Barn Talk - He Quit Corporate. Now He Runs One of America's Best BBQ Joints

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the world of barbecue, entrepreneurship, and rural revival with special guests Garren and Kelly Kirkman of John G’s Barbecue in Peachland, North Carolina. Hosts Sawyer and Tork sit down with the Kirkmans to uncover their incredible journey from humble beginnings in cattle farming and hospital work, through the all-night pop-ups and food truck hustle, to national recognition as one of the best barbecue joints in the country. You’ll hear what it takes to master brisket, the power of community-driven business, and how to build resilience through every setback, including the pandemic. Along the way, we explore what it means to be a cornerstone business in rural America, how to elevate food quality above the industry norm, and why the American Dream is still alive and well, especially when there’s a little smoke in the air. So grab a plate, settle in, and let’s head to the barn for stories of hard work, delicious barbecue, and the faith it takes to make good things happen. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow  ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS    ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4    ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer’s X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler  ● Tork’s X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler  00:00 The show's audience support 10:52 Getting recognized by Texas Monthly 15:38 Iowa Corn Checkoff benefits 16:47 4th of July childhood memories 24:25 Grandma's brisket cooking attempt 31:28 Online debates and personal approach 37:06 Starting with a pop-up stand 42:08 Getting a food truck in 2018 48:26 Setting up the kitchen and food truck 49:46 Opening challenges with restaurant traffic 59:25 Offering à la carte barbecue 01:04:33 Managing Tuesday Invoice Orders 01:09:49 Pricing early catering jobs 01:14:41 Challenges for young cattle ranchers 01:16:17 Unexpected celebrity encounters 01:26:22 Supporting rural small town growth 01:28:19 Staying local in Peachland 01:36:17 Brisket cooking technique discussion 01:40:02 Building a consistent brand 01:45:31 Restaurant kitchen hood issues 01:49:50 Thanking Garren and Kelly ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. #EP211  #iowacorn #landus #gateway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This Thursday, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility.

Talk to Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand-new day in theaters Thursday. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from. plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in names. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today.

We're going to let it all out for you, guys. Today is going to be a good one. Got a great guest coming all the way from North Carolina to have an amazing conversation with us. Pump for this one. This guy, he's got a skill that I think a lot of people enjoy me in particular. We'll get into the details of that very, very soon. But before we do, you guys know the drill.

If you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more of this show grows. And it's just the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. We found the best way to grow a podcast is through you guys. Organic and word of mouth. We do not run ads to promote the show. We don't pay anybody to tell people about Barn Talk.

It's all been because of you guys. And we just really do appreciate the hell out of all of you that do do that. you do not understand how much it means to us. So thank you. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. All those reviews pile up and give us a lot of credibility to land some of the guests that we are able to talk to in this barn. So thank you to everybody that does that because it really does mean a lot. Last thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is you can go sign up for our weekly newsletter. It's join barn talk.com. That's the domain that you. You can type into your search bar, join barn talk.com. We're putting out a weekly newsletter all about what's happening in agriculture, but more so rural America. Everything going on and I's thoughts on it. So check that out.

If we reach 10,000 newsletter subscribers on that list, we're going to throw a live event right here at the farm in the barn. Have a good old time with all of you, meet you, and it'll be a good time if we can get there when we get there. We'll get there. Something else. We're traveling around a little bit this summer, speaking a few places. We were actually earlier this week.

We were in Lake Okeboji. We spoke to a group at Christensen Farms, and that was excellent. It is, as much as we love shooting this podcast, it is great when you can get out and talk to people. And we really enjoy that. There was, I don't know, three or 400 people there. It was great. we are going to be in Kearney, Nebraska, November 18th. We're going to be there for the entirety of the show.

It is the, correct me? What is the Gateway Farm Expo? So we're going to be at the Gateway Farm Expo for the entirety of that show, but we're going to be there the 18th, and we're going to be speaking there. And so if you'd like to hear us, if you're close by, if you're going to that, stop and say hi to us. we'll be floating around. And then we're also going to be out in Indiana this summer too.

But Gateway is going to be coming up in November, and we'd love to see you there and stop and say hi. Yeah. Now what? I'm looking forward to that. I won't lie, though. It's a little bit different than just talking to you on a week-to-week basis. I love seeing all you guys and meeting you,

but sometimes your butthole gets puckered a little bit when you get on stage. It's a lot of people. We're not used, we're not, we don't claim to be public speakers, but we're trying to work on that. So it's getting, it's getting better. And feedback's been great. So we love doing it. Yeah. It is different when you sit in front of a live crowd. And, you know, some of the things that I think are really funny aren't, aren't always funny. And then sometimes people just look at me and laugh. So you never know what's going to work. You're a ball after just the way you are. You get that. Yeah. You get that emotion out of people. Yep. Whether it's whatever comes out of your mouth or just looking at you.

You're going to make people emotional. You do. You do. What are we going to do today? Well, today our guest is, this is right up our alley. So he grew up in Statesville, North Carolina. He showed cattle. His dad raised cattle. He was in the medical field for a long time.

That's where he met his wife. And then in 2009, he smoked his first brisket that he got from Walmart, ruined it. and still got obsessed with barbecue anyway. He spent years, him and his wife have spent years of all-nighters in full work weeks doing pop-ups in Charlotte, had a food truck, and then in 2019, they decided to open up their own restaurant. And today, Texas Monthly has them among the best Texas barbecue joints in the country. Eat or named them restaurant of the year, and people drove from all over the United States and world to stand in line that starts at nine in the morning. So they know how to do barbecue right.

They've been through the ringer trying to build this business from the ground up. And he is one of the best barbecures in the entire world, arguably. So it is an absolute pleasure or ready for those ones. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Well, we're live, boys and girls. So Garen and Kelly Kirkman, welcome to Barn Talk. And wait, let me fix your mics quick. Okay.

like is this right? I don't know. Okay. Okay. Bozer. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. Okay. You're good. Check one, two. Hello, hello, hello. Hello. Happy to be here. Thanks for having us. Well, if we can stay, if we can, if we can make it through this without anything else going hayrope, haywire, one, we're all feeling fat and sassy.

Because I think I just had probably one of the best. meals I've had in a long time. I'd argue my life. The white brisket. We're going to jump ahead here, but for those that don't know, what is white brisket? It's actually a pork belly,

uncured, straight up, cooked just like we do brisket back at the restaurant. So we take a whole pork belly, we quarter it, four pieces, season it, throw it on the pit. And when it feels, just like what it doesn't brisket feels, we pull it off and slice it.

just like a brisket? It, uh, I think the nearest way I can explain it is, well, it's like heroin. Not that I know anything about heroin, but I feel like it's kind of the same effect as what heroin would be. Because I took a bite of it and I was like, you wanted another bite. I wanted another bite. And another bite. I did until my plate was, I, I got to say, though, I was a quitter. I couldn't get through everything. Uh, we had brisket. We had white brisket. We had two different kinds of your homemade sausage

and then all of the fixing that Trisha made and your wife. Yes. Your mother. My wife. The woman that keeps it all straight for us, she made coleslaw, baked beans, and

cheesy corn casserole. Yep. We had tried y'all's product before sitting down shooting this podcast today. So we are We wanted to make sure you were legit. Yeah. We had to vet you before you came on the show.

You know what I mean? I like that. Yeah. Really, really size you up. I just want to say my mind was blown by the cheesy corn casserole. Well, good. I mean, I guess I should expect that being here in Iowa, but, man, incredible. Good.

I might steal that. You ask for a recipe. Mom will give it to you. We told her if she sees it on the gram. She'll know. We'll give her a shout out of inspiration. There. There we go. I like it.

And I did make a gin bucket. So, sorry, this isn't bourbon. This is a local, for those of you that don't know, this is a local drink. There is a little restaurant not very far from us called the Shamrock. And they used to make a gin bucket, and they served it in a tin peach can. And this is a recipe from John. And the secret is cheap gin. You want to use the cheapest gin you can get.

Very good, I might add. Perfect night cap. Yeah, so today's been one of those days where I think God tries to humble you because y'all have had some water problems back home with your restaurant and some other things. Today, we've had some water problems. Well, well went. My pressure tank was waterlogged. I didn't realize it.

We got a new well shed because our old well shed blew away in the storm. I got the new one, got it delivered. Realized that my measurements were off the floor of the new well shed was higher than the old one. I couldn't make everything line up. And then in the process, I realized my pressure tank was waterlogged. And we didn't have water. We didn't have water. And we needed water to cook this beautiful meal that we had before we came over.

You pre-cooked. You smoked everything. Smoked it all right there in Peachtland. So we had to suave it, right? So you got to have water to do that. Yep. so we finally got the water back on at quarter to three quarter to three had the meal I went home real quick and my house was flooding while I was over at my house so I shut my water off came over

here now we're recording we'll deal with that later but so thank you for letting us share all of our problems with you it's about to get way better for yes it is and that barbecue was unbelievable unfriken believable you guys are the real deal best brisket I've ever had in my life and that white brisket was next time. I mean, I've never had something so good. It means world to us. Happy to share that with you. Yeah, thank you so much.

So let's get the 50,000 foot view of your guys's journey here. So you guys, let's start with where you are today and who you are. And then we'll go back to how you got to where you are today. Yeah. So my name is John Garon Kirkman. We own John G's barbecue in Peachland, North Carolina. I'm Kelly Kirkman. I'm Garen's wife and also own John Gis Barbecue.

Guys are a dynamic duo. It takes both of us 100%. And you guys have been recognized as one of the best barbecue joints in the country. Yeah, we've had a few accolades here and there. Brag on yourself a little bit. That's hard to do, man. But, now, one of the ones that meant the most was Texas Monthly called us top 10 in the rest of the country outside of Texas. The fact that we cook a lot of brisket automatically just puts us in the Texas barbecue bucket.

And, man, just a huge recognition shout out from that one. So, yeah, that one meant the world. But, yeah, we appear on the list every once in a while. It's a good thing to be on those lists. Yeah. Appreciate. anybody that's ever felt we've uh are deemed that good of uh brisket or barbecue in general so yeah yeah and you guys you mean you guys are selling out you guys serve one day a week outside of your catering or

your your pop-ups right yeah yeah we're uh we do a barbecue saturday in peachland but um we do a large catering operation as well and then we do pop-ups in charlotte uh usually on wednesdays in you know the charlotte area yeah so but you're selling out i mean most of the time most saturdays you're selling out. You got lines out the door. People tailgating. I mean, what, how? It hasn't always been that way. But man, I mean, sometimes there's people out there, 5 a.m. 6 a.m. We've had a few spend the night overnight. We open at 11. So, I mean, it's a pretty big commitment from those people that do that. I mean, it's humbling to say the least. And you've had people from all the world, all over the world, right? China. I mean, you manufacturers from China like we were talking about this morning.

I mean, literally like, how did you find about, I find out about this? And he's like, On Instagram. I mean, it's just like, how does that even happen? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you got my vote. Depending on the regulations in your state, heck, I'd vote twice. Yeah.

I'd vote twice too. Like I said, if you guys are in North Carolina ever, I mean, it is literally, we don't have a great barbecue in Iowa. I've never been to Texas to have tech. Well, I've been to Texas, but I haven't had Texas barbecue. But I've had your barbecue. and I can honestly say it's the best barbecue I've ever had. Plenty of pigs.

Not blowing smoke up your buddy either. There is plenty. There is an awful lot of good private barbecue in Iowa. It's just most of your regular barbecue is pretty much mass. Yeah, it's fast, it's fast, convenient barbecue. It's not anything like what you guys are doing. What you're doing is, I would say, and I said this earlier, you know, it's an art form, really. I mean, it's a craft.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, it blows my mind. North Carolina has become this hog-centric barbecue state because of our population. But, you know, come out of Iowa and I'll just get tons of pigs. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we need to start a barbecue in Iowa. I think you're on to something there. Torx, pork.

How about that? Torx, greasy fork. Barbecue Emporium. We'll work on that. We'll work on that. We'll get after it. Well, before we get into, like, the story, because I just wanted to give people context of where you guys are now, how, you know, how. how great y'all are. I mean, you guys are great. Even if you won't say you are, we think you are

and a lot of people do. Let's go back to, you know, growing up as a kid. You know, you have been in the cattle business. Your family's been farming. Talk about, talk about the farm life. Talk about growing up and what cattle and farming means to you. Yeah, farming was definitely a staple of my childhood. My grandfather, you know, came back more to started farm. At one point, they had, I think, around 175 head, a few hundred acres of Herford cattle. My dad, you know, jumped right in the cattle as well. My grandfather worked for ABS for 60 years. I mean, right up in the point he passed away at 93 almost.

I mean, it's wild that kind of impact in the livestock. He's in the livestock or Agriculture Hall of Fame of North Carolina. We got to see him inducted in that in 2016, I think it was. So, huge accomplishment for all that. But yeah, my dad, you know, we grew up going to farms all around North Carolina. Much of my childhood was spent right around a truck pulling liquid nitrogen and going to fill up seamen tanks. Yep. That are holding a cup of warm water to get ready for some AIA.

Yeah. You know, things. You didn't need much help learning about the birds and the bees, did you? Man. You had to figure out. Started early on that one for sure. I mean, I wouldn't trade it for nothing, man. It gave me a whole new appreciation for hard work

and all that goes into what, you know, people are eating at our restaurant. I mean, it don't just happen, you know, by chance. I mean, there's a lot of hard work that leads up to that. And then a long night, of course, before the actual meal as well. So it's just time, man. Hey, thanks for sticking with us.

All right. So I want to talk about something that I think is genuinely underappreciated. The Iowa corn checkoff. It's one cent per bushel. that's it one cent and that money goes to work for you in research market development and education it's not going into something black hole it's funding the work that builds demand for your corn all around the world the checkoff was established by farmers by a grower referendum back in 1977 specifically to benefit farmers and it's still doing exactly that it funds the research to develop new value added products from corn

it builds markets and countries that want our ethanol and our feed products and it educates consumers on decision makers about what we actually do out there when you think about it like an investment, which it is, the return on that one cent is pretty darn good. To see where your checkoff dollars are going and what they're doing on your farm, head to Iowa corn.org. Now let's get back to it. Still beat small square bailing though. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Oh, man. One of the hardest days of my life July the 4th, you know, popping the F-150 and four-wheel low and chasing it through a field trying to get the square bells on it, you know. I mean, probably the closest time I've ever come to pass now. I mean,

Yeah, you know, people love Fourth of July, and, you know, we used to, when the kids were younger, us or one of our friends, we would always have a Fourth of July party. But I don't think I ever, I don't, I think only recently I've really gotten to the point that I enjoy that holiday as much as a lot of people do. And it's because as a child, I think almost, it felt like almost every Fourth of July. weekend was when my dad would be like, you know, I think that hay will go. I'm going to mow that. I'm going to mow that. And we would end up bailing hay. And it was a hottest day of the summer, Fourth of July weekend. And so I always looked at that holiday different than a lot of people did. Because I'm like, well, I'm probably going to be bailing hay that day. After that one, for sure. It hit different for sure.

Fireworks, though, did you ever, you got to see the fireworks? But just did you see him in the field? Oh, no. As a kid, we didn't go to, we didn't go to fireworks. But did you see him while you in the field working? No, because it wouldn't be at night. And you got to remember like when you're kids, they didn't have fireworks at like in Washington. Like maybe they did. I don't

think that they did. Maybe probably in Iowa City or Cedar Appas but the best we could hope for was between all my friends, we'd pool our money and give it to one of our oldest brothers that would go to Missouri because fireworks were illegal in Iowa

when I was a kid. And so you'd funnel all your money to whichever older brother could drive to go to Missouri. And you didn't care about fireworks. You wanted an M80s. That was the prize thing, M80s, because you would get like a bag of 25 M80s, and then you'd pop the wax cap out of them,

and you'd dump like 10 M80s into one. And then you'd go put it underneath like an old hog feeder or something and see how far you could launch that. you just gave every kid listening a horrible life. You can't even get them anymore. You can't get M80s anymore? I don't think so. We got Tanner right now.

You know, Tanner Wright's the same thing. I mean, when I was, the hard way. So I was with my, I was with two of my friends that we used to do that. And the one time that really went awry was, I don't remember how many,

on average, we would dump together, but maybe it was like five. Maybe it wasn't like 10. But this one time, we were doing that, and we'd like to take M80s and you'd drop it into a post hole driver, and then you'd shove a tennis ball, and then it would launch that tennis ball. You see how far you could shoot it. But we did all that, and then we had a bunch left. And so we said, let's just, let's just dump.

Let's put everything we got left. We're just going to put it into one, see what we can make. And so we did. And we had that thing clear full, and we took it out. and I can't remember what we put it under in his out at the edge of his driveway. And we lit that and we ran back into the shop. And his parents were gone, his brother was gone. And they had a big Morton machine shed with a shop in it.

And we're in the shop, lit it. And we look out the, you know, the oval windows and a roll-up insulated door. We're peeking out there. And that thing went off. And it was so bright and so loud. we hit the ground. Like we were like, oh, we knew that we had done something bad. They had a pole light by the sidewalk to their house.

It blew all the glass out of the pole light. And then it shattered all of those little windows in that shop and threw rock and just pitted the door. And we were probably 14, so we had our three-wheelers. And I'll never forget, poor Matt, The smoke clears, you know, and we look, and we're like, oh, man, this is not good. And Gary and I looked to each other and we're like, we do not want to be here when your parents get home. We're like, well, Matt, uh, see you later.

Anyway, for like the next three weeks when you'd call Matt, hey, is Matt around? No, he's working in the garden. He was pretty much done for the rest of the summer after that. So, sorry, I digress. that was my 4th of July story. That's a good one. You just gave a whole lot of terrible ideas. Well, heck, that's good. That's just good childhood right there. Hey, we learn something. You don't do that. Five's the limit. You don't put 10 or 12 into one. That's right. That's right. Kids take that for what it's worth. You grew up cattle, raising cattle, but you decide that wasn't, that wasn't the path for you.

Yeah, I think a lot of the hard work kind of drove me away from farming at that point. So I got into healthcare. Like it was just like, here's this job that could provide and be steady and all the things. And honestly, it wasn't. I mean, it just had all ups and downs of everything. You know, healthcare model changed. It was very productivity driven. If you had this many patients, you can only work this many hours.

Like, it wasn't just that steady 40-hour work week that I thought I was going into. do. So I started that in 2007. I actually had my first bite of brisket in 2009. I'm all over the place here. But, you know, barbecue for me growing up in North Carolina was pork and chicken at a fire department for usually a fundraiser. Or it was a family or union, pohawk pig picking, which was great. But the first bite of brisket growing up with beef cattle, you know, was just, just mind blowing.

Like, I thought all beef was supposed to be medium rare. And here's this piece of meat that's been way past medium rare to kind of break down

all this good fat and stuff. And it was just to change my life as what I looked at as barbecue. I still love North Carolina barbecue. I'm not knocking it.

But ultimately, like I was like, man, how can I fix this? Like, it's not something readily available in North Carolina. So it's doing this whole motion

of like, man, go buy a smoker and try to do this myself. The hook was set. Man, full on. You say this was 2009. That was 2009 when I tried Biscuit. Yeah.

It was 2011. Is when you. It was when I was like, I got to go try this. When did you meet Kelly? When did you guys meet? We worked together at the hospital. I started in 2008 and then we started dating in 2009. That was probably one of our first dates, honestly, at that restaurant where you had

brisket. It was. Kelly was there for it. Yeah. Did you, had you had brisket before? in your life? No, and I don't think I tried it there either. Yeah.

She's stuck with a safe bet. She got the chicken. She got the barbecue chicken. We got to remember, like, this was before YouTube or barbecue culture or any of this where we are today. I mean, barbecues everywhere. Like, Texas barbecue especially. Like, it was just.

There was no YouTube. There was nobody talking about brisket. Trying to tell, like, how to do this. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, trying to go viral showing. tip and trick possible, these restaurants learn the hard way. Right. They're just all divulging the information of how to do it.

Yeah. Well, and back up. So you, like within your family, you said that, was it your dad or your grandpa talked about that they had made brisket? Yeah. Yeah. The story is, and it wasn't good. Yeah, my grandma, you know, tried to cook brisket one time and it wasn't smoked.

Right. It was just in the oven. But, you know, in a family of medium rare, you know, the whole, if a vet can't get back on its feet in five minutes, you know. It was tough. You know, it was undesirable. And every animal processed after that went to hamburger as far as a brisket goes. So, yeah, it was definitely not in my family by any means.

You know, no second generation pit master. I could have been a third generation farmer, but I chose to cook this stuff instead. But you had it in 2009 and it just, it stuck. with you that I want to learn how to cook this. Yep. And so then in 2011 is when you're like, all right. Went to Lowe's. I bought an offset smoker, a char griller, and I went to Walmart and I knew I was going

to ruin this piece of meat. So I found one. It was in the cryo, so it was wet aging technically, but it was out of date. It was after the sale by date. So I approached the guy and I'm like, I get this thing marked down a little bit. Like, I know I'm going to ruin it. So against his will, hopefully I don't get the guy fired if he's still working for Walmart. He did it.

And, you know, at that point, it was still like 45 bucks. Yeah. You know, it wasn't cheap. Cut of meat. But I took that thing home, you know, those forums at that point, no YouTube, but, you know. Barbecue.com. Like, what was like the most popular? Barbecue brethren or barbecue something.com.

Yeah. But I open up the kitchen sink and poured every season I knew on it. scored the fat cap, which probably the only one I ever did that with, but didn't trim anything off. It's like I paid a lot of money for this thing. I'm not going to take anything off. So I got up early next morning, you know, five, six o'clock in the morning, put it on the pit, and I cooked it with charcoal and red chunks, red oak chunks, not red oak, sorry. Cherry. Cherry. Yeah. Cherry chunks of wood. and I didn't look at thermometer or nothing. Like, I was just like, if the smoker quit smoking,

I'm going to add something to make it smoke more. So it might have been involved, like, just dumping the chunks in water. Did I just kill the fire down? Yeah. I sat out there all day. Just said, hey, this thing's done. Like, it's time to eat.

You know, picked it up, took it on a plate and started cutting it. You know, now we rest it and do all those other things with it. You know, Kelly's famo was there. We ate in the garage. We thought it was the coolest thing ever. You know, it was probably terrible as ever. In hindsight. Man, something about it.

It was just like, awesome. Like, I did it. You know, it was this challenge. Like, how it'll make it better? Yeah. Kelly, what was your like first? Like, when he got this and took it by the horns, were you like go for it?

And then you had that piece of brisket. Or did you think it was good at that time? Or what did you think of this whole thing? I mean, I guess at the, At that time, in 2011, I was like, I mean, it's good. You know, I mean, not a huge meat eater, honestly. Like, it wasn't my forte. Like, it wasn't something I would have picked.

But if there's one thing about Garron, when he gets his mind on something, he's going to go for it 110%. There's no halfway. So I will say he has a date. He has a reminder on our calendar every year. And it says first brisket cooked. And every year, the alarm goes off to remind us this was the day he cooked his first brisket.

Yep. And he looks back at the picture, and I'm like, it looks like a meteorite. Like, it was, it was not good. I was putting it nicely. Yeah. The slices didn't even look like brisket. I don't know. But we ate it and we were happy.

We ate it. We were happy. And that was like a starting point for John G's. I mean, way before John G's happened. Yeah. Where does John G. G. The name.

Yeah. So my name is John Gern Kirkman. My other grandfather, my mom's dad, was a barber. And he had a little barbershop, single chair barbershop in North Aardale, right beside North Aardale Grocery. I would walk in the shop and he would say, hey, John G. You know, I can hear it in my head. I can never say it like he did, but it just stuck with me. So in 2015, I made an Instagram account to kind of document my backyard cooking adventures.

Yep. And I was like, well, what do I name this thing that means something to me versus just some generic name? And just came up with the John G's barbecue. Yeah, heck yeah. That's awesome. So you had to progress this thing. You obviously progress this thing. So how long did it take before you really started to say, I'm making this in my backyard. Now I want to try, like, selling this to people. Like how did that all happen? What made you go there? That's how I mean, you cook a brisk. That's a big chunk of meat. Like you're going to have at least four pounds of meat. Like you can't eat that in one. sitting. So it's like, okay, bring some friends over and feed them with it. So kind of what we did. We made all the sides, asked for comments and suggestions of how it was. And you guys had a suggestion box. Yeah, I think it was natural. And I don't even know why. Like, I don't even think we

were like, we're going to start this as a business. But it was just kind of like, it was, you were passionate about so you wanted to get better. So you were like, what do you think of this? Yeah. So before we get to. far as you were doing this obviously when you started you didn't really know what the heck you were doing but you were on a lot of forums and then also you said like your first one you just you just opened the spice rack and said yep all right throw it on there tarragon oh yeah i'll throw some of that on there too you know whatever about so did you did you work on your on your rub to your seasoning what you were doing? Like, did you just keep experimenting until you found? Like, did you know what you

were looking for? Or did you just feel like every time you're like, that's not quite it? Am I growing up like what's always, you know, all about the sauce? Like, that was kind of a steadily thing. Like, I'd never thought about it. And the others, like, let's just make it simple and actually taste what we're going after here. And that was kind of the aha moment, I think, if anything, was just like kind of going back down to that salt pepper, you know, like, let's just start right here and see what I'm actually doing, what the smoke tastes like? What kind of aspect is that adding to the meat? Yeah.

Versus, you know, paprika and cumin and everything else else I was putting on there. So, yeah. So each time you would make a brisket, did you just like try something new? Or did those forms really start to help you? Did you keep going back to him? Or do you just, like, how did you figure out the change? He said, these guys are idiots. I'm doing this myself.

Oh, yeah, there were some strong opinions on there. So it was, I never commented. never made like a handle like it was just not me together and argue about like what's the right thing to do and i still like you know if you like it it's all you you know like here's what i do but do whatever you want but um yeah it was just at that point i think i once i dumbed it down like the the base of it all that was whenever i was like let's try to figure out when it's the correct done this is you know like still to this day like that's the most crucial point of cooking barbecue you is knowing when it's done. I mean, you can, you can do a lot of right stuff, but if you pull that

brisket too soon, it's going to be tough. If you overcook it, it's going to fall apart. Like, knowing that window of when this brisket's done is the most crucial part. That's, that's another aha moment of cooking barbecue. So, okay, suggestion box, suggestions are coming in. You guys are cooking for friends, getting good feedback. When do you take the jump? When do you guys take the jump to do the first pop-up. When are you sitting around and going, you know, we both got these good, we got these good, steady jobs working in health care. Let's just, let's throw caution in the wind.

We're going to throw our friends into the bus on this one. Nobody probably critiqued us too hard. Yeah, I mean, they're our friends, you know. I mean. Probably gave us a little false hope here, but, you know. But we were like, maybe we can do this. Yeah. Or maybe Garen can do it.

Let me be clear, because I'm not a cook. Anything, like all the sides he's done, all the meats, he's figured out, like, he taught me how to do the sides, the sauces, the onions, all that stuff. So early on, I could train our friends. It was really just our friends early on. All the credit goes to Garen for the food. All right, let's move on. But from 2011 to 2015, I would say, like, he just kept trying.

He kept trying. He kept trying. And why did we even buy those prime brisketes at Frontier Meats? I don't know. I mean, yeah, at one point I was like, I want to make a better brisket. So I was contact a local butcher shop and I was like, hey, you can give me prime brisket. You know, just thought that would be the automatic, like more fat, more flavor, you know, regardless of anything else. And they ordered a case, special order for me.

I went to pick them up and I'm digging through to pick out the one I won. And they're like, oh, that's a special order. You bought the whole case. Like, that's for you. And I was just like, oh, my gosh. you know, I mean, like still four or five hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I was like, no, he called me and told me and I was like, no. Like, you're going to have to tell them that we cannot afford an entire case of brisket. Yeah. Like, also, what are we going to do with it? Like, no. Yeah. We do not have. I think that's the other thing about, that's the other thing about brisket as to why it's kind of,

I don't know if you want to say niche, but you think about. that. It's such an expensive cut of meat to learn how to do. Like you can go, I can walk in a fairway and buy a pork butt's going to cost me $27. And, you know, I can cook one of them every weekend until I get it just the way I want it. And you don't feel so bad. You go throw down 80 bucks on a brisket and you screw it up. One, you're going to beat yourself up. And two, if you're not the one in your family that does the budget, somebody else is going to beat you up and be like, what in the heck were you thinking? Yeah, we ate lots of tacos early on.

It was like, that was my like, okay, let's salvage this thing and not just throw the money down the drain. We'd just chop it up and make tacos out of it. If you ever mess up a brisket. Did those prime brisketes turn out? Did you like them? Were they? I don't remember. I think what happened was with the extra fat,

underestimated how long I should, how far I should take it. So it was just like super unrendered. Like all the fat just wouldn't control. invert. Oh, gotcha. I'm like, oh, man, back at the drawing board again. Yeah. I mean, you're committing so much time into that that you get to the end and then

you're trying to figure out where it went wrong. Yeah. Yeah. You got to definitely cook a lot or find a good YouTube video that divulge everything. And I've always said, like, you watch a YouTube video and they're showing you everything, but until you actually get your hands on it is when it like will start making sense. And like you just build that repetition and just do it over and over. over and over. And then it's like, okay, this, this is making sense now and you can do it

blind-velded almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Every animal's different too. So, yep. There's one every once in a while. We're just like, oh, let's a taco brisket. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you do, you guys do it. So when, when, is 2016 when you guys first try it out? Like you're going to sell barbecue for the first time. Yeah. 2016 was when we approached, there was a new place in town. called Southern Range Brewing a Monroe, North Carolina. They weren't brewing their own beer yet, but they were selling all North Carolina beers. And they didn't have food.

I mean, with alcohol, usually food to kind of beer and everything, barbecue usually goes synonymous as well. So I approached the owners and it's like, man, I've been cooking barbecue for a while now. Can we try to set it up? And there was a loophole back then that's since then gone away, all legal. but it was a private club. So people would show up, sign a card, give a dollar, and they would be a member.

And the health department couldn't say anything. Right. It was totally legal. We saw that loophole to kind of get out without, you know, going knee deep into this business, possible business. We didn't even try to do a business that point. But like, we just wanted to feed people. Like we had saw the reactions from our friends.

You know, they just take a bite. You just, man, it just like hits, you know. Like we just got addicted to seeing that. So we did a little pop-up. And man, when I say like a business from the ground up, it was a 10-by-10 easy-up pop-up and a 500-gallon smoker that reluctantly built, biggest buyers or more purchase ever coming home.

But, yeah, we pulled that thing to the parking lot and just tried to serve like two or three brisketes and probably took one home. Okay. Yeah. It definitely wasn't an instant success by any means. Right. Yeah. So how long, do you got anything you want to start?

No, I was going to say it was not an instant success. Like we spent Benny Nights waiting on a customer, waiting on a customer. Are we going to sell this food? Oh my gosh, we just spent X amount of hundreds of dollars. We have to pay this, like we've paid for this smoker, you know, which at the time seemed like, felt like a lot of money. Yep. And also in the middle of this, 2013, we got married. 2015 we started trying to have a child.

We were going through, it wasn't that simple, started going through infertility treatment. So like there was so much going on like outside of barbecue that people didn't see. Yeah. And so, you know, it's easy to say now they're so successful, but it wasn't like that. You know, back in 2016 when we were just trying to sell food to 25 people, you know. Yeah. So how long were you guys at the at the brewery? Like how long did that stage of the business, if you could even call it, if you guys even call it at a business at that point, how long were you there doing that? So we weren't there every Saturday. It was just like basically like, when do we have enough time to do this?

You know, but it was as often as we could at the same time. But we did that for roughly two years. Okay. On and off. And you guys are still working, right? You still have your jobs and health care. Working Monday through Friday, sometimes taking a call, like going home Friday, trimming out briscus staying up all night, cooking it and trying to serve it on Saturday and we clean up on Sunday and go back to work on Monday.

Yeah. And like looking back and like, how did we have enough energy to do that? Yeah. Just give me a fraction of that energy back. Yep. Yeah. But somehow we did it. And like I said.

And got better. at it. Looking back, questionable, but that's always the goal. Like, I always want to get better. Like, that's 5% better this week. Like, let's keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, the, uh, private club thing kind of came to an end. And, uh, they want to do pizza through the week because we weren't there. We were only the occasional Saturdays at that point. So, uh, at that point, since they were permitted, we had to get permitted. And, um, that was all new territory again. I mean, it's kind of like, oh, figuring out brisket, you know,

what we thought at that point was hard. Like now we got to figure out this. Your sanitation and all your equipment and all the refrigeration. Yes. And at that point, that's when we were like, okay, we need to be a legitimate business. If we're going to do this, like, we have to buckle down and actually, like, figure out how this is supposed to go, you know, like, we're pretty, we're kind of rule followers. So we have to do this the right way.

So that's when we, you know, formed an LLC and business license and all the things, you know. That's when it officially became official. Yeah. So it was that like 2018, 2019? 17 and 18. Yeah. So part of that getting the legal aspect of all that was getting a food trailer. So I sold a motorcycle that I had.

Yeah. Yeah. Sold the motorcycle to go buy the. food trailer and since the food trailer was 24 foot long and 10,000 pounds, I had to get a new truck to. Stuff I don't always think about here. But yeah, we went to that. So we had to then find a commissary kitchen, which is somewhere you could prep legally

to get your water, discard water, store your food, prepare your food, all the things. Like food trucks aren't just like magical things that just can go out and do whatever they want. So we found a commissary, luckily right in our hometown of Marshville. again, like everything is just kind of aligned. I mean, I was just wild how it just laid out like that, even though it was hard. But so, yeah, at that point,

kind of just progressing the next thing. It was like 2016 under a tent, 2018, we bought this food truck. We were way more legitimate than we'd ever been before. I mean, everything we did was always legal. And then I would say like our last few, pop-ups at the brewery were getting way busier. I mean, that's when we started like having a line.

Now, I want to say this, because we both worked at the local hospital on our town, and I also was a dance teacher, so I had, I taught dance at night, we knew a lot of people in our community. And so it was so much support from those people that came out and supported us at these pop-ups once we kind of got the ball rolling, and then they would tell somebody, and then they would tell somebody. And that, you know, within a couple of years, that's what pushed us to buy that food truck. Definitely organic growth.

Yes. We didn't hire a publicity or publicists to come in and kind of say how good this food was. It was very much just friends selling other people. That's the best way. Yeah. I think it's the only way personally. So when do you guys take the full jump and you quit your job and go all in? Like, when does that happen?

So that was around 2019 when I started like winding down. down. Like, I was, I moved into like a management type position at the hospital and I think my body was giving me signs. Like I was skipping beats. Like I was in by Gemini and I would lay down as a test patient just to have them look, you know, sonography and all that kind of stuff. And everything looks good, you know, but it was just like something telling my body like you're not in the right spot kind of the thing. And he was so stressed. Yeah. Did you two quit? the same time? So I left the hospital in 2017 when I had Gil. So I left the hospital. I was still

teaching dance. But I left teaching dance in 2020. So when COVID kind of hit and we were trying to build John G's in 2020 not to jump ahead too much, I was like, okay, I got to, I have to decide what I'm going to do, right? Yeah. So it was around St. Patrick's Day. Whenever I walked out of the hospital for the last time, as a full-time manager. roll all that stuff and man to say that was a big jump leap however we on a phrase that is understatement yeah but uh hilly was awesome she had to decorated my truck with a bunch of balloons and st patrick's day stuff i mean just kind of snapped me out of it when i got in the truck like okay i was like making the right decision here yeah yeah but um yeah so

fast forward just a little bit to 2020s whenever we found the building it's right down the road and I had actually taken a picture of that in 2016, just randomly, when it was another whole barbecue restaurant. So we went through some negotiation in the 2020. We finally had our ending closing day in February of 2020. Whole COVID thing hadn't totally come to light yet. You know, looking back on it, like, oh, no, that started in fall of 2019.

Like, there's all the speculation going on. But it was clear that it was unfolding. right before our eyes whenever I'm in there trying to remodel this place and get it where we needed to be as a kitchen to continue with our catering and commissary and all that kind of thing. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. If you could see crop issues before they cost yield, would you? That's exactly what Sky Scout from Landis does. With advanced in-season aerial imagery and agronomic insight,

Sky Scout helps farmers catch stress earlier and make smarter decisions across every acre. Learn how Sky Scout works for your operation at Landis. Now, let's get back to it. Yeah, so you literally bought a restaurant February of 2020. March 2020 is prime COVID. That's when everybody finds out about it. Just cash in some savings and invest in no business. And most people, yeah, I mean, everybody listening knows the effects of COVID,

especially on, you know, hospitality, set down restaurants. Like, it was brutal. So how did you guys manage to renovate, this restaurant and get it off the ground in arguably the toughest time for hospitality ever, you know, of restaurants ever, you know, in America. Every day pretty much since we had signed, you know, papers for this building buying it. I was in there, you know, might just be cleaning up, tearing down, putting stuff back together. Like, we repurposed a lot of the restaurant.

Like, it was a whole wall. Like, this building's been there a long time. so there had been multiple additions built on. So we would literally take this wall down. I was holding up like LVL headers, like me and a friend's dad that was a general contractor. Yep. We're in there doing all this at that time.

And every day, I just go to the restaurant and work. Every day, all day. And that is not an exaggeration. Not making any money. Like just literally just in there working. I mean, our friend, his dad came out of retirement as a contractor to like, come help us do this. I mean...

Thank you, John Bishop. Yes, thank you, John. Yeah. You know, Darren plays it down, but I was at home with a three-year-old, and he was at the restaurant, and we'd come visit him and eat lunch with him, and, you know, I was like, hey,

we kind of start breaking in some revenue. Well, and then you got to remember, I'm sure, at the same time, you're watching the news. Yeah, and you're like, well, okay, well, this, we just bought this building. Yeah, and it wasn't, like getting any better. Every week we thought,

okay, well, this, you know, this is going to blow over. This is going to blow over. One wild thing here is I can take you to the spot in that restaurant when I got the news that John Prine had died. And that was like the moment, I was just like, this ain't good.

This dudes beat everything. Answer, rock and roll, you know, the whole lifestyle. And COVID took him out. Yeah. But, yeah, so like Kelly was. saying, I mean, we're just like, man, we need some revenue because more money's going out than coming in at this point. Yeah. It's not good for business. But I'm like, how, how are we going to do it?

Because our dining room was under construction. We were like, okay, we have to get this kitchen done first. Like, it has to be good enough that the health department can come in and they can at least inspect this kitchen to get us up and running in this county. So that happened faster than it felt like because it was like end of March, maybe beginning of April, that we did our first pre-order pickup from our food truck. So luckily we did have that food truck that served as a space that we could work out of. So you guys had the kitchen, you could cook in. Your, was it, there's a conversary?

Conversaries. You have that now. Got the food truck. You can park it outside the restaurant while you're working on the dining room. Yes. And so you were pre-selling food. Yes. Like I quickly had to figure out.

Still on Saturdays. Yeah, still on Saturdays. Saturday had always been our thing. Like that's where it started the rest at the brewery because that's the only day I had that I wasn't working. So yeah, I was still on a Saturday. Figuring out how to do a website for pre-orders and have people do pick up times and, okay, you have a 30-minute time slot. You can come pick up. So we start doing that and it sold out, like the first pre-order we put out there, like sold out.

and I'm like, okay, and we're on a main highway. So the first time, like, people started coming, our whole shoulder of, like, that main highway was, like, backed up with traffic trying to pull into our restaurant. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, I never, we have a back way you can come into the restaurant. I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, on the pre-order, I didn't put that you need to come in from, like, Passaic,

which is the back way. So it was just so many things we learned and had to learn quickly through COVID. but we were so fortunate that people from out of town, the beach, Wilmington, Raleigh, Charlotte, decided, hey, we're just going to get out of the city, we're going to take a drive to wherever Peachland might be, because nobody probably still knows where Peachtland is,

but it's a very small town. So it was kind of a, it was kind of, it actually worked in your favor because that small town, people from the city were like, well, let's just go somewhere because you couldn't do anything. It's not like they were going to go hang out anywhere in Charlotte

because everything shut down. And Peachtland, I'm sure, didn't have the restrictions. There was no one in there. Like, we weren't trying to buck the system or anything. Yeah. But, I mean, there was parks. Like, I've got pictures of people

eating on, like, hoods of cars. Like, it was just a very humbling throwback to barbecue. Old school days. Yeah. Yeah. It was just like, get out. Like, there's nothing. nothing else and do. Let's just go eat barbecue.

Was there people that would show up that didn't even pre-order? Because they were just like, let's go. All the cars. And they were like, yeah, something new, something to do. I mean, yeah, it's like, let's just go try that out. And they would wait through that line and get to the front and we're like, this is pre-order only. Call next week. Yeah.

Yeah. Check us out, follow us, you know. I mean, that's part of our following was built right there for sure. That is amazing. So, yeah, COVID was actually not. a bad, not a bad time for you guys. The first time I ever heard that was actually Daniel Vaughn from Barbecue Snob, Texas Monthly. And I mean, I probably looked at him like he was crazy when he said that. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And it's definitely, you know,

there was some bad. I mean, some of our employees lost their parents, their dad. I mean, it was tough. But ultimately, yeah, it was a good thing for the business because it was no better time than drive to the country and just barbecue. So the whole Saturday thing has stuck to this day. You guys really only have the restaurant open on Saturdays, right? Yeah. So my whole thing has been like the fresher barbecue we can serve back to back. If I slice that brisket and I serve one person and another person that won't come in for 30 more minutes,

that brisket is just then they're drying out while I cut that off. And now they've got a dry piece of brisket. So the more back to back we can serve the brisket, the better. For everybody. Yeah. And any meat for that matter. Yeah. I mean.

Brescott, especially. It's going to oxidize. Like, it's just not going to be pretty. Yeah. Yeah. Something I noticed about you guys, food quality is just like your number one thing. Like you guys are not. Anything we can do if it's 5% better.

Like, we're going to try to do that. Yeah. Which is awesome. Which is rare in the restaurant industry today. I mean, everybody, we've talked about it. Cisco basically dominates the market and people joke now that go out to eat and they say,

it's just basically a, a race of whoever cooks Cisco the best, you know, which is sad, but that's kind of where restaurants are today. There's not much proprietary home cook meals anymore. Yeah. You can look at it nine times out of ten and no, it's kind of a prefabbed deal. Yeah. Does that make going out to eat harder for you guys? Like, when you go out, having your own restaurant, I'm sure, and like if doing it the way you guys do it. Yeah, we try not to be judgmental, but yeah, ultimately, man, I mean, sometimes food is not

expensive. And if you just think like, you know, this restaurant didn't make this, but I got charged for a price that they should have made it. Yeah. Sometimes we just know too much. Yeah. I mean, you know, we, we can see the prices that they're paying for that food and you're like, but they're charging me a lot more. Yeah. Too much. Okay. You are definitely known for your brisket. So what on a given Saturday, what's on the menu at your restaurant. Yeah, so the brisket definitely takes the spotlight. I mean, that's just kind of what we got known for,

but we've got so many other meats. We've got pork, pulled pork with some mixed in belly into that, just for added richness. But, I mean, we've got burn-ins that we're brining a week out in advance. That is crazy. Yeah, I mean, we're having to think about people that were going to serve a week out. I mean, it's not like a burger that you could just go grab out of the fridge and toss on the flat top for five, ten minutes and put on the plate and be done.

Like, I guess I had a lot of prep going into that meat. But, yeah, the burn ends, we've got turkey. Turkey's a big sleeper on our menu, as in a bunch of Texas barbecue joints. We do pork ribs, of course. Sausage. We make our own sausage. Yeah, everybody thinks like brisket is the hardest thing to cook. barbecue but when you try to make sauces from scratch it'll humble you real quick it's the only thing

that i wasn't self-taught 100% with uh actually went to texas an m they had a two-day creative sausage making class and kind of laid down some baseline that i had no idea what went into making sausage so i went down there did that class and that the sausage allows us to get rid of that scrap brisket you know briskets don't come in looking beautiful right out of the package like there's some trimming involved that that has to go somewhere or briskgo to be even more expensive. So sausage is definitely a big saver there. We do two different kinds of that.

I mean, some of the cheese we use in our peso Texcano sausage is right from 10 minutes down the road. It allows to bring some of that local aspect into our menu as well. I can just say I had both kinds of sausage today, tonight, and that's like next level. I mean, the white brisket is good. it's all good but I that sausage is like I mean that's good stuff I'm not lying when I say I genuinely it's the best barbecue ever ate my life like I'm not like I'm and I'm blow and smoke up your butt like every single piece of every single piece of meat on there was like yep that's the best sausage like I've had yep I've never had white brisket but that's unbelievable yep

that briskets phenomenal. Sawyer's not a very good liar. You can pretty much tell Sawyer's thought about something by the look on his face. And when you got that plate and went in there and sat down and you started giggling like a 15-year-old girl

on, I was like, yeah. Well, I told him, I said, this is equivalent to Thanksgiving for me. So I said, I'm going to go like it's Thanksgiving dinner because, you know, you go until you can't go no more. You had me pretty convinced for the first plate, but we went back for the second plate. I was like, man, you made me feel pretty good. I think Sawyer was the only, the only person

of the table that went back for a second. And I wanted to, but I just could not do it. I couldn't do it. And the portion sizes were, I mean, let's be real, the first plate, the portion sizes were great. Well, it was a lot of meat. That was a lot. That was a lot. That was over half a pound of meat on the first plate alone. Yeah. That was impressive. Yeah. Well, it was impressive to enjoy. I tell you what. So, uh, you guys go through a lot of meat,

right? And I think with, you touched on the local part. Uh, I think a lot of people in, in today's world want to go to restaurants or butcher shops, whatever, and they're like,

I want local. I want local. And it's like, especially in the barbecue restaurant world, I mean, you, all the logistics, all the things you have to prep for,

people don't realize that a brisket, a cow, a steer has two brisk. Like you can't just go in the pasture and provide your barbecue restaurant with all local beef. It's literally not possible. You would not have enough brisket to serve for a week even probably. Yeah, the most local program that we were able to use until they couldn't keep up with the demand was from North Carolina, New York, kind of eastern seaboard. And that's getting pretty local for a decent amount of volume of food.

Like, you know, my dad's still got 75 head of cattle. I mean, they're not all ready to go to slaughter. So it's like that there's just no way a family can, you know, produce brisket for a restaurant. Like, you just can't keep it that local. Yeah. Yeah. Even though, I mean, I'd love to.

How many pounds of meat do you go through a week, a month? On a Saturday, we're north of a thousand pounds of meat. Yeah. Pretty good. I mean, there's restaurants out there doing insane numbers. There's restaurants out there that think. That's a lot. Yeah.

There's all degrees of... Right. How many people do you think... Like, when you sell out a Saturday, how many meals is that? We're making enough food for about a thousand people, I would say. If, like, you just look at the end of day report,

like, there's probably enough food for a thousand people. And is it all a la carte or do you guys doing plates? Yeah, we do all the cart. Man, I've always... When I started barbecue, one of the coolest parts to me was, like, I don't just have to get this one meat and two vegetable dill. Like, it's like, you just want to come in and eat meat.

If you're a carnivore, like, just come in and eat meat. Like, we'd love if you'd buy the sides. Our margins are a lot better on the sides. But, you know, we'll try to get down to a quarter pound if you want it. I mean, sometimes one slice of biscuits is a half a pound. But, yeah, literally just come in and try, like, a little bit of this, little bit of that. Like, one pork rib, you know, a slice of turkey. Like, try it all.

A lot of Saturday we are talking to the people online and honestly a lot of it is like trying to, it is helping them understand how to order, right? Because it is very different than most restaurants where you sit down and order off a menu and the plate size is set for you. So, you know, we talk to hundreds of people every Saturday and they're also asking if like the local question and we're educating them on no because there's only two brisketes on a steer. you know, we're telling them all the same things we're telling you here and helping them understand, you know, if you want fatty brisket or a lean brisket, that's going to change the weight. And I mean, there's just so many things that we talk about with people through the line every single Saturday. And they don't think about, you know, they don't have a reason to think about those things. I too was humbled and educated when I started helping Gary.

I mean, just getting away from that, you know, typical play and two sides deal. you know what I mean that's a way to develop a relationship with these people that were coming up Yeah yeah they want to talk to us They want to understand They want to form that relationship With not just us but like any staff member

Who's out there, you know, talking to them And that's a huge part of Saturdays too Yeah so you grew up with cattle right A lot of the stuff you sell or the briskets you have Are they Angus or black Angus or they Yeah so I grew up Herford Okay But, you know, grand Paul probably wouldn't be too happy that we're using Angus right now.

Yeah. Yeah. I still feel like I'm giving back to the cattle community. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I grew up on different farms with Semantau. I mean, I've got pictures of me like, I don't know, four or five years old showing a Semantau my dad. Yeah.

I mean. Well, at some point, the Angus guys, they did a really good job marketing. There's probably people who couldn't even tell you that's a breed of a cow. Yeah. I mean, it's really amazing. what they did. Yeah. It was genius.

It was genius. It really was because they, yeah, you're right. I mean, to a lot of people, Angus just is cattle. Yeah, it's just some kind of good meat. Yep. That's right. Yeah, good job. Kudos to them. Yep, kudos to them.

They did a better job than the poor producers coming up with the other white meat. So that was not a good marking deal and that's for a different podcast. Unless it's white brisket. It's good. Yeah. Buffaloes don't have wings. So why brisk is fair game. So from 2020 on, I mean, we're here in 2026.

It's just, has just getting that restaurant done and having those pre-orders, has it just been an upward trajectory from there? Just momentum is really built. And things are a little bit. I mean, we're still at it. I mean, the fact that a restaurant is surviving a year later as accomplishment. You know, once that's being 10 years of. and do it at this point is a good thing, you know.

I mean, we're still just Saturdays and catering, so it's not like these crazy numbers, but I mean, it's upper twin, friend. Yeah, it's. Catern is definitely taking off even more now, though, so too. I mean, the more people we serve on Saturday, the more word gets out there and definitely helps out with our catering.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we're doing more corporate catering than we ever have before and lots of repeat customers on that side of things, which is always great. One wedding leads to the next and leads to the next, and weddings are a whole different story. But, you know, catering is really a bigger part of our operation than even Saturdays are. So, you know, people are like, oh, how do you have full-time staff? Well, it's really so much more than one day a week. Yeah.

our staff are working full-time plus some weeks, especially during the busy seasons. Yeah, so break down like a week, like breakdown, because you were explaining today about the tickets. Like how, yeah. Okay, like on a normal week, if we were just talking about Saturdays, you know, Mondays, we make sausage, pressure-wash smokers, our inventory truck comes in, we're putting our truck up, and we're kind of laying out logistics for the week. So we have all our invoices hung for the next three weeks. So we have a green, yellow, and red system.

So, you know, he was telling you about the burn-ins and they have to be brined almost a week ahead. Well, okay, yes, but what if you have an invoice where we have burn-ins on a Tuesday? So that's like a whole other timeline than what you would normally do for a Saturday. So, you know, there's a lot of sets of eyes on these invoices. It's, yes, it's guaranteed money, but you have to make sure you're getting that guaranteed money right. That order has to be correct. You have to cook the right amount of meat and sides and all the things. So, you know, it used to be just Garen and I, setting eyes on these invoices.

Now we have multiple people checking behind us, you know, making sure everything's. You don't miss anything. Yes. It's very stressful. Sometimes I still wake up, middle of the night, like looking at my phone, like, oh, my God, did I forget an invoice? Did I forget, you know? Because, I mean, somebody's counting on that food, and that's a big responsibility.

So Mondays, that's kind of on it for just a Saturday week. Those are the things we're doing. I think there's a lot of things acceptable that can get delayed, you know, in the mail and whatnot. But man, if somebody's got a wedding, you're supposed to be there with the food. You've got to be there. There's a whole different ball game. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like you said, when you sell out at the restaurant, you were 10 pounds short. There's 10 people in the line. You tell them, we're out. If 10 people are short at a wedding, that's not good. That's not as unacceptable. Right. I mean, it's just, I don't know. you know, why?

Unless it's a discussion with them beforehand to say, like, hey, you don't, you didn't get enough brisket for everybody to have that or you didn't get enough of XYZ for everybody to have that, it's going to run out. Are you good with that? Like, unless you've had that conversation with that customer. There's nothing more, nothing more dangerous than an agitated mother of the bride or a bride. Yes. You do not want to cross those two women.

Beid them first. Be them first. V them first. That's the key. Well, and the thing that too that we talked about is people don't realize it, but you got to cook. So if you need a pound of cooked meat, that might take how many pounds of...

Yeah, yeah. If you walk in a store and pick up a 20-pound brisket, you throw that thing on the smoker for 12, give or take hours. You're not going to walk out with 20 pounds of brisket. You might get eight. Eight or less. You know, hour yields roughly 30 to 40, by the time we trim it and it gets cooked.

That took a lot of test work. I mean, we stay in school kids because, like, basic math is really a necessity in life. I mean, we have, like, equations, you know, butcher paper written and taped up, like, on our walls in the restaurant to figure out, like, yield. Every protein is different. Yeah. Turkey is going to have a better yield than brisket. Forks, he's around 50%.

Like, seeing those forums and meat conversations, everybody's like, I'm cooking for 12 people. Like, how much meat do I know? need, you know, and I see all different kinds of answers. Like, what's your portion size? Yeah. There's so many more questions to it than just how much while I need because, yeah, yield and portion size are huge. Yeah. So what are some of the most creative ways you guys have figured out to use the whole, like not letting any of your product go to waste? Like, has that kind of, like you said, if you got to cut off a certain part of the trim on, and the brisket or whatever, you're cutting a certain part off.

Is that, like, kicked your brain to be creative of like, okay, how can I use this? Like, what are some of those dishes that have been created out of necessity almost? So sausage in Texas barbecue scene is the lowest hanging fruit possible. People use your pork rib trim to go there, your brisket trim, but we trim pretty aggressively. Like, we want that finished product to be as good as it can. And so we're taking that brisket grinding up, making basically a brisket burger that will be crumbled up and putting our beans.

We make a cheeseburger tater-type casserole out of it. I make a sloppy John Kalachi for breakfast. A sloppy John. What is this thing I hear about brisket stir-fried rice? Yeah. So there's in a brisket, I kind of see it as three different sections of the brisket. You got the lean, you got the fatty. And then there's this other little section that's just not quite as good as a slice.

It's got kind of a fat seam through it's just not really that pretty. And the bottom side is really, really lean. But yeah, we had a little bit extra catering order or come back. I took too much food, talking about yield and everything back in the day. And it's like, man, a risky fried rice. We'd ate a restaurant that had something similar down in Texas. And I was like, give that a whirl. Blood Brothers was a restaurant in Houston we went to.

And man, it was one of the few recipes where like the first time we tried it was like, that's it. Like, that's good. You know, the yum yum sauce we even made was like the first time trying. I was just like, this works. I'm not going to mess with that anymore. Yeah.

So is that on your menu all the time? It's on the menu all the time. Okay. It's usually pretty quick to move. We do that at a lot of festivals. And I mean, move producer. you know, had me cook for his 50th birthday party in L.A. one time and we did brisket fried rice out there. So.

Okay. Let's talk about that because when you're talking about, uh, your yield and, uh, the time it takes to prep and all of that, when you started catering, like, how do you, how do you figure out to, when you were starting, like, how did you figure out what, you, you started catering? Like, how do you figure out, like, how did you figure out, what you had to charge to be able to cover all of that time when you haven't really done it.

Was that one of those deals where you did it and then you're like, you throw out a number and you're like, and then you're like, well, we didn't make any money on that one.

So then we... I had fun doing it, though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we started, we didn't know. I mean,

we kind of would read stuff online like, how much should you charge for, you know, I don't know. Jeeves. Yeah, basically. Exactly. I mean, ultimately just had it come like this like baseline math of, you know, we spent this much, here's what we made. What do we need to do from here? Yeah. And I will say, even still, we learn. We do so many different types of events. Right. And some are close by. Some are far. Some, you know, want us to cook, have prime rib there with chimmy churry and a beef rib on a croissant. And, you know, those are expensive items. And I'm, you know, those are expensive items. And I'm, you know, still in this space where I feel bad charging people, but I'm like, I can't feel bad, you know. There's a whole lot of unrealized costs, like with weddings.

Like, they're wanting to come to a wedding four hours in advance. So you got 10 staff just standing there. You know, why does, why is catering so much more? Like, because a lot more time involved. And I mean, people aren't going to come do it out of their goodness of their heart for fun of it. You know, it's like, we've got to pay these people to stand there for that four hours, waiting while y'all get married. Yeah. So we just learn. We just literally like we just learn all the time.

I mean like, okay, well, this has never been a variable in our catering before, but now it is. So now it needs to be factored into the full service catering fee, you know. I pretty much have it broken down by zero to 99 guests, 100 to 149 guests, on and so forth. Like, and it goes up by X amount of dollars per 50 people. Yeah. And it depends on what they want too, right? So then the food cost is broken. broken down separately, they can see all of their charges most of the time.

Like, we're typically not invoicing out like some caterers do where it just says $45 a head. You know, we could do it that way. I'm not saying we'll never do it that way. It's just we haven't. We're not to that point yet. Like, I'm very transparent. People are like, oh. Which I think's really good, though.

I mean, I think people would appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, our food costs the same as if you would come to the restaurant, even for your wedding. You're still paying $39 a pound for brisket. you know, but you are going to have a catering fee on top of it because it's, we're doing everything, you know, we're traveling with it, we're cooking it, we're staffing it, we're cleaning it up, we're busing the tables, like. So.

And there's a constant move. I mean, Briscuits on the rise has been on the move. Like it's, I feel like we're paying more now than COVID. I didn't even think, I didn't think we'd ever get back to COVID price for a while, you know, maybe some inflation along the years, but I mean, it's like. We've blown right fast out on the B side. that. What is this beef market done for you? I mean, because it's crazy high. It's been crazy high. Yeah. And I mean, it's not to say it's not worth it. You know, if you look at these stats of, you know, what beef should cost when everything else has went up, like, it's not to say it's not worth it.

But, you know, and my dad would say, you know, I took some cattle up to the cell bar and I was getting 22 to a pound on the hoof. It's like, man, once that thing's gutted and where it needs to be, the hides off and all the things. things like it keeps on moving up and uh you know the worst the worst thing that has come out of these high beef prices for me and i think you'll say this you probably took you're going to take mine it is the death of the 16 ounce ribby yeah every restaurant you go to now every place you go to the portion side has gone down by two ounces it's like where's my 16 ounce ribby yeah now it's a 12 it's either a 14 or a 12 yeah New York strips of 10 now.

You know, it's just not right. Yeah. I mean, like, going back to my dad, like, getting these better price at the sale barn, like, like, man, just hold on. Because if you see that $15, $20 cheeseburger. Yeah. I mean, we knew. Like, yeah.

Somebody's got to pay more if you're going to get paid more. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's all fair game. I get it. A total, total respect. And they earn it. I mean, farm is not easy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we talk, a previous podcast, we were talking about the whole cattle thing. And it's like, there's a lot of these cattle guys that haven't really made money in 30 years. And now that they're making it. And the ones you got to feel sorry for are the young guys that somehow, some way,

they're going to get started raising cattle now. They're going to be the ones that are going to get it on the tail end of this. And then they're going to have to wait another 30 years before they make any money. Because what it does, when this cattle market does catch up, it's going to be ugly. It's going to be ugly. It's a cycle. It's like everything. But we got off a little bit.

We were talking about, you know, trying to figure your cost on catering and all that. However, when you get, when you get like, when you get certain people, let's just say you get a movie star that calls you that wants you to cater. was it tempting at all to just say, ah, yeah, this is the price. Just no itemized bill. This is the price because you figure, well, if they're flying us all the way out there, they could afford it.

Yeah, I was going to say, you guys not only... Jamie had an advantage because he's a friend. Yeah, I was going to say, you guys not only have the recognition about your restaurant and your food, but you have catered for some really awesome people. Yeah. And, yeah, we are open.

You guys want to disclose any of that about who and how you've catered for those people. We're all game for that. There's been some NDAs signed along the way. Yeah. I mean, it's barbecues open the doors to meet some people that I just never would have thought would have walked up to me asking for food. And some of them that mean more to me, you know, because they're my favorite band, you know, or more than some people are like, oh, my gosh, I'll did that, you know. but I mean last week we were hanging out

Turnpike Trubedores. I mean, I was like every time we've catered for them multiple times and every time it's a highlight, you know, them saying like, and we're getting to watch your kid grow up because we take our kid to the shows. I mean, it's just like, that means the world, man. It makes us feel pretty special.

But I mean, past that, I mean, yeah, I mean, like Leonardo DiCaprio and, you know, the founder of Netflix, read Hastings. I mean, just people like, like the world, how are we in the same room with these people? I'll never forget, Garon, telling me, I think I'd left for the day maybe on a Saturday, and he's like, Steph, no, Seth Curry. Oh, yeah.

Seth Curry, not Steph Curry, his brother, Seth. Came to the restaurant. Do you all know that is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was Duke fan in North Carolina, either Tar Hills, Duke or State fan, NC State. So I think we got hooked up with him because of Jamie, too. Yeah, Jamie Patrick Rolf. Just put in a good word for us.

So anyway, his wife reached out and we ended up, he came down to pick up some food at the restaurant one day. So Garen's telling me the story, he's like, yeah, you know, I'm walking him out of the car, getting everything out of the car for him. And he's like, I was kind of just trying to keep him out of the spotlight. You know, I didn't know how he felt about all of that. So he's like, I see this guy. He's just making a B-line for us. And I just knew, oh, my gosh, like, he's about to ask him for a picture. It's Seth's birthday.

Like, it's like, man, just get a, yeah. We do a, we do a pre-order system, like above $500 you can call and do it for your head, pre-call, pick up. So, Garen was like, guy comes over, and he's like, hey, can I get a picture? And Garen's like, I just assumed he meant with Seth, you know. And he's like, no, with you. And he meant Garen. Like, he meant he wanted a picture with Garen.

So Seth Curry took this picture. Took it. Oh, no, no, no. Seth was like, I can do it. And the guy was like, no, I'll just go a selfie. Oh, that's right. That just happened. That is, that's pretty good.

I had to go find the guy. I was like, do you know who that was standing beside of me? He was like, no, I was like, that was Seth Curry. He was like, are you kidding me? That is hilarious. Why didn't you tell me that before? Yeah. Yeah.

Great guy. Pretty funny. Yeah. So that's led you guys to some, like, did you ever think when you started this barbecue thing that it would ever turn into meeting movie stars or athletes or doing what you're doing today. Never. You're getting flown around to cook.

We're all over. Never. I mean, it's like, each time we do it is like, this is probably the last time that happened. Yeah. And then it's happened again here and there.

Like, how does, how do these doors keep opening? Do you have any, do you have a catering story that you can disclose that's one of your favorites are the most memorable or it's a good, it's just a good story? He talked about we went to Michigan.

We rented up, okay, we did not have a catering van at the time. So we rented a van of minivan. Because we, right? We rented a minivan. Okay, the girl who was supposed to go with us ended up getting COVID. I'm like, oh my gosh, like we have to have help. I mean, I'm serving at a wedding. And I've like told this girl we would do charcutory cups.

Now, listen, this stuff is like very detailed. I mean, it takes time. And I love Garen, but it's not really something. He can't help me with that. He could, but he's going to be worried about the meat and all the things. And I'm like, oh, my God. So I find this, I find help. We load up in the minivan.

We drive 16 hours to Petoskey, Michigan. We end up making all the food, making all the charcutory cups, making this thing happen. We load up. No, I think we even left our cooler there. Like we had taken an igloo cooler so we could just leave it there. Just dumped them off. We flew home.

We got on plane. We flew back to Charlotte. We load up in probably my suburban, if I had to guess. Because at this time, we were catering out of my suburban. We drive to Greenville, South Carolina, which is a couple hours from where we're from. Garen had lost his voice during all of this craziness of catering. We had to load up enough stuff to make a thousand service. of brisket fried rice to serve at Euphoria Greenville,

which is a big food festival in that area. And we were cooking on our BQ smoker. He had made this big flat plate, like a hot plate for it so he could like do the rice on it. Turned a whole hog cooker into a flat top grittle. Okay. Pretty neat, coal-fired hot. It was just so many moving parts.

And we were dead dog-tired. I mean, I don't even know how we made it through. and people are trying to talk to him, and he's like, oh, yeah, that's going to. He could not talk at all, and I'm trying to talk for him, and they don't know who I am. I'm just some girl that's, you know, there for John G's barbecue. And I mean, by the time that was over, we were like, oh, thank God. The weekend's over, but we will never forget. I remember coming over the hill in Petusky.

Now, I'd never. Potosky. I don't. I don't know. Anyway, I had to say it. I had never seen a lake that size before. What lake were we on? That was a great lake.

Michigan. We come over the hill and I see the lake and I'm like, where? Is this in America? You thought you were at the ocean. Like I was just like, this is incredible. Like, it was so beautiful. Yacht club, pretty dang cool. And they're friends.

They're not celebrities, but that's just one of our most memorable, probably catering weekends. When you get into cooking mode, I mean, we were talking today when you were at coffee shop. Like when you go to a catering event in LA, they just get you a brand new blackstone if you want to make fried rice and you not season nothing. And you just got to, man, you just got to break it in and season it. Yeah. Usually, you know, you bring up the griddle to temp and all this stuff. And it was out in the sun. It's like I had infrared thermometer. Like I was trying to make sure this thing was like 400 degrees. And it was just reflecting right off of it. Like give me all these

weird reasons. I knew it was hot by just putting my hand over it. But it, but it, At some point, I was like, man, we've got to go. Like, it was just me at that event. I had a couple of helpers that were, like, from other restaurants, come in and help me out. But, man, I threw the rice on this thing, and it smoked it.

Like, it was just immediately black. It's like 700 degrees. Maybe 8.50. I don't know. It was up there, man. But I'm, like, slinging this brisket fried rice off the back in the bushes and trying to salvage what I could. I mean, it's, you just never know, like,

what kind of predict. I mean, you're going to get in. Shaking hands with Leonardo DiCaprio, you know. To me, that would be just the hardest part is, especially for somebody like you, that your food quality, I mean, that's your calling card. Your calling card is the quality of your food. And when you're asked to go somewhere that you can't have your equipment,

oh, man, I would have it. Do you get anxiety about that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's nothing like being at home, you know. I mean, knowing whether there's good or bad equipment, you know how it's going to react, and you go somewhere else. Yeah.

You know, brisket fried rice has always been the arch enemy of flat tops, man. It's like this unseasoned flat top. We were cooking for Buffalo Bills one time and talking on the phone before we went up there. I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row. And he's like, no, I got a black stone. Like, I'll pick up a propane tank. What I didn't realize is when I got there,

he had got a propane tank because he had never fired. it up before. That was purely... Stickers on it. Stickers on it. Price tag. No oil's ever touched it. Nothing.

I mean... You've never seasoned it. You've never seasoned the flagstone. I mean, it's smoking for an hour. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not a good smell.

Like, I can imagine what they do to ship that thing, but... Like, I was sitting up inside and I'll come out, like, are you okay? Do you need help? And I'm like, are you doing this right? Need more oil. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Tallow would be great right now. Yeah. So when you get into cooking mode, are you just like, that's your, you're just locked in. Like, are you,

pretty heavy. I'm pretty laid back until, like, it's go time. I need to focus. Like, if I don't focus, I'm going to miss something.

Like, oh, my mind will get carried away. And my biggest pet peeve in life is, like, when the food's ready, like, we need to eat.

You know, that's like my thing, man. Just eat a lot's fresh. 100% yeah yeah he was looking at me tonight like come on oh are you ready to eat let's go yeah he's heading on the table he's like all right everybody shut up everybody was standing there so everybody was standing there argued about who was going to go first other than Sawyer nobody had to tell Sawyer twice everybody's like some all right you were like all right grab a plate

get over i was like yes say less don't have to ask me so all right right let's switch gears again here and let's go to what i really love about your guys's business because your town is what'd you say 300 to 500 people somewhere in there 95 420 on a good day depending on which article you read what census it was taken from very small no stop like town yeah nice and you guys and you guys have really i mean i would argue made an impact there i mean i've always said this on this podcast about, you know, the re, like, revitalizing rural America and how important it is to have cornerstone businesses in these towns to keep them alive. You know, ethical rural America entrepreneurship is what I think is going to keep small towns going and thriving. And you guys

are one of those small town businesses that is keeping this community thriving. You're bringing people from all over North Carolina, all over the country, all over the world to come to your restaurant, bringing dollars to that small town. It's pretty freaking awesome. You guys are a cornerstone business for that town. I mean, the reach that we've gotten is pretty cool. I mean, 90% of line on a Saturday is charlatan. But, I mean, man, there's been shoe manufacturers from China that's walked in there.

And, like, they tell me, I'm just like, are you kidding me? Like, how did you find out about us? And they're like, Instagram. Yeah. How in the world did this happen? Yeah. And usually not a place that we go. if Garen has a, if we have something on John G's, like, if we go to the beach, like, okay, we're in

public set in Oak Island, North Carolina. And this lady's like, John G's, I pass that every time I go to Charlotte and I'm going to stop. It looks so good, you know, and we're proud of that little building on the side of the highway. Like, we're, we're so happy when people tell us that. You know, we don't have, we don't, most of the time we don't tell them like, that's us. Sometimes Garen will be like, they'll say like, oh, I'm like, are you, are you John you know and he's like yeah heck no that guy he's a real prick we took our kid to see monster jam

the other night in Charlotte and the guys walking by all the John G shirt and I was just like he's like oh yeah yeah that's awesome thanks for wearing that shirt that's awesome yeah we're proud of our building insane to me at this point yeah yeah I mean it's it's so cool

and I think you know you guys have probably had the opportunity to maybe go to Charlotte you know, I'm sure, like we were talking today, people have approached you about, you know, maybe franchising or come to Charlotte, you know, get into a bigger market. But I think what you guys do about staying in that community, bringing dollars to that community that, you know, stay and help that community thrive is super cool. But I think it also adds, like, to the lore of your establishment and your business.

because like for me, I would much rather go to Peachland and try your guys as barbecue in a town with this barbecue restaurant that's world famous than go to somewhere in Charlotte and try barbecue because it's like, it's like, it's, I don't know, it just adds to it, you know, it's like the perfect thing. It's the perfect setting. Yeah, it's the perfect setting for barbecue.

You know, they're getting out, getting some fresh air in the country. I mean, it's just getting them out of their normal element. Yeah. I mean, it adds to the adventure, the weight, the lead up to it. I mean, it's all pans out, man, talking to people, you know, getting people outside of their comforts on and talking to people, realizing, like, there's a whole lot more that I can agree on the disagree on.

It's the simplest of thing, just not getting that red buzzer, getting ready for when you're table, you know. Yep. It's mind-blowing to some people, but it's awesome for humanity. We have, like, a list of, we call them, decrees and they're outside our restaurant. And the last one is like share tables, share stories, make friends. Like a lot of times I don't even realize people came into the line separately. You know, they sit inside with family style seating and they're sitting together or they're even outside,

like sitting together in a circle of like lawn chairs or what have you. And I just assume they're together. And when I'm giving them their tickets with their party size, um, on the back of it, they're like, oh, no, we're separate from them. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I just assumed y'all were friends. And they're like, well, we are now, you know. So it's just, it's a different way to do things than most people are doing it. Yeah, bringing people together and enjoying meals. Got it.

I mean, that's great. What it's all about. The worst restaurant accessory is when, and I don't know if anybody else that does it, I'm sure there's somebody else that does it. But Darden, when they came out with this idea, if you've ever been to what they own, they own Longhorn. I was about to say it's a restaurant group. Yeah.

Yeah. And they have the kiosk at the table. You pay your bill at the table. But they also, they try to sell you games. At your table of this restaurant you're going to pay to have a meal at. I mean, what the heck is wrong? with you. That's a bad. Yeah, not smart, especially with iPhones and stuff, because let's be honest, the kids are going to be the ones to play the games and then the kids are rather going to,

they're just going to get on the phone now. Well, I just think it's so tacky. Like, it's so tacky that you. The goal is to keep people together or not. Yeah. Yeah. Play a game. Yeah. Talk. Come up with new ideas. Yeah. You know, family time. But there is, there also, one thing, a trend that is interesting. that some places have embraced is I've been, I think we actually were in a place when Trish and I were on vacation the last time where they just had a big basket at the server's desk. You could throw your phone in when you walked in.

I like that. And they just keep your phone until you're ready to leave. Yeah, I think that's cool. I think that'll definitely be more of a thing as time goes on. People are going to want to get away. They're going to pay for experiences where they can get away from. I agree with that. I think we're the next generation even is like putting their phones down a little more than we kind of realizing it's not so good to have you on it all the time.

Trisha told me about this. There is a, I think they're selling it on Amazon, but it's this. Well, I remember when I was a kid, you know, we had a 20 foot, we had a 20 or 30 foot curl up cord on our dial up phone. because when I was talking to sweetheart, I'd go as far as the cord would reach so as not to have any parent hear what I was talking about, you know, even though my mother

was standing at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping and God, she had good hearing. Or picking up another phone. Yeah, or quietly pick up the other phone. Anyway, it is for like Android or Apple, and it is like it's like a landline plugs in, it's a charger

but it's the idea that you basically just lay your phone down on the counter in your house like it's a landline and to use it, you have to walk over and pick it up. And they're selling them like crazy because people want that. Like they're trying to get away from their phone. It's so crazy. Well, I heard not that I follow him all the time, but I saw Kylie Kelsey of all people say that she is not letting her daughters have phones and she is making them go old school

where they're going to have a family iPhone, but it's going to sit in the kitchen. And they got to come down and use it. They want to use it. And I was like, wow. That's hilarious. That's like old school, old school in the new age, I guess.

But I don't know. Got to figure out something. Yeah. Anyway, but would you, what advice would you give to somebody that wants to become a better backyard barbecuer? If you could give them one tip or a couple tips that would serve them well.

The easiest thing I always ask people like, you know, if you're cooking briske right now, like, what's wrong with it? And they're like, it's tough. I'm like, why do you think that is? And I'm like, because I over cooked it. And I'm like, it's the exact opposite. Like next time let that brisket go longer to kind of convert all those tough, you know, collagen and everything else in there.

Yeah, most of the time, is just cook it longer. Like, make sure that thing's done. When you pick up a raw brisket, your fingers will kind of sink into a little bit. Like, next time you pull off the pit and make sure your fingers will sink into a little bit, like don't just roll in one temperature,

whether it be, you know, I've heard 195, 203, 205, 208. Like, just make sure that thing feels right when it's done. Second part of that is, if it's done, don't throw it straight into a cooler. Like most people throw it in a Yeti, a focane bro, as they call it. Like let that thing come.

come down, quit rendering. If it's, if it's where it needs to be, like, once it comes down, it's going to be even better. So you'll pull it, you'll pull your brisket, and then you just leave them out for a while before you wrap them. And then once you wrap them, you put them in a in a cambro. In 2020, we had got another smoker that's going to, was going to increase capacity. And I was actually pulling briskets to wrap them. We used to wrap in and butcher paper. And I picked up this brisk and i was like man that thing feels done so i just set it aside i'm looking at it and bark was kind of gnarly like peeling off a little bit and everything so i'm like how can i get this thing moisture so i wrapped it at that point to kind of like let it sweat and kind

of bring that bark back down and kind of hopefully bind to the meat just open and praying that something would make it you know edible out of that experience and that brisket turned out to be one of the best ones that ever cooked and it totally just changed the pathway of how I do things. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. That's why, because I'm one of those guys. So I, I, uh, I'll put two meter probes in a brisket. And I always, I always run them until they're like 203, which I always thought that's a goofy number. Like, it really matters whether it's 205. But it sounds smart. So I use 203. But when I pull it, I, I, wrap it right away and then put it in a cooler and and I thought that the the thing was to let it go like

people wouldn't let it set long enough so I always made sure I would try to pull it and let it set in there for at least an hour but I'm going to try your route and let it how so how long do you let them how far do you let them cool down before you wrap it yeah kind of that rendering like they'll continue to render like 170s but like like Like you get below 160. As long as you don't go below 135, like keep that meat in a safe temperature, you're good. But yeah, below 160. The other thing I did want to say, like a tidbit that might help some out is 203 is not wrong.

It's dependent on how hot and faster, low and slow you go. So the lower and slower you go, the lower temperature of brisket can be when you pull it. The hotter and faster you go, the higher the temperature should be. I gotcha. So yeah. And my, I'm not wanting to get on a soapbox typically and say this is how it has to be done. You want to tell you how the weather affects a cook? He did a whole new segment on how weather affects the cook.

And like, no joke. I mean, but all in all, like you can nerd out about barbecue all you want. Like you can have thermometers everywhere. I was that guy at one point. But man, at the end of the day, like, you, barbecue is supposed to be simple. Yeah. Whenever you can just maintain a consistent fire

and touch that brisket, like, it's ready. That's all there is to it. You don't have to have wires and thermometers everywhere. Yeah. Like I said, I've been there. I think it might just be easier just to, you just need to get me to a certain economic standard,

and then I'll just go to John G's anytime I want barbecue. That's kind of the plan I think I'm on. Yeah. Yeah. They need to come up here, though, and make one in Iowa and just make it pork-focused. Outpost. There's nobody got grits.

Did you say the outpost? John G's outpost coming to Iowa. John G's outpost. You can bring grits to the state Iowa. Yeah, grits. We don't even have grits. That's crazy that y'all don't eat grits. Mind blowing as much corn as I've seen riding down the road here that y'all don't have grits.

It's a need. I mean, next time we come or y'all come to us, we're making you the grits. I can't wait to try. All right. I want to hear from each one of you. What is one tip you would give to a small business owner out there that's trying to make a go at it? With everything you guys have gone through, what's something that you would say to just, I don't know, maybe some encouragement or a tip or something to make them feel like it's worth going after it?

because I mean you guys yeah you guys have been through trial and error and busting your butt and just keep the faith and fighting for it I mean you guys are the epitome of that so I want me to go ahead if you guys I'm ready yeah I'm trying to just narrow it down

just one that's that's tough I mean all the trial and air we've been through it's one stuff well one thing that has remained consistent over the last 10 years is we have fought hard to build a brand Garen, that was one big thing to him when we started this, and he said we need to be focused on building a brand, something people can recognize, something that is consistent. And I think we've done an okay job at, you know, we have two very recognizable logos at this point.

Sure, they change up every now and then we do a special edition, what have you. but like when you see John G's, you know it's John G's, you know what John G stands for. So we've just really tried to remain consistent and faithful to that brand. Yeah, definitely build something, you know, somebody you can identify with,

like the fact that we put our name on our business kind of separated us. You know, it's like this guy took enough pride in his business that he put his name on it. Like some people don't know who John G is. But yeah, it's, man be something to be proud of you know definitely yeah that's good uh where do you guys want to go

from here like what what is i know you guys don't usually you don't have a lot like you this whole time you didn't have a goal in your mind that we're going to start this business to make money like it kind of just happened so are you kind of running that same play where you're just like their punches are rolling and you're going to keep rolling with them or do you guys kind of have a a place you want to get to someday. Yeah, I still don't, I mean, I think, yeah, we talked about that for coffee. It was like, I've never had a goal because I think any goal I've ever would have ever put out there.

Probably too low. It was way too low. Like, I had no expectation. Like, it was a little barbecue make people happy. Make a little money maybe, you know. The reach is just far beyond anything I ever expected. But at this point for me, man, I'm complacent. Like as long as we can stay in the business and raise our kids and show them what hard work, you know, what it'll do and how people respect that.

I mean, that's honestly all I could ask for. Agree, yeah. Another big reason why we just aren't ready for Charlotte Venture yet, our two small children, we're 10 minutes from our house, you know, building the restaurants not for the weary. And even though we've done it once, doing it, would be just like starting over and we're not willing to give up those formative years of their lives and so I was that as a business like I always want to make better food like that's always a goal like I mentioned earlier like 5% better's worth it any process we can change any meat

we can source like anything that'll make it better I think the other part will come yeah yeah that being said we also always look at each other and say never say never like You don't know what opportunity is going to unfold for you tomorrow. So, never. I was going back to the other question, you know, the business advice. Like, we said never a few times. We ate that one pretty tough. Like, we were we humbled real quick.

Like, it was like, never say never. Yeah. Well, I would just say, like, observing your guys' story, I mean, grit and fortitude is the epitome of just your guys' story. And being gritty about, like, just being smart about like that whole COVID thing, you guys just like had to make it work and you made it work.

You know, I think that's the... No choice. Yeah, you were right in. We had signed the papers. Yeah. What are we going to do with this building? When there's a will, there's a way, you know? And I just think that's freaking awesome.

It's really inspiring and cool to see what you guys have built. And you can feel it in the product. I can tell you that. I mean, you can feel that you guys deeply care about what you put out in the world. So I can't recommend. enough for the people listening or watching to go go give it a try so where can people find you when if they want to support you guys yeah so if you're ever in charlotte area north carolina we're like depend on traffic you know 45 to an hour away uh headed east down 74 um you ever heard of

wilmington we're off the beating bat i mean right off the main road that headed towards the coast of north carolina yeah only about an hour outside of charlotte so we got one last segment that we like to end the show with. And you probably both all, you both have hats. So we're going to have each one of you do a tip of the hat. So who is somebody in your life or what's a product or a brand you use that you want to say, hey, y'all are doing it right.

I want to give you my flowers and tip my hat to you because you're doing a heck of a job or you've had a big impact on me or whatever it is. Yeah, for me, just as simple as I can't just say, one person that's impacted our business, you know. As multiple people, like I was mentioning, friends dad that was a contractor. Like, there's just so many people that have impacted this business to where it should get,

where it's went. Like, I mean, just, just the other night while we were here, you know, Kelly mentions this guy that, his name was Billy Oxendine. She's like, don't we know of Billy Oxendine? I'm like, yeah, she's like, passed away. I was like, it hit me so freaking hard because we had, it was like our last step of being or to open the restaurant with our hood system.

You know, I hired a big company that was kind of well known. They just come in and just felt it. Like, no, just like, here's what we can do. Here's how to help you out nothing. Well, this local guy, native fire control, comes along and like just helps me out. And I was just like, man, you're godsend, you know. And I don't know. I still know why he passed away or anything.

but, I mean, it's just wild thinking about all these people who are such a crucial part into where we've gotten thus far. I mean, I think that it would be a disservice if I did not say I would really love to tip our hat to our staff that works super hard for this business every single week. You know, they allowed us to fly to Iowa and they're there holding it down for us and, you know, we're a small business, and, you know, we put a lot on them sometimes,

and we think really, really highly of everybody that works for us, and we're super thankful that we have the team that we do. And we're, I don't know if you notice this about us, but we're kind of perfectionist. And, you know, we can be kind of probably hard to work for sometimes. But they're, you know, they probably know us better than we know ourselves some days. So, you know, thankful, super thankful to have a great staff. Yeah. Amen to that.

Yeah, it's present. I mean, it all happened for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, they all played a huge part in making us successful and, or I guess, whatever successful is. Yeah. I think we're successful. I don't know. Well, amen to that. I mean, and I can just say this, like,

the American dream is alive and well. I mean, you guys are living proof of that. I mean, you guys made, like, that's the beautiful thing about America. It's like you ate a bite of brisket, and it changed your life forever, and you got out of the corporate job that you probably weren't made for

to do something that set your heart on fire, and you started it from nothing. and now look where it is today. I mean, if that's not the American dream, I don't know what is. Have you ever thought, like, have you two ever thought, what if you would have never,

like if that would have never resonated with you? I mean, you wouldn't know any different, but you'd be, you know, what if you never started? I mean, that's several things of, like, you know, my family is kind of entrepreneur. Yeah, they're entrepreneurs. Like my grandpa was a barber and a single chair of barbershop.

The other one's a farmer. It's like, I felt like it was kind of in my blood, you know. Yeah. Do you believe the American dreams alive and well? Like, do you feel that? Yeah. We're proof of that. I'll acknowledge that one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To build a brand that's recognizable, you know. I mean, what's humbling is like, there's people who's never heard about it. Yeah, I'm sure people are listening right now that's never heard about us. And that's okay. That's the beauty in it.

Like, there's still more mouths to feed out there. Yeah. Like the will hopefully get a talk to you one day and thank them for coming to our business. Yeah. Yeah. So if you all go there, you tell them that Tork and Sawyer sent you and they'll charge you a dollar more. Oh, I was saying, I was thinking they'd just send every person that tells them that we're going to have a referral program where they just send us a brisket or send us. Well, that's why they got to charge a dollar more to pay the shipping to ship brisket to Sawyer.

Send us aside or send us a little sausage link or whatever. Send you a brisket. That's big love. Yeah. That's a lot of love for sure. So John G. barbecue, no H,

J.O.N. No H. And that's not short for Jonathan. It's just straight up John. And that's on all social media platform that you're on. Yeah. We're pretty involved with Instagram, Facebook,

TikTok. There's an out there. I haven't really dove into that in Twitter. Yeah, John G's barbecue. Awesome. Well, Garon and Kelly, thank you guys so much. much for making the trip. It was an absolute pleasure and honor to have you guys. Your food is

amazing. You can feel it. You can feel the love that you put into your product. And yeah, I love this episode. I love the food. And we just really appreciate you guys. Thank you for having us. We appreciate you all bringing us to Iowa. Yeah. Like it's a state that we've flown over many times. And it's been special. Are we the first food? You are. Yeah. You are. You guys are the first food entrepreneurs on this show. So that's going to make it pretty hard for whoever has to follow you up. They're going to have to add their game. Farming and food.

Yeah. We're bringing the farm to table right now. You are. We are. We're mending it. That's right. So. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Thank you so much. If you guys got any value from the show, go, go follow these guys. Go support them. They're absolutely killing it. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Share the show with the people that you know. We love you guys.

We appreciate you. We'll see you back here next week for another episode.