July 22, 2026 • 36 mins
In this episode of Barbecue Catering Smarts, Michael Attias sits down with Stuart McClean, Founder of BaQ-Bone BBQ & Catering, to discuss how a passion for authentic Texas barbecue evolved into a catering-focused business built for long-term growth.
Stuart shares how selling smoked Thanksgiving turkeys from his backyard led to larger catering opportunities, why he chose to prioritize catering over expanding everyday food truck service, and the operational systems that allow his team to execute consistently while maintaining the quality they're known for.
They discuss practical strategies for generating catering leads through corporate partnerships, food truck events, referral marketing, Easy Cater, and even TikTok advertising. Stuart also explains why minimum order requirements, saying "no" to the wrong opportunities, and focusing on repeat customers have helped create a healthier, more profitable business.
Beyond barbecue, Stuart reflects on how lessons from college football, entrepreneurship, and his background in mental health counseling have shaped his leadership style, work ethic, and approach to building a business that supports both growth and family life.
Whether you're trying to generate more catering leads, improve profitability, or build a catering operation that gives you more freedom—not less—this episode is packed with practical insights every BBQ operator can apply.
Barbecue Catering Smarts is sponsored by CaterZen Catering Software.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:32):
Hello again, I'm Michael Latias, your host of Barbecue Catering Smarts, and today's guestis Stuart McLean, founder of Backbone BBQ and Catering.
With years of experience building a barbecue business centered around quality foods,strong customer relationships, and reliable execution, Stuart knows what it takes to
deliver memorable catering experiences at every level.
(00:52):
From managing large events and maintaining consistency under pressure to building systemsthat support long term growth, he brings a practical operator first perspective on what it
really takes to run a successful.
Barbecue catering operation, and we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get started, let's take a minute to recognize our sponsor, CaterZen CateringSoftware.
They help barbecue restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:13):
Discover why barbecue restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase cateringsales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of the software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Barbecue Catering Smarts.
Welcome, Stuart.
How's it going?
I'm doing good.
Michael, how are you?
Good, good, good.
Thanks for being here today.
Um we probably could have just gotten face to face since we're probably a couple of milesfrom each other here over East Germantown.
(01:41):
I'm in East Nashville.
So I'd like to start everyone off with an icebreaker question.
Give me a number between one and three hundred.
13.
I've ever had that one.
If you could relive your childhood in some other country than your own, what country wouldyou choose and why?
That's a good one.
oh If I could relive my childhood in any other country.
(02:05):
I would say Trinidad and Tobago.
ah My father's from there.
I've only visited a couple of times, but I really enjoyed my trips there.
I think that would be an amazing place to live as a kid, for sure.
It it I I'm assuming is it in the Caribbean?
And very tropical, beautiful waters.
(02:27):
beautiful water.
You can get fresh fish right on the water.
um The weather is always warm, so it's a cool place to be.
Very cool.
Um, I was born in France, so I've I've been there a handful of times as a kid and thenmore as an adult and um I don't know that I would give up.
I grew up in Memphis.
I had a great childhood.
(02:49):
Like we we ran the streets.
When you know, when when I was a kid, you know, you leave at the crack of dawn and I comehome till night and you go in the woods and ride your bike and do all sorts of stuff and I
don't know that I would give up my childhood.
Yeah, I agree.
If I had to live someplace, that would be it.
But my childhood was the exact same.
I grew up in rural East Texas in a small town called Tyler.
(03:12):
And it was the same way, going in the woods, staying out till right before the sun wentdown and street light came on.
That was your indicator to go back in the house when the street light came on.
But yeah, I do.
Yeah, I have two.
My kids are eight and whatever.
They'll be eight and five this summer.
So they're seven and four now.
(03:33):
You know, I used to say my mom let me run the streets when I was five, which is probably,you know, child protective services today, but I think kids
They miss out on that independence of fending for themselves and learning how to work withyour friends and being creative.
Like we would take scrap pieces of wood and pallets and build forts and all sorts of stuffthat kids today they're just playing video games and they're missing out on so much.
(04:01):
We'd go fishing and we had a couple of ponds in our neighborhood, you know, catch catchtadpoles and
you know, toads and whatever.
So I just feel kids today, like I I think probably because of all the news you're scaredto let your kid out past the the mailbox that they're gonna get abducted.
They probably got equally abducted when I was a kid, just nobody knew about it.
(04:23):
Exactly.
It wasn't on the news or Instagram, so we didn't have any reports of it.
So I think there were a lot of missing children posters up back in the day, it wasn'tpublicly, the knowledge wasn't there for it.
kid got kidnapped in California you knew nothing of it.
Now you no, no, no, I grew up in Memphis.
My father got yeah, he got trans he got recruited with a company out of Memphis and sothat's where I spent my childhood and then I moved up to Nashville.
(04:52):
I worked for Corky's barbecue in college and was one of their first franchisees.
So how did you wind up in Nashville from Texas?
So I got recruited to play college football here at TSU and decided to just stay inNashville.
I enjoyed it.
I met my wife in college and we just made Nashville home.
So that's how I ended up here.
(05:14):
It was a cool journey to come from Dallas into a smaller town, which I was kind of usedto.
But when I got here, I thought I was going to see a bunch of people riding horses.
I thought it was going to be like, so country music and it was.
exact opposite of what I expected that should have been.
So it was cool.
That was a cool experience.
I got here in 2006.
(05:34):
In 2006.
there you know, Nashville's come a long way in twenty years.
A long way.
I mean, two thousand and six it was I mean, it was probably safer than when I came to townto go downtown, but it's it's nothing like it is now and now there's so many high ri I
don't even recognize the city, can't keep up with all the restaurants.
(05:54):
It's
It's crazy.
So, um, that's awesome that you you made a home here, and you got in at the right time.
So tell me how you ended up in the barbecue business.
Sure, ah so initially coming from Texas, the barbecue in Nashville was just so differentthan what I was typically used to.
(06:14):
There was more beef, we'd do more beef.
You didn't really get good brisket here.
There weren't any places you could get really get smoked turkey here.
So it was confusing to me when I got here.
my great uncle's back home in Texas.
They're pit masters and I would kind of watch them growing up.
And my mom actually bought me my first grill.
So we used to grill on our back porch.
(06:37):
And so she showed me how to work the grill.
In Texas.
In Texas.
Yep, in Texas.
So this was in high school.
High school.
So like 16 or 17.
Yes, I've been grilling a Weber kettle.
It was a Weber kettle.
So did you did you offset Cook on that thing?
I didn't start offsetting cooking until I bought my house here in Nashville.
(07:01):
So I bought, what was it, like 2014, yeah around 2014, 2015.
As a moving gift, my wife bought me an offset smoker.
She bought me an Oklahoma Joe.
And so I learned to cook.
Oh yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, so I learned to cook on an Oklahoma Joe in the backyard.
(07:23):
So I started smoking meats on the Oklahoma Joe.
And eventually I was like, well, there's this place back home called Greenberg SmokedTurkeys.
They're world renowned.
They ship turkeys around the world, all over the country and all over the world.
They're even on Oprah.
So they're very, very popular.
And um I missed that flavor of smoked turkey that we get back home.
(07:46):
So I started trying to make my own version of that here and it got really popular.
So like every Thanksgiving I would sell more and more turkeys.
one them selling like five or 10 turkeys to 20 or 30.
And then one year I sold close to 50 turkeys.
So was just like, I've got something here, you know?
So I started taking like small catering gigs after that, trying out my hand at brisket andribs.
(08:09):
I was good at cooking ribs and stuff like that already, but it took some time to likeperfect my brisket, which I'm known for now, but that's kind of how I got my start just in
the backyard, you know, like everybody else just taking a shot at a lot of YouTube videosand
Just over the years, it's got better and better.
I think that's a common thread.
you know, I got into the business because of weighted tables at Corky's, but I grew up myparents had a Brinkman smoker, the little dome kettle.
(08:36):
They used to do turkeys, um, you know, at Thanksgiving.
And then
year.
I would say I I had one of those.
I had a uh I was in a cooking competition for beef ribs and we had to use a Weber.
So we I sort of retrofitted it.
We cooked across from the coals and had a a water pan and those beef ribs were were fire.
(08:59):
My my son will tell you best beef ribs he's ever had.
It was it was phenomenal.
But you know, obviously it's a it's a big it's a big leap from you know making stuff inyour backyard for friends and family to starting a business.
absolutely.
coming from a football background, how do you feel that that contributed to to yourbusiness?
(09:25):
Absolutely.
oh So I would say discipline.
So in college, we used to have to get up super, super early.
I'm talking about sometimes 5, 5.30 to make, you know, early morning workouts.
We stay up late watching film until, you know, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night andhave to be back up the next day, study hall each day.
So it created a certain level of discipline that I've implemented in my business.
(09:49):
So when I start up my pit is usually early in the morning same around the same timesometimes four or five o'clock in the morning ah And I've kind of implement it implemented
that into my business as well as my staff So even though they don't like getting up earlyI'm like hey if I'm up early you guys have got to get up early too so we can get our day
started um I Think usually if you get up before 5 a.m.
(10:11):
It's a lot quieter.
You don't run into traffic
So we're able to do a lot of the heavy lifting early in the morning before people aremoving around.
It just makes our workflow a lot easier.
So I would say that discipline from getting up early mornings for football is what reallycreated a structure for my business moving forward.
that's cool.
I've always been an early morning person.
(10:33):
Like I'd rather get up and cracking and done early.
And like you said, you know, when my kids were growing up, sometimes I'd be in my officeat four in the morning and I could get I could get eight hours worth of work done in two
hours.
There's no interruptions, there's no phone calls, there's nobody asking you anything.
You can just get in the zone.
Now, you've got a food truck in Germantown, so that's ten minutes from my house.
(10:55):
Literally, I'm gonna have to come check you out.
what
You only do the food truck one day a week, you told me?
do a food truck.
Yeah, we do the food truck one day a week.
ah As we staff up and we kind of ramp up for the summer, we're going to start addingSaturdays consistently.
We've been doing like a pop-up or two on Saturdays at the brewery as well, mainly doingbrunch.
(11:18):
ah But yeah, right now just Fridays.
Eventually we plan to open more days a week, but for now just Fridays.
And do you have a smoker on the truck or do you smoke in a commissary and bring it out?
We smoke at the commissary and bring it out.
uh Eventually, we're actually working on a second trailer with a pit on it.
(11:39):
And that way we'll be able to just do everything on site.
so probably within the next six months, we'll have that completed and ready to go.
And so this is a full time business for you?
Yep, it's full time, um seven days a week, 365 days a year.
So what what percentage of your business is catering versus what you sell out of thetruck, you know, to individuals?
(12:05):
% of our business is catering.
We do more catering than anything.
And so during the week are you doing more drop off or full service events?
Mostly drop-offs during the week.
uh From time to time we do have full service events, but we do lot of catering with thefood truck itself.
So we actually bring the food truck out to do events as well.
Let's say a client wants us to cater for their office party or they're paying for lunchfor the day, we'll bring the truck out and do that.
(12:35):
A lot of businesses around town hire us to bring our truck out for lunch.
So we do stuff like that during the week.
But you do a lot of drop off as well.
So what's what what is the profile of the drop off customer and how did you build thatbusiness?
Because usually that business is built because of bricks and mortar, right?
You have a building on Germantown, people come and eat there, and then they they want youto come cater to their office.
(13:01):
You don't have that built in foot traffic.
So how'd you build the drop off business and who's your who who are you selling to in thedrop off arena?
Sure, oh I started, so what was it, maybe three years ago I did FUTA.
I don't know if you're familiar with him, but essentially you set up and do a pop-up atdifferent office buildings around town.
(13:23):
So I did that for about a year, it really, really well.
We were one of the top uh grossing businesses on the platform in Nashville, so we didreally well.
But it just got to be too overwhelming, because we were like at two different spots at onetime.
Wow.
trying to manage staff and staff enough food for both sides.
It just got to be really busy.
And so I built a lot of the connections through that with like my corporate clients.
(13:50):
And then just word of mouth, people have been sharing the business.
oh We did something at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center to help us get a lot of exposureas well.
We did one of their programs uh and we graduated from that.
So we've gotten a lot of clients from being a part of that.
And then we just, you we talk about it when people come to the truck and let them knowlike, hey, if you have anything you need catering for, give us a shout.
(14:14):
ah This time of year, we're getting ready to go into the summer.
So we'll be doing like a lot of family reunions and different things like that.
And then we just have repeat customers we built rapport with.
And then there's a few apps like uh you have your cater cow and your, what is the otherone that we use?
There's another one that we use quite a bit that.
(14:35):
cater?
We do easy cater.
oh So there's a few different avenues that we use to kind of get ourselves out there somemore that's kind of helped us build that book of business for weekly catering.
So the people you're doing drop off for, I would imagine it's feast or famine, right?
Like, do you have a minimum like, hey, on a Monday we shut down and we only work threedays a week?
(15:01):
Or, you know, are you gonna go in for somebody says I just wanna order drop off forfifteen, you got nothing else on the books, you're gonna go in, make it happen and then
the next day makes up for it.
How does that work?
No, so we're typically closed on Sundays and Mondays most times.
ah Usually those are our rest days.
I go to church every Sunday, so that's the first thing we do.
(15:23):
And then Mondays is usually our planning period day and day of rest really.
We have a staff meeting on Mondays.
We kind of check the calendar, make sure we don't have anything on the books for that day.
Usually if we do have something on the books for that day, it's something we booked outmonths in advance.
But typically we don't do anything on Mondays except for like,
Creating shopping lists and ordering from like our providers to make sure that oursupplies are there for the week Tuesday we're Catering orders and deliveries And then
(15:56):
Wednesdays and Thursdays we're doing prep for the food truck on Friday or if we have anyother things going on that week We'll do the drop-offs and stuff.
But typically we have a minimum our minimum for pickup catering is 750 and our deliveryminimum is 850 so
If it doesn't meet that criteria, we won't touch it.
Just to, you know how it be done.
(16:17):
not like a barbecue restaurant that you could do a two hundred dollar order because you'vegot the food.
So it's gotta be worth your while to fire it up.
Yep, it's gotta be worth our while to fire it up.
Again, we're still doing Kraft barbecue, so I'm cooking everything fresh.
So typically, like a lot of the providers that we use for the weekly caterings, theyusually give us a week's notice.
(16:41):
So I have a catering drop off tomorrow morning and we knew about it last week.
So we'll have all the prep done for it.
We started the prep yesterday, so it's already done.
I'm finishing up the proteins today.
We'll get everything ready for tomorrow and um we'll drop it off tomorrow at around 11.
uh It's box lunches, our least favorite caterings because it just takes more time to do.
(17:06):
Yeah, yeah.
But it's usually like 40 to 50 people.
So it's okay with a couple of people doing it.
uh I really don't like doing box lunches, but that's how this provider requires us to doit.
And I'm like, hey, you know, we can offer this at a way better price if you buy it in atray and we can just drop it off.
thing and people get it's hotter and you know, if somebody wants a little bit more theyget a little bit more and you know, what have you.
(17:32):
So you said you go to church every Sunday.
I've just gotta ask, are are you AME?
Do you go to an AME church?
No, go to the church I go to is called One City.
It's a oh non-denominational church.
The reason I ask is right across the street from me.
It's an AME church and I've always worked with the the pastors at that church and one of'em's a good friend of mine.
(17:55):
Well, they combined that church with another church and they took the preschool from theother church and now we have a preschool across the street.
Yeah, it is nice.
My fiance and I went to Costco and bought some
snacks for all the kids.
Super super cute kid.
We brought we brought the black lab over there and the kids went crazy to play with thedog.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
(18:17):
So besides the marketplaces and the word of mouth, um what have you done to build yourbusiness?
Like do you knock on doors?
Do you network?
Do you communicate with your current like how you know that's always the biggest issue inany business, right?
How do you how do build sales?
Yeah.
So I think it's ever evolving.
(18:38):
I've done a little bit of everything.
We pass out flyers, we knock on doors, we cold call, whatever we can do, honestly, I'mactually getting ready to employ a virtual assistant to do some outreach for me to kind of
increase our weekly sales during the week when we're not doing our food truck stuff orevents.
(19:00):
Um, so just, just to kind of add something else to that, as we, as we bring in more peopleon the team, that's one of my goals is to increase our revenue.
Um, you know, we're getting a second truck soon, so, you know, the other part of it ismaking sure that we can support the growth.
Um, and so that's one of the reasons why I'm doing that, but mainly word of mouth, I've,I've found good results with TikTok ads, surprisingly.
(19:25):
ah I don't worry.
Yes, I've done really well with TikTok ads.
You'd be surprised.
ah I've tried to...
or selling catering?
Really?
and and Just keep getting people to the food truck like tick tock has been great The adsaren't expensive Yeah Yeah, yeah for sure the ads are so super expensive.
(19:49):
It like you can do as little as like 10 to 15 bucks a day And I usually run them like twoor three days in a row nothing too long So for like less than a hundred bucks, I can run
an ad for like three days
and that's done really well for us.
So I have gotten some catering leads from it as well.
And then there's a lot of like lists and stuff you can sign up for.
(20:11):
There's a lot of, you've got like all the food truck apps.
They have a lot of catering leads come through those consistently.
So they're all over the place.
It's just a bunch of different things that we employ to get leads.
So one of the things I used to do is, you know, I like to sample my food because if theytaste it they're gonna want it, right?
(20:32):
And
Now everybody goes out and does sample lunch and says well I didn't have time, didn't havethe staff to do it.
So if it was a big enough event, I'd say, Hey, come eat lunch with me in the dining room.
And so what's coming to mind for you is every Friday you're in Germantown, you got plentyof food.
You know, I'm thinking go to all the businesses within a ten, fifteen minute drive, right?
(20:55):
So go to Metro Center, there's a million people who order in lunch and invite those peoplewho order in lunch to come get a free s lunch on you on Friday.
Yeah, sure, that's a good idea.
food and you know you get a you get a few minutes to chit chat with them, make aconnection because, you know, you come across very personable and if the food's good, you
know, there could be an opportunity.
(21:17):
So that's the first thing.
Metro Center is a gold mine, you know, as far as offices and you know, and then we haven'teven talked about downtown, it's just a stone's throw away, the government building.
So literally if you just prospected the businesses in downtown and Metro Center and youknow, invited five
new people a week, ten new people a week to come get a lunch on you and build thatdatabase, you you probably have more business you you you wouldn't know what to do.
(21:43):
Yeah, that's a great idea.
I'm actually going to try that.
So we typically open at five.
So a lot of the businesses are closing for the day, but I may just start opening a littleearlier in the day, maybe around lunchtime on a Friday and just have a Friday that we're
doing exclusively that we're just marketing.
And that may work.
Definitely that might be other thing.
(22:05):
Well, mainly a lot of times because I'm cooking stuff fresh, I'm usually finishing upcooking food for the day.
And so some like like my brisket I usually cook Thursday and they hot hole but a lot ofthe like my chicken or some of the my ribs I typically like to do those the day of it just
tastes better in my opinion and you know I want to always give the best product possibleand so definitely it's on my schedule to eventually start opening uh earlier and earlier
(22:35):
it's just you know I'm
I really feel like even though I have staff with the cooking part of it, the smoking partof them, I'm a one man band.
it's just that part of it, has to be, I'm very almost particular about that piece.
I'm like, this has to be right or I won't serve it.
you know, as I get over that.
Well you might need to put a little smoker in your truck, like a little Southern Pride orsomething, so you can smoke those things, you know, while you're prepping up and doing
(23:02):
everything and it's those are on site and the other stuff.
The other thing that comes to mind is do you make barbecue nachos or baked potatoes?
we do.
So a lot of our caterings are barbecue nachos.
mean, they're tacos or are loaded potatoes.
We do a lot of catering with those.
So they're easy to kind of grab and go.
(23:23):
um so during the, yeah, yeah, people get a lot of, so we, typically we do a lot of, so wego to like Howard School and do lunch service sometimes.
When we do like the lunch service during the week, a lot of times we're doing like asmaller like, uh
menu of our full menu for the truck.
we're doing like loaded nachos, we're doing the potatoes, we're doing the smoked wings,things we can get out pretty quickly.
(23:50):
And it's usually just like either one of those items, it's not all three, it's like, allright, we're doing loaded potatoes today or we're doing nachos.
We were like, well, I can't get a beef rib today for lunch?
No, you gotta come to the truck on Friday for that.
But today we're doing potato with either chicken, pork or turkey.
This is your options, you know.
and it's good to have that scarcity.
(24:11):
Like, I always want Chick fil A on Sunday.
So if they know they can only get the beef ribs on Friday night
Yeah.
And so what else?
What what's the what's the what's next?
You know, do you see getting a brick and mortar build bu building?
Um, do you l do you like the the focus in on catering and having the portability of notbeing stuck in a location and that paying that rent every month?
(24:39):
What where do you see the what next for you?
So what's next for us is to expand our catering business.
Like I said, we're working on a second truck.
We've ordered a commercial smoker that should be ready soon.
So we'll be picking that up soon.
And I'm really going to focus more on catering and events, doing some larger festivals.
(24:59):
We're doing Tomato Fest this year for the first time.
ah So we're doing a lot of like, that's going to be kind of what I'm going to lead into.
Maybe doing some traveling and doing some things outside of state.
um
and less, ah I would say less everyday service.
I feel like everyday service is cool, but it has limitations, know, weather kind ofhampers business in the winter months.
(25:22):
It's like watching paint dry waiting on people to come to a food truck.
it's like, ah instead of focusing more on opening more days and marketing towards having afood truck open more days, I really want to focus on just continuing to grow catering.
We know exactly what we're going to get from that.
You know, we don't have a lot of waste.
uh The staff seems to love doing catering versus sitting on a truck for six hours.
(25:46):
So it's just easier on us.
I'm a dad too.
I have two small children.
So with my schedule, they're playing sports and things like that.
So I want to make more room to do those types of things with my kids and not be workingall the time.
So it's more about light and balance.
mean, yeah, yeah, for sure.
know, you can't get that time back with them and you know, and the good thing aboutcatering is you can massage it around to your lifestyle and you know, if you got a good
(26:14):
crew, you don't have to be on every event or deliver every event, you know, so there's alot of flexibility.
Um so I know you have a background in mental health counseling, substance abuse, is thatcorrect?
Did I read that right?
That is correct, yes.
And so, i y you've got two very diverse backgrounds, right?
(26:35):
Athletics, mental health counseling.
How d how is the mental health counseling aspect of your background, how has that helpedyou in running and growing a business?
So one thing I've always done working at any business and also watching my parents, bothmy parents were entrepreneurs.
(26:55):
My mother was a hairdresser and my father is a visual artist.
So they're both were entrepreneurs.
So I had ah good people to watch and learn from.
uh But one thing I always did, it didn't matter which job I worked at, I always paidattention to how they ran a business.
ah It didn't matter what you're doing, it's the business of being, some money's beenexchanged.
(27:17):
So I did a lot of uh research and just a lot of observation when I worked those jobs.
But I would say what's helped me manage my business is to understand my own mental healtha lot of times and just kind of be super hyper-focused on like, hey, tomorrow's gonna be
better than today.
Even if I have a bad day and I'm not feeling it or I'm stressed out, I always think abouttomorrow's gonna be better today than today.
(27:44):
uh
really focus on my mental health.
It's very important to make sure that your mental health is important when you run abusiness, because it gets stressful.
As you know, sometimes it's...
that's a great point.
I don't I think sometimes people just run themselves ragged.
Luckily I've always done everything in moderation and never fully overdone it.
Um probably seeing my dad work too hard, work five and a half days a week, kill himself,my mom you know, we went bankrupt, my mom had to go back to work, she was a breadwinner
(28:14):
for a while and you know, just seeing that stress, it's i that extra money's not worth thestress.
I can tell you that.
I've gotten to the point now where I'm turning things away.
If it doesn't align with what I want to be doing and if it doesn't make sense for thebusiness, I'll be like, nope, we're passed.
We get opportunities all the time and I just like, hey, this isn't the right opportunityfor us.
(28:37):
It's not worth the extra stress.
You know, you b you you you bring up a good point.
One of my mentors say one of the most important skills is knowing what to say no to.
Exactly, exactly.
when you're trying to build a business, you want to say, Yeah, I'll do this, yes, I'll dothat and then you look back and go, shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have done that.
It it either didn't fit with our core business, our values, what we should have done forprofit.
(29:00):
You know, sometimes you're just chasing that dollar but you don't really realize the priceyou pay or that hey, it's not as profitable as you think it is.
And if you'd said no, you would have freed up the time for something else that would havebeen profitable.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So w how do you feel your background helps you in uh understanding and dealing withpeople?
(29:24):
'Cause you know, there's an old saying like, you know, somebody you date somebody who's atherapist, it's like, Are you psychoanalyzing me, right?
So do you do you feel that that helps you dealing with your team, your your customers?
say yes.
My grandfather growing up taught me how to deal with people.
(29:44):
uh He grew up in the, you know, he worked for NCR as a cash register tech in the south andyou know he's always had to deal with people all the time and I just kind of watched him
and observed him uh and a lot of the same mannerisms he has I have.
Like I'm very personable, I like talking to people.
(30:05):
uh
I'm very approachable and I mean, I'm very easygoing and I think that spirit carries on inme and I think that's what helps me interact with people in a way that feels natural and
not forced.
A lot of times people can be kind of standoffish when you meet them.
I'm not like that at all.
I'm super easygoing.
I think my size sometimes scares people.
(30:26):
I'm like 6'4", like 320.
So people will look at me like, oh, that's a big guy.
But a lot of times I'm really, really nice.
I love to talk.
My wife says I'm too talkative.
So I think that's kind of helped me.
uh And I typically don't try to psychoanalyze people at all.
I just don't have the time for it.
I will say.
(30:46):
think but don't you think naturally you have a read on people because of your background?
Maybe you're not trying to psychoanalyze them, but how can you not work with people andpersonalities and not just on a like a natural level, you can read people instantly and
know what they're about and what their their motives are and you know
(31:09):
I agree.
do say I do subconsciously, I would say.
I would say I definitely do subconsciously.
uh Also working in that field, you also get burned out too because you're dealing withother people's problems and issues all the time.
uh That's part of the reason why I decided to step away and just focus on like it starteddraining me.
(31:30):
You you're having to deal with people dying and different things that happen in thatspace.
And it can be overwhelming.
I don't know if maybe even firefighters or some of first responders, they go through a lotof the same things because they're dealing with so much different things, tragic things
that happen to these people all the time.
And they internalize a lot of those things.
(31:52):
So working in, especially in substance abuse, I dealt with a lot of very traumaticstories.
And at some point it just got to a point where it was too much.
I'm like, hey, this isn't, I can't do this anymore.
And so I kind of cut.
part of that off in my brain.
like I said, I may do it subconsciously, uh I've been so, I'm probably going on nine yearsremoved from that.
(32:15):
So it's kind of a phase of my life where it's not as prevalent and I don't practice itevery day.
it's not, I don't deal with it as much.
So yeah, for sure.
but I think, you know, you probably innately can read people.
And so uh you know, you pick that up.
But what you know, what's interesting, you know, I'm sure dealing with people's regularproblems is like one tenth of dealing with somebody going through substance abuse and
(32:41):
sobriety and you know you know, you got somebody who's coding out and uh just all sorts ofshit that you deal with, I'm sure it is just
physically emotional draining where barbecue like I'm eating I'm happy like I I unlessyour food sucks I'm not complaining.
Like I got a good plate of nachos.
(33:02):
I'm happy.
So it's a whole it feeds your soul when people are happy with what you're producing.
You know, and I think it's the same whether
you're a backyard cook and your friends come over and they're raving about what you'regrilling out or whether you have a restaurant or catering company, there's a lot of
satisfaction knowing that, hey, I've made this, I made all these people happy.
(33:24):
you know, I prefer happy businesses to sad businesses.
I agree a thousand percent.
oh You pose the question of what makes me tick, that's it.
Seeing people smile when they try the food, try it for the first time and they're just atawe how good it is.
We've had some people come to the food truck recently from like around the country andit's been shocking to see the like people know about us and they want to try the food.
(33:47):
We had a couple family come in from Minnesota.
They were like, hey, we were trying to find you.
They had been calling the business line while we were on a truck trying to find us andthey found us and they really enjoyed the food.
We some people come in from Brazil and try the food last weekend.
So it's just crazy to see like people are from around the world are getting to try ourfood.
So that's amazing.
ah Food is worldwide.
(34:11):
I think it is the bridge that kind of brings the world together.
ah And so with that being said, just being able to ah experience the joy that people getfrom the food that you bring is obviously barbecues and comfort food.
So, you know.
Allowing people to see that and enjoy the food and just live in that moment.
That's what really makes me tick, you know?
(34:32):
That's exciting.
And you know, what I've seen over and over again is like
There's there's no such thing as get rich quick in the food business, right?
It's you build a reputation and then you know, one day you're gonna be thirty years downthe road and you're gonna have this and that going on and you're gonna be in grocery
stores and people go, man, look at him, he's an overnight success, and they don't rememberyou're sweating it, cooking five turkeys in your backyard, hoping that it they get out
(34:59):
good, right?
You they don't they don't see the journey and and and I'm sure sports teaches you theperseverance, right?
Because you gotta work hard.
There's no shortcut to be
being a good athlete, right?
I mean, th there there's not an easy button.
Yes, some people are more gifted than others, but even the most gifted guys, you know,Michael Jordan, he he hit the gym every day.
(35:20):
Kobe, I mean these guys are working hard.
They're not they're not resting on their lawyer laurels, right?
To be to be the goat, you you've got to you gotta put it in every day.
And I think a lot of people
you know, they give up way too quickly.
Um, they don't see that like, you know, you just stay after it, you do a good job, theworld's gonna find obviously it helps to market yourself and get your name out there, but
(35:46):
well that's exciting.
We'll have to come check you out.
Um I don't know if we're gonna have time before we leave town for the summer, but if notwhen we're back.
Super exciting.
Well I appreciate your time, Stuart, and good talking with you.
What?
Thank you.
I say I appreciate you having me.
Thank you.
You too.
(36:06):
Thanks.
Hello again, I'm Michael Latias, your host of Barbecue Catering Smarts, and today's guestis Stuart McLean, founder of Backbone BBQ and Catering.
With years of experience building a barbecue business centered around quality foods,strong customer relationships, and reliable execution, Stuart knows what it takes to
deliver memorable catering experiences at every level.
(00:52):
From managing large events and maintaining consistency under pressure to building systemsthat support long term growth, he brings a practical operator first perspective on what it
really takes to run a successful.
Barbecue catering operation, and we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get started, let's take a minute to recognize our sponsor, CaterZen CateringSoftware.
They help barbecue restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:13):
Discover why barbecue restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase cateringsales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of the software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Barbecue Catering Smarts.
Welcome, Stuart.
How's it going?
I'm doing good.
Michael, how are you?
Good, good, good.
Thanks for being here today.
Um we probably could have just gotten face to face since we're probably a couple of milesfrom each other here over East Germantown.
(01:41):
I'm in East Nashville.
So I'd like to start everyone off with an icebreaker question.
Give me a number between one and three hundred.
13.
I've ever had that one.
If you could relive your childhood in some other country than your own, what country wouldyou choose and why?
That's a good one.
oh If I could relive my childhood in any other country.
(02:05):
I would say Trinidad and Tobago.
ah My father's from there.
I've only visited a couple of times, but I really enjoyed my trips there.
I think that would be an amazing place to live as a kid, for sure.
It it I I'm assuming is it in the Caribbean?
And very tropical, beautiful waters.
(02:27):
beautiful water.
You can get fresh fish right on the water.
um The weather is always warm, so it's a cool place to be.
Very cool.
Um, I was born in France, so I've I've been there a handful of times as a kid and thenmore as an adult and um I don't know that I would give up.
I grew up in Memphis.
I had a great childhood.
(02:49):
Like we we ran the streets.
When you know, when when I was a kid, you know, you leave at the crack of dawn and I comehome till night and you go in the woods and ride your bike and do all sorts of stuff and I
don't know that I would give up my childhood.
Yeah, I agree.
If I had to live someplace, that would be it.
But my childhood was the exact same.
I grew up in rural East Texas in a small town called Tyler.
(03:12):
And it was the same way, going in the woods, staying out till right before the sun wentdown and street light came on.
That was your indicator to go back in the house when the street light came on.
But yeah, I do.
Yeah, I have two.
My kids are eight and whatever.
They'll be eight and five this summer.
So they're seven and four now.
(03:33):
You know, I used to say my mom let me run the streets when I was five, which is probably,you know, child protective services today, but I think kids
They miss out on that independence of fending for themselves and learning how to work withyour friends and being creative.
Like we would take scrap pieces of wood and pallets and build forts and all sorts of stuffthat kids today they're just playing video games and they're missing out on so much.
(04:01):
We'd go fishing and we had a couple of ponds in our neighborhood, you know, catch catchtadpoles and
you know, toads and whatever.
So I just feel kids today, like I I think probably because of all the news you're scaredto let your kid out past the the mailbox that they're gonna get abducted.
They probably got equally abducted when I was a kid, just nobody knew about it.
(04:23):
Exactly.
It wasn't on the news or Instagram, so we didn't have any reports of it.
So I think there were a lot of missing children posters up back in the day, it wasn'tpublicly, the knowledge wasn't there for it.
kid got kidnapped in California you knew nothing of it.
Now you no, no, no, I grew up in Memphis.
My father got yeah, he got trans he got recruited with a company out of Memphis and sothat's where I spent my childhood and then I moved up to Nashville.
(04:52):
I worked for Corky's barbecue in college and was one of their first franchisees.
So how did you wind up in Nashville from Texas?
So I got recruited to play college football here at TSU and decided to just stay inNashville.
I enjoyed it.
I met my wife in college and we just made Nashville home.
So that's how I ended up here.
(05:14):
It was a cool journey to come from Dallas into a smaller town, which I was kind of usedto.
But when I got here, I thought I was going to see a bunch of people riding horses.
I thought it was going to be like, so country music and it was.
exact opposite of what I expected that should have been.
So it was cool.
That was a cool experience.
I got here in 2006.
(05:34):
In 2006.
there you know, Nashville's come a long way in twenty years.
A long way.
I mean, two thousand and six it was I mean, it was probably safer than when I came to townto go downtown, but it's it's nothing like it is now and now there's so many high ri I
don't even recognize the city, can't keep up with all the restaurants.
(05:54):
It's
It's crazy.
So, um, that's awesome that you you made a home here, and you got in at the right time.
So tell me how you ended up in the barbecue business.
Sure, ah so initially coming from Texas, the barbecue in Nashville was just so differentthan what I was typically used to.
(06:14):
There was more beef, we'd do more beef.
You didn't really get good brisket here.
There weren't any places you could get really get smoked turkey here.
So it was confusing to me when I got here.
my great uncle's back home in Texas.
They're pit masters and I would kind of watch them growing up.
And my mom actually bought me my first grill.
So we used to grill on our back porch.
(06:37):
And so she showed me how to work the grill.
In Texas.
In Texas.
Yep, in Texas.
So this was in high school.
High school.
So like 16 or 17.
Yes, I've been grilling a Weber kettle.
It was a Weber kettle.
So did you did you offset Cook on that thing?
I didn't start offsetting cooking until I bought my house here in Nashville.
(07:01):
So I bought, what was it, like 2014, yeah around 2014, 2015.
As a moving gift, my wife bought me an offset smoker.
She bought me an Oklahoma Joe.
And so I learned to cook.
Oh yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, so I learned to cook on an Oklahoma Joe in the backyard.
(07:23):
So I started smoking meats on the Oklahoma Joe.
And eventually I was like, well, there's this place back home called Greenberg SmokedTurkeys.
They're world renowned.
They ship turkeys around the world, all over the country and all over the world.
They're even on Oprah.
So they're very, very popular.
And um I missed that flavor of smoked turkey that we get back home.
(07:46):
So I started trying to make my own version of that here and it got really popular.
So like every Thanksgiving I would sell more and more turkeys.
one them selling like five or 10 turkeys to 20 or 30.
And then one year I sold close to 50 turkeys.
So was just like, I've got something here, you know?
So I started taking like small catering gigs after that, trying out my hand at brisket andribs.
(08:09):
I was good at cooking ribs and stuff like that already, but it took some time to likeperfect my brisket, which I'm known for now, but that's kind of how I got my start just in
the backyard, you know, like everybody else just taking a shot at a lot of YouTube videosand
Just over the years, it's got better and better.
I think that's a common thread.
you know, I got into the business because of weighted tables at Corky's, but I grew up myparents had a Brinkman smoker, the little dome kettle.
(08:36):
They used to do turkeys, um, you know, at Thanksgiving.
And then
year.
I would say I I had one of those.
I had a uh I was in a cooking competition for beef ribs and we had to use a Weber.
So we I sort of retrofitted it.
We cooked across from the coals and had a a water pan and those beef ribs were were fire.
(08:59):
My my son will tell you best beef ribs he's ever had.
It was it was phenomenal.
But you know, obviously it's a it's a big it's a big leap from you know making stuff inyour backyard for friends and family to starting a business.
absolutely.
coming from a football background, how do you feel that that contributed to to yourbusiness?
(09:25):
Absolutely.
oh So I would say discipline.
So in college, we used to have to get up super, super early.
I'm talking about sometimes 5, 5.30 to make, you know, early morning workouts.
We stay up late watching film until, you know, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night andhave to be back up the next day, study hall each day.
So it created a certain level of discipline that I've implemented in my business.
(09:49):
So when I start up my pit is usually early in the morning same around the same timesometimes four or five o'clock in the morning ah And I've kind of implement it implemented
that into my business as well as my staff So even though they don't like getting up earlyI'm like hey if I'm up early you guys have got to get up early too so we can get our day
started um I Think usually if you get up before 5 a.m.
(10:11):
It's a lot quieter.
You don't run into traffic
So we're able to do a lot of the heavy lifting early in the morning before people aremoving around.
It just makes our workflow a lot easier.
So I would say that discipline from getting up early mornings for football is what reallycreated a structure for my business moving forward.
that's cool.
I've always been an early morning person.
(10:33):
Like I'd rather get up and cracking and done early.
And like you said, you know, when my kids were growing up, sometimes I'd be in my officeat four in the morning and I could get I could get eight hours worth of work done in two
hours.
There's no interruptions, there's no phone calls, there's nobody asking you anything.
You can just get in the zone.
Now, you've got a food truck in Germantown, so that's ten minutes from my house.
(10:55):
Literally, I'm gonna have to come check you out.
what
You only do the food truck one day a week, you told me?
do a food truck.
Yeah, we do the food truck one day a week.
ah As we staff up and we kind of ramp up for the summer, we're going to start addingSaturdays consistently.
We've been doing like a pop-up or two on Saturdays at the brewery as well, mainly doingbrunch.
(11:18):
ah But yeah, right now just Fridays.
Eventually we plan to open more days a week, but for now just Fridays.
And do you have a smoker on the truck or do you smoke in a commissary and bring it out?
We smoke at the commissary and bring it out.
uh Eventually, we're actually working on a second trailer with a pit on it.
(11:39):
And that way we'll be able to just do everything on site.
so probably within the next six months, we'll have that completed and ready to go.
And so this is a full time business for you?
Yep, it's full time, um seven days a week, 365 days a year.
So what what percentage of your business is catering versus what you sell out of thetruck, you know, to individuals?
(12:05):
% of our business is catering.
We do more catering than anything.
And so during the week are you doing more drop off or full service events?
Mostly drop-offs during the week.
uh From time to time we do have full service events, but we do lot of catering with thefood truck itself.
So we actually bring the food truck out to do events as well.
Let's say a client wants us to cater for their office party or they're paying for lunchfor the day, we'll bring the truck out and do that.
(12:35):
A lot of businesses around town hire us to bring our truck out for lunch.
So we do stuff like that during the week.
But you do a lot of drop off as well.
So what's what what is the profile of the drop off customer and how did you build thatbusiness?
Because usually that business is built because of bricks and mortar, right?
You have a building on Germantown, people come and eat there, and then they they want youto come cater to their office.
(13:01):
You don't have that built in foot traffic.
So how'd you build the drop off business and who's your who who are you selling to in thedrop off arena?
Sure, oh I started, so what was it, maybe three years ago I did FUTA.
I don't know if you're familiar with him, but essentially you set up and do a pop-up atdifferent office buildings around town.
(13:23):
So I did that for about a year, it really, really well.
We were one of the top uh grossing businesses on the platform in Nashville, so we didreally well.
But it just got to be too overwhelming, because we were like at two different spots at onetime.
Wow.
trying to manage staff and staff enough food for both sides.
It just got to be really busy.
And so I built a lot of the connections through that with like my corporate clients.
(13:50):
And then just word of mouth, people have been sharing the business.
oh We did something at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center to help us get a lot of exposureas well.
We did one of their programs uh and we graduated from that.
So we've gotten a lot of clients from being a part of that.
And then we just, you we talk about it when people come to the truck and let them knowlike, hey, if you have anything you need catering for, give us a shout.
(14:14):
ah This time of year, we're getting ready to go into the summer.
So we'll be doing like a lot of family reunions and different things like that.
And then we just have repeat customers we built rapport with.
And then there's a few apps like uh you have your cater cow and your, what is the otherone that we use?
There's another one that we use quite a bit that.
(14:35):
cater?
We do easy cater.
oh So there's a few different avenues that we use to kind of get ourselves out there somemore that's kind of helped us build that book of business for weekly catering.
So the people you're doing drop off for, I would imagine it's feast or famine, right?
Like, do you have a minimum like, hey, on a Monday we shut down and we only work threedays a week?
(15:01):
Or, you know, are you gonna go in for somebody says I just wanna order drop off forfifteen, you got nothing else on the books, you're gonna go in, make it happen and then
the next day makes up for it.
How does that work?
No, so we're typically closed on Sundays and Mondays most times.
ah Usually those are our rest days.
I go to church every Sunday, so that's the first thing we do.
(15:23):
And then Mondays is usually our planning period day and day of rest really.
We have a staff meeting on Mondays.
We kind of check the calendar, make sure we don't have anything on the books for that day.
Usually if we do have something on the books for that day, it's something we booked outmonths in advance.
But typically we don't do anything on Mondays except for like,
Creating shopping lists and ordering from like our providers to make sure that oursupplies are there for the week Tuesday we're Catering orders and deliveries And then
(15:56):
Wednesdays and Thursdays we're doing prep for the food truck on Friday or if we have anyother things going on that week We'll do the drop-offs and stuff.
But typically we have a minimum our minimum for pickup catering is 750 and our deliveryminimum is 850 so
If it doesn't meet that criteria, we won't touch it.
Just to, you know how it be done.
(16:17):
not like a barbecue restaurant that you could do a two hundred dollar order because you'vegot the food.
So it's gotta be worth your while to fire it up.
Yep, it's gotta be worth our while to fire it up.
Again, we're still doing Kraft barbecue, so I'm cooking everything fresh.
So typically, like a lot of the providers that we use for the weekly caterings, theyusually give us a week's notice.
(16:41):
So I have a catering drop off tomorrow morning and we knew about it last week.
So we'll have all the prep done for it.
We started the prep yesterday, so it's already done.
I'm finishing up the proteins today.
We'll get everything ready for tomorrow and um we'll drop it off tomorrow at around 11.
uh It's box lunches, our least favorite caterings because it just takes more time to do.
(17:06):
Yeah, yeah.
But it's usually like 40 to 50 people.
So it's okay with a couple of people doing it.
uh I really don't like doing box lunches, but that's how this provider requires us to doit.
And I'm like, hey, you know, we can offer this at a way better price if you buy it in atray and we can just drop it off.
thing and people get it's hotter and you know, if somebody wants a little bit more theyget a little bit more and you know, what have you.
(17:32):
So you said you go to church every Sunday.
I've just gotta ask, are are you AME?
Do you go to an AME church?
No, go to the church I go to is called One City.
It's a oh non-denominational church.
The reason I ask is right across the street from me.
It's an AME church and I've always worked with the the pastors at that church and one of'em's a good friend of mine.
(17:55):
Well, they combined that church with another church and they took the preschool from theother church and now we have a preschool across the street.
Yeah, it is nice.
My fiance and I went to Costco and bought some
snacks for all the kids.
Super super cute kid.
We brought we brought the black lab over there and the kids went crazy to play with thedog.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
(18:17):
So besides the marketplaces and the word of mouth, um what have you done to build yourbusiness?
Like do you knock on doors?
Do you network?
Do you communicate with your current like how you know that's always the biggest issue inany business, right?
How do you how do build sales?
Yeah.
So I think it's ever evolving.
(18:38):
I've done a little bit of everything.
We pass out flyers, we knock on doors, we cold call, whatever we can do, honestly, I'mactually getting ready to employ a virtual assistant to do some outreach for me to kind of
increase our weekly sales during the week when we're not doing our food truck stuff orevents.
(19:00):
Um, so just, just to kind of add something else to that, as we, as we bring in more peopleon the team, that's one of my goals is to increase our revenue.
Um, you know, we're getting a second truck soon, so, you know, the other part of it ismaking sure that we can support the growth.
Um, and so that's one of the reasons why I'm doing that, but mainly word of mouth, I've,I've found good results with TikTok ads, surprisingly.
(19:25):
ah I don't worry.
Yes, I've done really well with TikTok ads.
You'd be surprised.
ah I've tried to...
or selling catering?
Really?
and and Just keep getting people to the food truck like tick tock has been great The adsaren't expensive Yeah Yeah, yeah for sure the ads are so super expensive.
(19:49):
It like you can do as little as like 10 to 15 bucks a day And I usually run them like twoor three days in a row nothing too long So for like less than a hundred bucks, I can run
an ad for like three days
and that's done really well for us.
So I have gotten some catering leads from it as well.
And then there's a lot of like lists and stuff you can sign up for.
(20:11):
There's a lot of, you've got like all the food truck apps.
They have a lot of catering leads come through those consistently.
So they're all over the place.
It's just a bunch of different things that we employ to get leads.
So one of the things I used to do is, you know, I like to sample my food because if theytaste it they're gonna want it, right?
(20:32):
And
Now everybody goes out and does sample lunch and says well I didn't have time, didn't havethe staff to do it.
So if it was a big enough event, I'd say, Hey, come eat lunch with me in the dining room.
And so what's coming to mind for you is every Friday you're in Germantown, you got plentyof food.
You know, I'm thinking go to all the businesses within a ten, fifteen minute drive, right?
(20:55):
So go to Metro Center, there's a million people who order in lunch and invite those peoplewho order in lunch to come get a free s lunch on you on Friday.
Yeah, sure, that's a good idea.
food and you know you get a you get a few minutes to chit chat with them, make aconnection because, you know, you come across very personable and if the food's good, you
know, there could be an opportunity.
(21:17):
So that's the first thing.
Metro Center is a gold mine, you know, as far as offices and you know, and then we haven'teven talked about downtown, it's just a stone's throw away, the government building.
So literally if you just prospected the businesses in downtown and Metro Center and youknow, invited five
new people a week, ten new people a week to come get a lunch on you and build thatdatabase, you you probably have more business you you you wouldn't know what to do.
(21:43):
Yeah, that's a great idea.
I'm actually going to try that.
So we typically open at five.
So a lot of the businesses are closing for the day, but I may just start opening a littleearlier in the day, maybe around lunchtime on a Friday and just have a Friday that we're
doing exclusively that we're just marketing.
And that may work.
Definitely that might be other thing.
(22:05):
Well, mainly a lot of times because I'm cooking stuff fresh, I'm usually finishing upcooking food for the day.
And so some like like my brisket I usually cook Thursday and they hot hole but a lot ofthe like my chicken or some of the my ribs I typically like to do those the day of it just
tastes better in my opinion and you know I want to always give the best product possibleand so definitely it's on my schedule to eventually start opening uh earlier and earlier
(22:35):
it's just you know I'm
I really feel like even though I have staff with the cooking part of it, the smoking partof them, I'm a one man band.
it's just that part of it, has to be, I'm very almost particular about that piece.
I'm like, this has to be right or I won't serve it.
you know, as I get over that.
Well you might need to put a little smoker in your truck, like a little Southern Pride orsomething, so you can smoke those things, you know, while you're prepping up and doing
(23:02):
everything and it's those are on site and the other stuff.
The other thing that comes to mind is do you make barbecue nachos or baked potatoes?
we do.
So a lot of our caterings are barbecue nachos.
mean, they're tacos or are loaded potatoes.
We do a lot of catering with those.
So they're easy to kind of grab and go.
(23:23):
um so during the, yeah, yeah, people get a lot of, so we, typically we do a lot of, so wego to like Howard School and do lunch service sometimes.
When we do like the lunch service during the week, a lot of times we're doing like asmaller like, uh
menu of our full menu for the truck.
we're doing like loaded nachos, we're doing the potatoes, we're doing the smoked wings,things we can get out pretty quickly.
(23:50):
And it's usually just like either one of those items, it's not all three, it's like, allright, we're doing loaded potatoes today or we're doing nachos.
We were like, well, I can't get a beef rib today for lunch?
No, you gotta come to the truck on Friday for that.
But today we're doing potato with either chicken, pork or turkey.
This is your options, you know.
and it's good to have that scarcity.
(24:11):
Like, I always want Chick fil A on Sunday.
So if they know they can only get the beef ribs on Friday night
Yeah.
And so what else?
What what's the what's the what's next?
You know, do you see getting a brick and mortar build bu building?
Um, do you l do you like the the focus in on catering and having the portability of notbeing stuck in a location and that paying that rent every month?
(24:39):
What where do you see the what next for you?
So what's next for us is to expand our catering business.
Like I said, we're working on a second truck.
We've ordered a commercial smoker that should be ready soon.
So we'll be picking that up soon.
And I'm really going to focus more on catering and events, doing some larger festivals.
(24:59):
We're doing Tomato Fest this year for the first time.
ah So we're doing a lot of like, that's going to be kind of what I'm going to lead into.
Maybe doing some traveling and doing some things outside of state.
um
and less, ah I would say less everyday service.
I feel like everyday service is cool, but it has limitations, know, weather kind ofhampers business in the winter months.
(25:22):
It's like watching paint dry waiting on people to come to a food truck.
it's like, ah instead of focusing more on opening more days and marketing towards having afood truck open more days, I really want to focus on just continuing to grow catering.
We know exactly what we're going to get from that.
You know, we don't have a lot of waste.
uh The staff seems to love doing catering versus sitting on a truck for six hours.
(25:46):
So it's just easier on us.
I'm a dad too.
I have two small children.
So with my schedule, they're playing sports and things like that.
So I want to make more room to do those types of things with my kids and not be workingall the time.
So it's more about light and balance.
mean, yeah, yeah, for sure.
know, you can't get that time back with them and you know, and the good thing aboutcatering is you can massage it around to your lifestyle and you know, if you got a good
(26:14):
crew, you don't have to be on every event or deliver every event, you know, so there's alot of flexibility.
Um so I know you have a background in mental health counseling, substance abuse, is thatcorrect?
Did I read that right?
That is correct, yes.
And so, i y you've got two very diverse backgrounds, right?
(26:35):
Athletics, mental health counseling.
How d how is the mental health counseling aspect of your background, how has that helpedyou in running and growing a business?
So one thing I've always done working at any business and also watching my parents, bothmy parents were entrepreneurs.
(26:55):
My mother was a hairdresser and my father is a visual artist.
So they're both were entrepreneurs.
So I had ah good people to watch and learn from.
uh But one thing I always did, it didn't matter which job I worked at, I always paidattention to how they ran a business.
ah It didn't matter what you're doing, it's the business of being, some money's beenexchanged.
(27:17):
So I did a lot of uh research and just a lot of observation when I worked those jobs.
But I would say what's helped me manage my business is to understand my own mental healtha lot of times and just kind of be super hyper-focused on like, hey, tomorrow's gonna be
better than today.
Even if I have a bad day and I'm not feeling it or I'm stressed out, I always think abouttomorrow's gonna be better today than today.
(27:44):
uh
really focus on my mental health.
It's very important to make sure that your mental health is important when you run abusiness, because it gets stressful.
As you know, sometimes it's...
that's a great point.
I don't I think sometimes people just run themselves ragged.
Luckily I've always done everything in moderation and never fully overdone it.
Um probably seeing my dad work too hard, work five and a half days a week, kill himself,my mom you know, we went bankrupt, my mom had to go back to work, she was a breadwinner
(28:14):
for a while and you know, just seeing that stress, it's i that extra money's not worth thestress.
I can tell you that.
I've gotten to the point now where I'm turning things away.
If it doesn't align with what I want to be doing and if it doesn't make sense for thebusiness, I'll be like, nope, we're passed.
We get opportunities all the time and I just like, hey, this isn't the right opportunityfor us.
(28:37):
It's not worth the extra stress.
You know, you b you you you bring up a good point.
One of my mentors say one of the most important skills is knowing what to say no to.
Exactly, exactly.
when you're trying to build a business, you want to say, Yeah, I'll do this, yes, I'll dothat and then you look back and go, shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have done that.
It it either didn't fit with our core business, our values, what we should have done forprofit.
(29:00):
You know, sometimes you're just chasing that dollar but you don't really realize the priceyou pay or that hey, it's not as profitable as you think it is.
And if you'd said no, you would have freed up the time for something else that would havebeen profitable.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So w how do you feel your background helps you in uh understanding and dealing withpeople?
(29:24):
'Cause you know, there's an old saying like, you know, somebody you date somebody who's atherapist, it's like, Are you psychoanalyzing me, right?
So do you do you feel that that helps you dealing with your team, your your customers?
say yes.
My grandfather growing up taught me how to deal with people.
(29:44):
uh He grew up in the, you know, he worked for NCR as a cash register tech in the south andyou know he's always had to deal with people all the time and I just kind of watched him
and observed him uh and a lot of the same mannerisms he has I have.
Like I'm very personable, I like talking to people.
(30:05):
uh
I'm very approachable and I mean, I'm very easygoing and I think that spirit carries on inme and I think that's what helps me interact with people in a way that feels natural and
not forced.
A lot of times people can be kind of standoffish when you meet them.
I'm not like that at all.
I'm super easygoing.
I think my size sometimes scares people.
(30:26):
I'm like 6'4", like 320.
So people will look at me like, oh, that's a big guy.
But a lot of times I'm really, really nice.
I love to talk.
My wife says I'm too talkative.
So I think that's kind of helped me.
uh And I typically don't try to psychoanalyze people at all.
I just don't have the time for it.
I will say.
(30:46):
think but don't you think naturally you have a read on people because of your background?
Maybe you're not trying to psychoanalyze them, but how can you not work with people andpersonalities and not just on a like a natural level, you can read people instantly and
know what they're about and what their their motives are and you know
(31:09):
I agree.
do say I do subconsciously, I would say.
I would say I definitely do subconsciously.
uh Also working in that field, you also get burned out too because you're dealing withother people's problems and issues all the time.
uh That's part of the reason why I decided to step away and just focus on like it starteddraining me.
(31:30):
You you're having to deal with people dying and different things that happen in thatspace.
And it can be overwhelming.
I don't know if maybe even firefighters or some of first responders, they go through a lotof the same things because they're dealing with so much different things, tragic things
that happen to these people all the time.
And they internalize a lot of those things.
(31:52):
So working in, especially in substance abuse, I dealt with a lot of very traumaticstories.
And at some point it just got to a point where it was too much.
I'm like, hey, this isn't, I can't do this anymore.
And so I kind of cut.
part of that off in my brain.
like I said, I may do it subconsciously, uh I've been so, I'm probably going on nine yearsremoved from that.
(32:15):
So it's kind of a phase of my life where it's not as prevalent and I don't practice itevery day.
it's not, I don't deal with it as much.
So yeah, for sure.
but I think, you know, you probably innately can read people.
And so uh you know, you pick that up.
But what you know, what's interesting, you know, I'm sure dealing with people's regularproblems is like one tenth of dealing with somebody going through substance abuse and
(32:41):
sobriety and you know you know, you got somebody who's coding out and uh just all sorts ofshit that you deal with, I'm sure it is just
physically emotional draining where barbecue like I'm eating I'm happy like I I unlessyour food sucks I'm not complaining.
Like I got a good plate of nachos.
(33:02):
I'm happy.
So it's a whole it feeds your soul when people are happy with what you're producing.
You know, and I think it's the same whether
you're a backyard cook and your friends come over and they're raving about what you'regrilling out or whether you have a restaurant or catering company, there's a lot of
satisfaction knowing that, hey, I've made this, I made all these people happy.
(33:24):
you know, I prefer happy businesses to sad businesses.
I agree a thousand percent.
oh You pose the question of what makes me tick, that's it.
Seeing people smile when they try the food, try it for the first time and they're just atawe how good it is.
We've had some people come to the food truck recently from like around the country andit's been shocking to see the like people know about us and they want to try the food.
(33:47):
We had a couple family come in from Minnesota.
They were like, hey, we were trying to find you.
They had been calling the business line while we were on a truck trying to find us andthey found us and they really enjoyed the food.
We some people come in from Brazil and try the food last weekend.
So it's just crazy to see like people are from around the world are getting to try ourfood.
So that's amazing.
ah Food is worldwide.
(34:11):
I think it is the bridge that kind of brings the world together.
ah And so with that being said, just being able to ah experience the joy that people getfrom the food that you bring is obviously barbecues and comfort food.
So, you know.
Allowing people to see that and enjoy the food and just live in that moment.
That's what really makes me tick, you know?
(34:32):
That's exciting.
And you know, what I've seen over and over again is like
There's there's no such thing as get rich quick in the food business, right?
It's you build a reputation and then you know, one day you're gonna be thirty years downthe road and you're gonna have this and that going on and you're gonna be in grocery
stores and people go, man, look at him, he's an overnight success, and they don't rememberyou're sweating it, cooking five turkeys in your backyard, hoping that it they get out
(34:59):
good, right?
You they don't they don't see the journey and and and I'm sure sports teaches you theperseverance, right?
Because you gotta work hard.
There's no shortcut to be
being a good athlete, right?
I mean, th there there's not an easy button.
Yes, some people are more gifted than others, but even the most gifted guys, you know,Michael Jordan, he he hit the gym every day.
(35:20):
Kobe, I mean these guys are working hard.
They're not they're not resting on their lawyer laurels, right?
To be to be the goat, you you've got to you gotta put it in every day.
And I think a lot of people
you know, they give up way too quickly.
Um, they don't see that like, you know, you just stay after it, you do a good job, theworld's gonna find obviously it helps to market yourself and get your name out there, but
(35:46):
well that's exciting.
We'll have to come check you out.
Um I don't know if we're gonna have time before we leave town for the summer, but if notwhen we're back.
Super exciting.
Well I appreciate your time, Stuart, and good talking with you.
What?
Thank you.
I say I appreciate you having me.
Thank you.
You too.
(36:06):
Thanks.
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