heat.
30:37
It's different. And then the sweet, I just left
30:40
in the sweet and I got a call in April from the American Royal.
30:45
All this American, I thought it was bought my registration for
30:48
the American Royal, Right? I forgot.
30:50
I didn't know they're going to call you with the news.
30:52
You won the sauce category. And I'm like, I did.
30:55
Wow. Then I'm like, which one?
30:58
You said the specialty and you got a perfect score.
31:01
I'm like wow. And then I'm like, wait a minute
31:05
of all the winners, then there's the best sauce on the planet.
31:08
So of all the mustard category, all these categories, they take
31:12
those and they have the best sauce on the planet.
31:14
Now I'm thinking if I had a perfect score, how can I get
31:18
beat? You can.
31:19
You can't trust me. Comes to tiebreakers.
31:21
I don't do really well. But hey, it won the category and
31:25
it was second best, second best sauce on the planet.
31:28
If you go look at the math, it didn't get the title, best sauce
31:31
on the planet. But just to be there, to win the
31:34
category, to be there, just crazy country.
31:36
Bob Nate Edmond in Centralia, IL.
31:39
We did the demo things and all that, but and I was never
31:42
prepared again. I should be.
31:45
When you send them something, they can come back better.
31:47
We have the original recipes we worked on.
31:49
It came back and I said I want a little more over here, go that
31:52
way. He sent me the sample for
31:54
Haunted Heat and he goes, I apologize, it isn't right.
31:57
We'll get it right with the next one.
31:58
I tried it and I'm like called him back.
32:00
I go, Nate, don't change a thing again.
32:04
It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's so
32:08
different. It gives you heat on the back,
32:12
it comes up with heat and it just dissipates.
32:14
So you get the experience. It was just really different.
32:16
And same with the sweet, more classical, Southern smoky sweet,
32:20
and boom, there I am a sauce company, right?
32:23
And if I'd known how fast you sell sauce, I would have done
32:27
that first. But again, I wasn't going to get
32:30
into retail sales at all, so the rub was just a oops and then the
32:35
sauce was intentional. So how did it go as far as when
32:37
you get your product in a store, do you just give them the I
32:42
guess how many they asked for? Do they purchase it or do you
32:45
get paid after it sells in the store?
32:49
So there's a lot of different models out there.
32:51
Early on it, I was just going door to going to the doors of
32:54
the stores. I knew, right?
32:56
I grew up in the area Alwin Pottstown Ravers.
33:00
The traditional meetinghouse has been here for decades, 5060
33:03
years. Millie went to them.
33:04
The first one I ever went to was one of my friends, Pastor
33:09
Stephanie and she had a picket fence of flower floral and she
33:14
actually called me first. She goes, he going to put that
33:16
rub here and I'm like, sure, I didn't have that extroverted go
33:22
knock on doors and get ready for a 70% rejection.
33:25
I didn't have that. So I had to build that.
33:27
But yeah, so a lot of the stores are just straight job shipped.
33:30
And Dave Raymond said, Paul, you need to own your three, the
33:33
three hour window around you, certainly the one hour, but you
33:36
got to own that go work that, go do demos, go do just hammering.
33:40
And so we did and we got a good local following.
33:43
And then I started the Kroger thing just fell in my lap.
33:46
And that actually turned out not as great because I learned what
33:50
a distributor can do for you and what they can't do for you.
33:53
The distributor wasn't that we'd sell out at a store in a week
33:58
and they weren't reordering. And I found myself getting calls
34:00
from customers. I was shipping them a free
34:02
bottle. I was copying the the
34:05
distributor distributor and copying the buyers and they just
34:09
weren't checking the stores. And I'm like, you pay a
34:12
percentage to that distributor. And so it was like after about a
34:16
year of that, when people would call me, I'd say where would you
34:19
go if not Kroger to get your meat?
34:22
I'd go to this store. So I'd call that store and say,
34:24
hey, I'd send them a bottle. I'd send them a kit with
34:27
everything in there. Try this, wait a week or two and
34:29
call them back. Have you had a chance to try it?
34:31
And then OK, can I have the feedback?
34:33
OK. And then I'd send them the price
34:35
sheet. So the three-step and during
34:38
like 19 and 2020, especially during COVID, I have a big old
34:42
whiteboard with all the I had little cards that I would
34:45
progress delivered sample, tried sample call back in the old
34:50
project meant call back on and then some, maybe next year,
34:53
which was probably a polite no at we're not coming here.
34:56
And we, we just made the push to go coast to coast and I got that
35:01
extroverted. Just get on the phone and say hi
35:04
and never call on a Monday, never call on a Friday.
35:07
Tuesday, probably the best day, Tuesday or Wednesday because
35:11
stores are going crazy on the weekends and all that and say,
35:14
hey, we've won some awards. We're a small shop.
35:18
We got craft BBQ sauces and rubs and we'd like to have a shot of
35:22
samples. And that's the mode.
35:25
It wasn't overly scripted, but it was pretty consistent.
35:28
And I probably called, I don't know, 2000 stores over that
35:31
period of time and we got, we added about maybe 8 or 9% that
35:34
took us. And unfortunately, post COVID,
35:38
we lost a lot of those stores too.
35:40
And the other key thing I learned, it's hard to ship
35:44
directly to the coasts, right? The prices when you get shipping
35:48
in that become a problem, right? So you either have to make up
35:52
for it in margin or in volume. And, and there's no magic to
35:55
that. You just do the math.
35:57
But yeah, no, I got OK at it. And lean on your buddies.
36:00
Chris said code 3, give him a call quite often.
36:03
Hey, I got this, I got that. And he said, well, if you don't
36:06
want to do that, I'll do it for you.
36:08
And I'm like, you know, pull in my ear, go, maybe I will hand
36:11
that over to you. Getting older.
36:12
I'm collecting Social Security now.
36:14
So maybe I ought to have somebody do my pic pack and shit
36:17
for me instead of me. Crazy, that's where I got this
36:21
from when I went to Chris Shaffer class.
36:24
It was in the Collinsville BBQ supply.
36:27
Exactly. I thought Code 3, but it's
36:29
Collinsville BBQ Supply. Yeah, Chris is a great guy, and
36:32
Mike, they've been good friends. I met them at NBBQA.
36:36
Yeah, and didn't know Collinsville or Code 3 at the
36:40
time. Hung out with them and we cooked
36:42
under a tent together, steaks and all that.
36:45
Yeah, he's one of those confidence and steaks, BBQ,
36:49
retail, everything like that. Yeah.
36:51
That's, again, all because of the context.
36:53
I met through MB BQA. But yeah.
36:55
So that's the channel from the craft product out.
36:58
And the best thing I can say is when you're getting into it and
37:01
if you have questions, call somebody that you know knows it
37:04
and you feel comfortable getting good and bad feedback.
37:08
And the one thing I'll tell you, and this is part of what I don't
37:12
always believe your closest friends and your relatives,
37:16
they're not going to, they're not going to hurt your feelings.
37:18
So the best thing is to do is exactly what I did it out of
37:21
spite because they were telling me, oh, it's great on salmon,
37:24
It's great on corn. I go, guys, it's a steak rub.
37:27
So I submitted in that seafood category.
37:29
I swear to you I submitted in the seafood category
37:31
intentionally because it wouldn't do well.
37:34
And it wanted. And that's when the light bulb
37:36
went off and it was like it really did win.
37:41
They are right. And instead of treating this as
37:43
hobby kind of mentality, I had to scrap my mental state and
37:48
start over. And that was this.
37:50
It was a watershed moment. And that's when I got more
37:52
serious about the business of the retail products.
37:56
You're giving good information today given the background,
38:01
because people think it's easy where you just throw something
38:04
together and get it bottled and get it in the store like it's
38:08
nothing. But it's the whole process
38:10
behind all that and now you telling it.
38:12
I didn't know it was that hard, but it seemed like it's a lot
38:17
there goes into getting a product in the store.
38:20
Yeah, and, and everything's going to change.
38:22
Prices are going to go up percentage is it going to go up
38:25
if you get into some of those contracts with the majors, you
38:28
get into the Bogos where you got to provide them, buy one, get
38:31
one. If your product doesn't so many
38:33
times months, etcetera, they want you to buy it back.
38:36
There's it gets deep, right. So you got to decide what
38:40
channel do I want to be in? How big do I want to grow,
38:43
right? And right now I'm, I've got a
38:46
couple of the larger stores that I'm navigating that because I
38:51
know it could be more of my time than I want to give.
38:55
And so that's where I would go look at a Collinsville BBQ, say,
38:59
Chris, this will be the one I want to hand over to you and the
39:02
beginning of me getting my hands off the day-to-day stuff, right?
39:07
But I've been flirting with that for three years, right?
39:09
I'm getting better myself, which kind of curbs it.
39:12
So the growth I can still handle, but you get into some of
39:16
the mid major stores is there you need somebody that does it
39:20
full time like those guys, there's more of them out there
39:23
and there's a bunch of Kansas City and etcetera.
39:26
So it's not just them, but that's who I would go to first
39:29
because I know them. Let's switch over to the KCBS
39:33
World Invitational, where you got the perfect score in
39:38
brisket, but also you tied for first but came in second.
39:44
I was. How was that feeling when you
39:47
got the results as far as I guess the you came in second
39:51
even though you had tie for the first score, tie for first?
39:55
Yeah, so we didn't get a chicken call and we do this and it's
40:01
very humorous. My buddy Scott, who cooks with
40:04
me all the time, was there. And Tim Matthews.
40:08
I asked him to come down and got him everything because I needed
40:11
help because I was going to cook for the judges.
40:14
They did a CBJ class on Wednesday, I think it was.
40:17
And so I knew, man, if I really wanted to cook the competition,
40:21
I'm going to have to help cook and everything else.
40:24
So he was there tremendous help. Scott and I have cooked together
40:27
a lot. We've won a few contests
40:28
together. So he knows me, right, Tim?
40:32
And Tim knows me, but he's fiercely independent like me.
40:35
So there was a lot of not clash, but what about this?
40:39
How about this? What about that?
40:40
Challenging some of the things I thought about.
40:42
And that brisket call was one of those conversations, right?
40:46
Normally don't do that. Why not?
40:48
And for anybody that knows me to change something at a
40:51
competition without practicing it.
40:54
So Tim was the one that why don't you add this and then
40:59
we'll float it. And I was like, I've never done
41:01
that. I'm not a can cook.
41:02
But yeah. So the whole contest went on.
41:05
We thought chicken was best. We thought ribs was second.
41:09
Pork was third best. And we thought brisket was the
41:12
one we had to worry about. And of course, it was completely
41:16
the opposite, right? Brisket was a perfect score.
41:19
Fort was, I don't know, top five, I think ribs was top ten
41:23
and chicken was like 60th or something like that.
41:26
And the night before we did that same chicken and we ended up
41:28
with a winning score but ended up third on tiebreakers.
41:32
So on Friday night I'll lose the tiebreaker for 3rd for chicken.
41:36
And then on I did win the brisket tiebreaker.
41:39
So there's I want one for three on tiebreakers.
41:41
And I was happy in that audience to be even in the top 10 because
41:46
I have not done well the year before.
41:48
Good. We all say that, right?
41:50
We all anyway. So this.
41:53
Day since. I have switched to comp our
41:56
pork, my pork and ribs have been just elevated and I've
41:59
simplified things and I'd like to believe I've kept that
42:03
knowledge from Steve Hayden and progressed.
42:06
But the briskets been my kryptonite.
42:08
It's either a Grand Slam or a fastball upside the head.
42:11
There's no in between and I think a lot of times I over
42:15
finish it, which is what creates that.
42:18
And so on that day I was sitting back in the chair when they got
42:22
to brisket and I'm sitting there thinking, hey, I'm going to be
42:24
in the top 20. That was my mindset, I swear to
42:27
you. And I think it was monkeys that
42:29
were overlooking. And then they called the 1st
42:33
place brisket and it was that 3 second delay ago did they call
42:38
our name? Because I thought.
42:40
Brisket was the 4th best pro team we.
42:42
Turned in and then Charlie's up there repeats it or Eric or
42:46
Charlie, I can't remember. Oh, it's Eric repeats it.
42:49
And then I look over at Mulkey's and they're like, you didn't
42:52
know, did you? I go absolutely not.
42:54
I didn't expect it. And you think if I have a decent
42:56
brisket, maybe, you know when I get from 15 to 10 maybe.
43:01
But once you get up to the top five, it wasn't that good, you
43:03
know, like you don't think you're going to beat these best
43:05
cooks in the world. And I just I didn't over finish
43:08
it. It was tender, but and I didn't
43:10
over finish it and it landed on the right table.
43:12
A little bit of table were left there maybe, but so then I'm all
43:15
excited and everything and then I sit down and they do the soy
43:20
award US soy, which was the. Chicken ribs and.
43:24
Pork category and I got a call in ribs and pork.
43:29
So I'm thinking, hey, I'm in the hunt for this now.
43:31
And I didn't get top five in the soy category, which I didn't
43:36
think about. I thought, OK, and the damn fine
43:39
beef and swine did right. And so we start calling off
43:43
names. I start popping names in the top
43:45
ten and they call off damn fine beef and swine.
43:47
And I'm like, oh, he tanked it. He came by afterwards.
43:53
You give the ceremony a hug. He pulled me in tighter.
43:55
There goes no, my brisket was shit, Paul.
43:59
And I'm like, OK, now I'm nervous because I thought he was
44:04
the one. I can't beat him based on the
44:06
scores I saw. And they start getting down and
44:10
cranking them up and I haven't heard Eric's name.
44:13
I haven't heard meet me in Saint Louis.
44:16
And there was one other and the one other was like 16th or
44:19
whatever, which they didn't call.
44:21
And and yeah, I'm, I'm not present mentally.
44:24
I'm tight as anything. And then they called me for 2nd
44:27
place and I'm happy. High fiving people take takes a
44:31
while to get to the stage on that and I'm up there getting
44:34
the picture with the guys. We got the big thing.
44:35
We got the trophy and the big check and Charlie Brinza, the
44:39
Rep leans over and says, oh, by the way, it was a three-way tie
44:44
for first and then walks on Charlie and I have a great
44:47
relationship, former board member, etcetera.
44:51
And I was there. You can see the smile with the
44:52
check and he tells me I was like, hang on, I got to take
44:56
another picture, the one I. Got was like.
45:00
Wow, it was that close and but it was Meet me in Saint Louis
45:06
and we cook with them probably 70% of the time with your best
45:10
friends and Bill and Andrea of Triple H Jordan.
45:13
Now can country Outlaws Chase if when you get down to the wire
45:17
with some of your buddies, Paul, and then you want to win, but
45:21
you're not disappointed if they do.
45:23
You're happy to be there. And that's what it was for those
45:26
guys. Brian's great crazy cook.
45:30
But yeah, I was tremendously happy even after that.
45:33
And then actually, once I heard that, man, I felt so horrible
45:38
for Eric, right? I'm like, I don't.
45:42
I did feel bad. I didn't win, but I felt worse
45:45
for Eric to be third because earlier in the year he had a tie
45:49
and didn't win again. So it's like his second or third
45:52
tie that he didn't win. My first tie that I didn't win
45:55
SE la vie. But yeah, no, it was, that was
45:58
an emotional day. And then we had to turn around
46:00
and do it again the next day and we had a decent cook, but I
46:04
missed a couple of things and I think we ended up 20 something
46:07
2724 or something like that. This I've been saying.
46:11
It I don't know what it's just that's a hard to.
46:15
Feel I'd be like don't even tell.
46:16
Me to score. Oh shit.
46:21
Charlie couldn't wait to tell me.
46:22
My wife's always on me because I'll be honest with you, when
46:26
it's a tie in the top five, I think I'm like one for 50,
46:30
right? The only ties I win are like the
46:33
tie for 26th, that you could have been 31st and you end up
46:36
26th. Those are the ones I win this
46:39
weekend at World Food. We tied for fifth.
46:41
We ended up 6th, so top five get an automatic invite back.
46:45
We ended up tied and I told Sean that's my fault.
46:49
I don't know what it is, but it's my fault.
46:51
I don't win ties, but I did win the I did win the brisket tie
46:55
over Sailor Knit and I let him know that so you.
47:00
Were a board member of. KCBS, what made you join the
47:03
board or go for the board? Like everyone, I have thoughts
47:07
of what the board. Should do.
47:08
And I was like, why don't you do this?
47:09
Why don't you do this? And Charlie Brenza, being one of
47:12
the closer ones to me, and Jean Titus were the ones I leaned on
47:15
because I knew them. I see them on weekends.
47:17
Why about this? Why did we do this?
47:19
How about this? And eventually I got put on a
47:22
committee, the Jacob committee with Charles Cridland, and he
47:27
goes rather than complain. Dave Drutzler steered me in.
47:30
He's a Rep. He goes rather than complain.
47:32
Why don't you join a committee and help us do things that make
47:36
that's reasonable? So we did.
47:37
We were working on the J Cup and I'd recently come off a contest
47:42
where I got 3 sixes in brisket and I had burnt ends too fatty,
47:46
too fatty. 666666 And I had at the time, President Stan
47:51
Dominsky tried those burnt ends and he's a man.
47:53
You nailed these and the intenders is amazing.
47:56
I'll put them in the I had a bad contest.
47:58
So it's not like I'm worried about oh, they hurt me, right.
48:02
A lot of times if they aren't perfect, I won't put them in the
48:03
box. So I put them in the box and I
48:05
got 3 sixes, 33 judges gave me straight sixes and I just,
48:10
there's no way. That was my motivation complaint
48:13
back to some of the board members and they put me on a
48:16
committee and I ended up doing the Jacob the brisket module.
48:21
And that's why it is what it is. Today we talked, we do talk
48:24
about because we never tell anybody, any judge how to judge
48:27
a burn end. And that was a problem.
48:29
And my fear is if we don't teach them how to judge it, they're
48:32
just going to disappear from boxes.
48:34
And they are more and more. You go to a contest, probably
48:37
I'm going to that 30% or less have burn ends.
48:41
And it used to be almost 50 to 80% have burn ends.
48:45
So that was my motivation to do that.
48:48
And then 23, there was some really bad tables and variation
48:55
on tables. And I was like, can't we do
48:57
something with this? Why am I on a table with three
49:00
entries? That shouldn't happen.
49:02
It should be 6 or five. So I started doing that and then
49:06
we had the little snafu with the royal and I have an IT
49:10
background, so I felt maybe that's the sign I should run.
49:13
So I decided to throw my hat in the ring to get on the board.
49:17
And that was yeah, 24. I ended up getting on the board.
49:21
I need to do something because my biggest.
49:23
Complaint with them is I like history.
49:25
I like to know if I want to know John Elway's rookie stats or if
49:30
I want to know a baseball players rookie said.
49:33
I can go and look, but if I want to know when Donnie Teal started
49:38
or Darren worse first year or I have no way of looking that up.
49:43
And we have to take people word for it on how great they are
49:48
because you can't really research it.
49:50
And I was telling Rod Greg, that's one of my things that I
49:54
want to see is I want to see people stance.
49:56
I want to see myself how great some of these people that don't
49:59
get the props back then how good they were.
50:03
But we have no way of seeing it. And it's sad that some of the
50:09
stuff is just lost and we don't get to recognize them for their
50:13
accomplishment before Internet. Yeah, and obviously BBQ.
50:19
Date is great for the digital age and beyond.
50:22
Like Lot of Bowl, Mike Davis, you got 3 Little Pigs and even
50:27
who else? Three Eyes.
50:28
There's Fort County Choppers. There's a lot of teams that were
50:32
on the fence of both sides. Donnie as well.
50:35
Johnny Tree, Yeah. Yeah, those guys were, I think.
50:41
We had TV back then when Johnny was cooking because I saw ATV
50:44
show with Johnny on it. But yeah, no, we.
50:47
So I will tell you that the board is scanning all those old
50:50
documents. Charles Criddlin is working
50:53
pushing this. He rolls off the board this
50:55
year. And probably myself or Dave
50:58
Qualls will continue to push for that.
51:00
But they're getting him digitized so that we can do
51:03
scanning to, to get that history.
51:06
Because you're right. And some of those ones, we only
51:08
have one copy. So it's a hey, we trust you to
51:12
scan this, but even when you're done, please preserve it because
51:16
we want to do that. But no, I give kudos to Charles
51:19
and even Mr. Qualls on pushing for the digital copies and all
51:22
that. And, and we're getting in the
51:25
window of announcing the candidates coming up.
51:27
So that'll be what are we, late October, probably early
51:31
November. Worst case, you'll see that come
51:33
out. Yeah.
51:34
And then some of the things we did last year on the Friday
51:37
night, we had the Rib World Championship and the Chicken
51:39
World Championship. We'll start communicating more
51:42
on that. We're hoping to have some
51:44
sponsors to put down on the table with those.
51:47
We're not going to wait for the sponsors to announce stuff.
51:50
If you want a chicken or a rib title, whether that's in
51:53
category like the four meat or whether it's a rib burn or a
51:56
chicken burn, those are going to be the people that are invited
51:59
to come back on Friday night. And my thought is man if.
52:03
I'm coming down there to cook. Rib or chicken on Friday night,
52:06
I'm going to cook the open on Saturday.
52:07
But now you got a reason to come down, not just cook and leave.
52:11
Or you can come down cook and help a team with their turn
52:14
insurance so everybody could use the next person in the trailer.
52:18
Especially a lot of times I cook alone.
52:20
So yeah, I don't mind having a little help in the trailer.
52:23
Yeah, that and also. Crowd bringing audience in to
52:29
view what's going on because a lot of competitions, they
52:34
sometimes it just be the cooks. And then I went to the Pigs and
52:38
Peaches this year and they had all the cooks like no joke, like
52:43
a half a mile away from the actual festivals.
52:45
People didn't get to really experience the competition
52:49
because it was so far away from the festival.
52:51
And I was like, this doesn't make any sense.
52:54
Yeah. And last.
52:56
Year was the first year we did a.
52:57
Public facing component and was it a home run?
53:00
Absolutely not. Probably more like a hit by
53:04
pitch. A good start, right?
53:06
It was a fair start. A, we need to make it wildly
53:09
profitable. B, we need to have people.
53:12
We have some plans going on this year with that open the
53:15
announcing sponsors of that. If we're going to do it, it's
53:18
going to be successful. We're going to have people there
53:20
or we won't do it. We do need to have the public
53:22
engaged though, to your point, and we need them to be visible
53:26
with the teams. And that, that's why you have
53:29
People's Choice is always great. Having companies with smokers
53:33
there and rubs so the public can come over and ask questions of
53:36
people who have a lineage in this.
53:38
That'd be great to have a Donnie Teal they're talking about.
53:41
Here's what I did or something like that.
53:43
Those are the types of things. But we got to get the people
53:45
there. So there's a little work to do.
53:46
I'm gonna ask you a fun question and then play a quick.
53:48
Game with you and get you out of here all right if you had to
53:51
create a dream team, the cooker competition is you and three
53:55
other people which and you can pick anybody dead or alive.
54:00
Which people are you picking and which meat are each of you
54:03
cooking? Wow.
54:07
I should have known this. I glitched before so I get to
54:11
pick three people, one for each meat.
54:13
There's four. Categories though.
54:16
You and three other people. I'm off to the.
54:19
Dream team. I'm not on it.
54:22
Oh wow, So it's going to sound Homer immediately.
54:26
I think Darren, I think Jordan, I think Bill from Triple H and
54:32
Albie. So I've got 4 right in my brain,
54:34
but you just told me I got to do 3, so probably.
54:38
Go, Jordan. Bill and Albie, OK, And we'll
54:42
meet each of them, OK. Darren, Go, Darren.
54:45
Or drew from Razor X up those two in kind of thing.
54:49
All right, and who cooking which?
54:50
Me, Paul and linen. I put Paul in if one of those.
54:53
Failed. I put Paul and linen.
54:55
Does that count as two if I? Said Paul and Lynn.
54:58
They're A-Team, maybe. I should have gone for those
55:01
that have too. So I get Sherry and Darren.
55:02
So we gotta rethink. That would be my first.
55:07
All right. And which?
55:07
Meat. Each of them going to cook who?
55:11
Yeah, that's see that's the problem it's going to be.
55:13
Exactly what's left for me, right?
55:15
Because. Jordan's going to do brisket,
55:19
no, no doubt about it. Of course, I get Teen Wolf with
55:21
that as well, so that's cool. I get Ally for the box, so we're
55:25
good there. Chicken is going to go to
55:29
probably Bill and ribs. Ribs, Albie.
55:36
And I'll end. Because he's a rib champ from.
55:37
Last year, so I'd end up with pork.
55:40
The problem is everyone can cook pork.
55:43
My strength. Is their strength that's the
55:45
worst? Part about it.
55:46
So I put Jordan there because that's my weak spot.
55:49
Consists in a brisket, but that's what I would do.
55:51
It sounds good. Sounds good, yeah.
55:53
I try to do that to see people have to pick people that strong
55:57
in each area because it's not like a Mount Rushmore, but it's
56:01
individual meat, so they had to be good and then meat.
56:04
All right, I came up with a game.
56:06
The college basketball has a bracket tournament, so I came up
56:08
with a bracket tournament of 16 meats that you cook on the grill
56:12
and just tell me which one you prefer to eat out of each
56:14
matchup and you'll see which one in the winter.
56:17
All right, matchup 1 is hot dog versus smoked baloney.
56:21
Smoked baloney. All right, next matchup smoked.
56:24
Ham versus hamburger. Hamburger, All right, Next
56:30
matchup, Beef ribs versus lamb. Beef ribs.
56:35
That's a shutout smoked. Turkey versus steak.
56:40
Steak. That's a.
56:42
That's overtime game. Brisket.
56:45
Versus pork ribs. Damn.
56:49
Brisket, All right. Smoked chicken versus.
56:52
Burnt ends. Burnt ends.
56:56
OK pork chop versus BBQ shrimp Pork chop and a runaway.
57:03
Right sausage versus pork. Belly damn.
57:08
If it's from burnt beans, we're going to go with sausage.
57:11
All right, next round we got Bologna.
57:13
Versus hamburger Bologna. OK.
57:18
And beef ribs. Versus steak, this is like A5
57:22
overtime. Game this can go.
57:23
Beef Brooks. We'll take Chris Marks beef.
57:26
Ribs. All right, Brisket.
57:29
Versus burnt ends, which is yeah, that works.
57:35
I'm gonna go burnt ends OK if they're Joe's from.
57:39
Slaps there, I'm gonna. Qualify that all right and you
57:42
got pork chop versus. Sausage.
57:45
Burnt bean sausage. OK.
57:48
Or if I get it from Cordy. I get.
57:49
That I give that the sausage now good and final. 4 You got
57:54
Bologna versus beef ribs. Oh, now we, now we're.
57:58
Eliminating people. So it's going to be beef ribs,
58:01
all right? Bologna won a few.
58:03
Times it's right Burning's versus sausage.
58:06
We're going to go sausage. All right, final match up, beef
58:11
ribs. Versus sausage.
58:13
I don't know how to choose between the two.
58:16
All right, Beef ribs is your winner.
58:18
All right, Paul, your therapy session is over.
58:20
If you want to promote yourself and get your website and all
58:24
that, you can do that at this time.
58:26
Yeah, no worries. We're smoking ghost.
58:28
Barbecue, it's on the Internet, we're on Facebook at Smoking
58:32
Ghost BBQ. There's only 1G in Smoking
58:35
Ghost, so a lot of times we get trouble because people put
58:38
smoking and ghosts and have two GS.
58:41
But we have a website if people want to find the products.
58:44
We are starting to do more and more classes.
58:46
I just remodeled the whole thing.
58:47
So this is our warehouse and barn.
58:50
It's a bit of mess right now. We got the precinct kitchen.
58:56
We just got the Viking stove put in, so that's pretty cool.
59:00
We just you can see all the back.
59:02
We've got rackages and storage and TV to watch the.
59:05
Packer games Watch the end. Of the Cubs season we built
59:09
there's the janky leg smoker up there see that master belt see
59:13
that leg tilted smoker the. Original 1.
59:17
I never claimed it. So it's all his, But yeah, so
59:20
that's the classroom in that. So we'll be doing some classes.
59:23
So if you're in the area, there aren't going to be competition
59:25
classes. There's enough people doing
59:27
competition classes. I'll help someone.
59:31
And when I do classes, you're going to come in my trailer and
59:33
just watch what I do a lot like what Triple H does.
59:36
That's for me, that's the better way.
59:38
But, but I'm going to do more for the general public, more and
59:41
more. Usually it's going to be
59:43
Sundays, but we work around the Packer games, but and we'll have
59:46
some in December and some in January.
59:48
But other than that, I just we got I'll switch on you a little
59:52
bit case BS. We got the elections coming up.
59:56
We have we'll learn all the candidates here shortly.
59:59
I know some of self-proclaimed they're running, but we'll see
1:00:02
that coming out very shortly. Ask everyone to get online and
1:00:05
research the candidates always love to have people with some
1:00:09
deep background, the marketing or legal or sponsorship,
1:00:14
whatever that type of background because we just, we can never
1:00:17
have enough. And ideas, connections to other
1:00:20
industries. I'll say this out loud because
1:00:22
if I don't ask, I'll never find out.
1:00:24
We've got a couple of things we're working on.
1:00:26
One of them I'm working on is hotel sponsorship, gasoline
1:00:30
company sponsorship. So if anybody is out there that
1:00:34
works at a level where they can connect 15,000 members with a,
1:00:40
like a mobile, a Shell, an Exxon, we can start talking
1:00:43
about maybe gas card or even hotel nights.
1:00:46
Because if you're a judge, if you're a Rep, if you're a cook,
1:00:51
you're going to spend money on gas, you're going to spend money
1:00:53
in a hotel increasing that membership value.
1:00:56
That's critical. And oh, by the way, you don't
1:00:57
have to be on the board to have good ideas.
1:00:59
In fact, it's probably better if you're not on the board because
1:01:04
we can listen. To them, yeah.
1:01:05
No, I make a pitch for. That more so than my products
1:01:08
right now because we've got a lot of things we could do.
1:01:11
So those are things I'd like to see get done, definitely and
1:01:14
like they say. If you're going to complain,
1:01:17
come with a solution or half a solution.
1:01:19
Don't just complain just to complain.
1:01:21
Have a If you have a solution, offer that also.
1:01:24
Anybody can complain, but if you're not doing nothing is a
1:01:29
waste of time and also. Do you?
1:01:30
Like you said, do your research. Don't pick the popular name.
1:01:34
Do your research and see what background each person has and
1:01:37
what they can offer. And just because oh, this is I'm
1:01:41
a vote for him. No, do your research because
1:01:44
some people are specialized in certain areas and combined
1:01:48
together. Y'all make a complete team.
1:01:50
So I'm going to amend my my. My 3 cooks, if we're doing any
1:01:59
ancillaries, I'm going to get Brad because then I get Jocelyn
1:02:03
to Brad Cochran. We're going to do like a.
1:02:05
Dessert or something like that. Right, if I can't get.
1:02:09
Them I want DB over there to. Do the dessert category if you
1:02:13
didn't say dessert. You said three, we turn in.
1:02:15
Dessert. So hey, that's fine, I need.
1:02:18
To extend it then, I definitely appreciate you coming on and
1:02:21
sharing your knowledge and your story because you gave a lot of
1:02:24
good information for people that want to get into this field as
1:02:28
far as rubs and seasonings and sauces and all that and
1:02:32
competition in general. So I definitely appreciate you.
1:02:36
Let's have a grow the sport, man.
1:02:38
All right, I look forward to meeting you at the.
1:02:40
Roar. All right, you enjoy your day.
1:02:42
All right, All right, Thank you. We just wrapped up another
1:02:46
session of BBQ therapy. Remember, stay patient, stay
1:02:50
passionate and keep that fire burning.
1:02:52
Hit subscribe, share the good smoke and pay the secretary on
1:02:56
your way out. Have a blessed day.