Smokey Oak Barbecue

Dan - Host: 0:00

Today's episode of the meat & Greet BBQ podcast is brought to you by iOS outdoor kitchens. They are the South's leading outdoor kitchen design and installation specialists.

Owen - Host: 0:19

Walk Welcome to another episode of the meat & Greet BBQ Podcast. Today we are talking with Jack and John from smoky oak barbecue. These guys make the most amazing offset smokers. So without much further ado, here's Jack and John. Hi, John. Hi, Jack. Thanks very much for joining us on the meat & Greet BBQ podcast. Great to have you here for it. Please tell us introduce yourselves. Tell us who you are.

Jack - Smokey Oak BBQ: 0:45

Jack Yeah, got the guy who does the welding? Building the pits? Yeah. And shops a lot of wood.

Unknown: 0:56

Fish Oh, Chopper, Joel do a lot of the operational stuff. So website fulfillment, organizing people. My favorite. Yeah. Anything like that. And also enjoying splitting wood. Seven times, I think on Saturday. Wow. Yeah. So the doors. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, painted doors after this break, say as a candidate, unfortunately.

Owen - Host: 1:24

So tell us more about smoke BBQ then. I suppose as a business where you know, where did you guys start? How did it start and start to do now.

John - Smokey Oak BBQ: 1:34

So 2018 was when it was set up as a business. We've been friends for over 15 years, maybe longer. Jobs best found my wedding that was 11 years going. We started as a catering business. So Jack came with the Texas in 2017. Saw some hits was so built the 500 gallon. Yeah, then was like well, you kind of a big smoker if you haven't really got a catering business. So we just decided to do it. Did a couple years of festivals, gluttony, topia or local ones, things like that. And then COVID hit so there was the festivals, we were left with that 20 tons of wood, which we had ready for that. So we decided just to do meal kits and people that a few people only in 2020 explosion of home cooking. Everyone's like, I want to cook at home because I'm stuck here. So people asked us could you build us a pick? One thing so. So we did. Yeah, started off just doing home pets and bigger ones. We've done four or 500 gallons for people. Various ones crammed one end at 200 gallon whales, a lot of home cooks, a lot of guys trying to do what Wilson has done has been 130 I'm doing sort of curbside collection that's quite popular. Yeah, built

Unknown: 2:51

the vertical smoker with Matt Burgess. His idea he came to us, we were a black day festival with this idea of this hanging kind of style smoker. Which initially wanted to kind of put in a restaurant build a whole kind of restaurant idea around this type of cooking when we looked into it, and we've like a gas assist kind of thing. And it was just Yeah, too much red tape, just way way too much for us to kind of do but with the kind of short discussion I did have that kind of like the idea and you know, the overall kind of way the pit to work. So we Yeah, built in that and you on the go. That's cool. And I've got one of my friends bought one really easy to use, it doesn't take it takes the same amount of space as a Weber kettle, a lot of people's complaints with offsets are turned off meters long. So well use a vertical, you get a different type of bark, get quite a lot of capacity. And now I mean that was feeding over 50 people with it from from that size, which you couldn't do in the weather. Now it's got the tearing is slightly different flavor profiles. Well, it's a bit more kind of direct heat, because the fires underneath and it's kind of go to interviews are and then kind of the smoke comes up through so yes, slightly different flavor profile as you would off, like compared to an offset. So yeah, the offsets would work for Wilson's barbecue Dave, then extensively on tweaks and things he said 100 130 gallon as the 300 gallon was cooking the master classes with him. So he, you know, he comes up with some of our leader, our charcoal management system. Okay, man if you work with him to do it, and then out everyone that's got ones over them too. So we've also done an extended damper. We've redesigned that again just recently. So we're constantly trying to innovate and change. We're not just saying that's our pitch. I say, we've done what we're going to do stuff. We have to be bit careful because we don't want to get copied by everybody. Take Who's trying to keep some of it? Is to people that have got pizza, or are in contact with us. We don't post everything online. Yeah.

Owen - Host: 5:07

So just out of interest. And you mentioned obviously, both went to Texas together and you saw some pits and Jackie went, Yeah, I can build that. No problem. Have you done anything like that before? Was it just

Unknown: 5:21

No, no initial Well, I had to get a welder friend involves to kind of it was my idea. And obviously, my kind of design essentially. But yeah, to kind of get in, get him involved to get your hands and then it kind of got your little bit unreliable, and we wanted to kind of push the business and we will kind of rely on him. So then, we decided that, you know, the only way to do it is for me to do it on my own. So a lot of money. Yeah. A lot of mine a lot of equipment, and taught myself to weld basically. So you know, kind of formal training just picked the welder up and off, I went kind of thing. So it was upgraded equipment. Any money we ever make, we end up profit, we buy more equipment. Yeah, it's it's, yeah, it's the be the fun part. I mean, we drink our logs fitter, made jokes to set dreaming of purchasing it. And we're archery can't wait to have this. And then we will all right, we've got enough money now. Catering still. We needed logs, we need to get you know, we need to do it. Because obviously the wood is a big cost. So we can we can do it ourselves. And I had done but with a smaller electric splitter. And yeah, so we finally upgraded into that. But yeah, it was a real workhorse. Yeah. See, so

Owen - Host: 6:49

you're saying you're not out there by hand, just a lumberjack and up chopping.

Unknown: 6:56

Things come about people we would sell him would via text message during during COVID. Because he's like, Well done, hey, build a website. Just send send me a text and bought one of these little carbureted things just to generate links to people. So there was I'm gonna have to learn how to build a website. So I built one wasn't very good. I've rebuilt a new one. It's going live. Soon, like in a week or so didn't wait a couple more pictures. That should help us we actually got some feedback from someone said I would have bought it from you. But your website looked a bit basic. Just got to learn that. So I've spent the last couple of weeks getting very frustrated at the computer.

Owen - Host: 7:38

So very much and it's a business by learn as you go.

Unknown: 7:43

Yeah, I'm joined by trailers manageability sites in London, where the commute was kind of five hours a day, kind of just on the train just wasting my life. And it was just, yeah, it needed to change. And it was just it all kind of COVID. And going back to work. You know, it all kind of did us a favor, really to be fair kind of pushed us into doing it. We both got furloughed. Yeah. So I'm a supply chain, supply chain consultant for a manufacturer of business. So often you go to different sites, see what they do. Implementing process improvement says Happy days for me to sit and do this. We are polar opposites and the way we work, we have clear splits of who does what? I'm never going to pick up a welder. It's not gonna happen. Just literally go on the website and do anything because yes, we've got a real split. Yeah,

Owen - Host: 8:36

but that's that's how a good partnership works, right?

Unknown: 8:39

Yeah, there's no point trying to terminate someone's toes. No, nine times out of 10 Well, probably 9.9 times out of 10 we agree on the same thing anyway, like if a question comes up or something we'll both say the same thing. Leader research shy about no. Yeah 10 love we love people ask us for things. We're not going to build that. We don't love people. So can you copy chatbox? No, but if we do anything, we will do it with our own spin. We don't just not in that business. You know, copying other people we did the tortilla presses are requested but message them on Instagram and did put a video up saying here's how to do it. Like literally handed it to everyone knowing how to do redesign coming out. We really don't like making them they're paying us you know and another thing that we refuse matte black as a color just is an algo that we fully insulate our boxes so we can essentially put any color you want so yeah, that's kind of something that we've done from the get go. Yeah, not everyone's wants to cut her in yet. So yeah, that's what we do all the cut. We literally say to her, you can pick a color we will do it we've had shown him for 200 gallon when this mad mint green. We've seen quite a few of them. Now we've had Dave's got the sorts of steel blue mines Texas, orange, but did it differently because painted it first and then cut it all. It does look different because you can't pay him. So we got asked the question at the demo we did a couple of weeks ago, when that will melt things. So close the firebox. So now you can touch it. There's running behind this not a problem. Fully insulating the whole via locks as well. Not not just the sides of the top but the door. All of that is important. Yeah. But it's you know, a lot of people might have say is putting inside firebox was just wrapping a bit of insulation around the inner pipe, but let's not, you know, it's not fully insulated acid that the backs insulated the front insulate the doors, like literally always, when we took some readings when we were up at the shack, did the master class livers, I think the inside of the door was reading about 300 C, and the outside was just to talk about 98 I think. So you can you know, you can put your hand on it, it's going to be but you're not going to scold yourself, you're not going to burn that and especially one of the big things is like safety as well. But obviously when we started blood, my daughter she was probably she was two to three at the time. And that was we had a semi insulated box on that and insulated doors and that used to terrify me because we used to be in the back garden. We used to run the fall under go and you know, luckily she learned pretty quickly that it got hot but you know it's one of those things also so I don't want to kind of supply a smoker that an accident happened where a child falls into it or whatever. We know now that far we've we've actually at festival we won't know who it was but they they touched a lot intellect fathers daughters go to a&e burn their leg quite badly. Yeah, because they just brushed against it just didn't think we almost took we're casual now with us because I don't worry. But I don't tend to use any other piece. We the the installation is insane as the kind of the heat retention it does, it doesn't let any of the heat out like we had the fire guy sharp, good three hours. And you can hold your hand physically hold it on the bottom of the firebox and hold it there. Like and it's not hot, it's warm, but the only heat that is just the heat transfer through like the ends and stuff is not like dying in direct heat off of it. Which essentially just keeps all that energy and all the you know, the hard work that you've done to kind of maintain fire is going the right way. And it's not just getting lost to dust. The other one, if you've got holes in your firebox door for vents and things, it's not fully insulated. So you can literally if someone says it's fully insulated, they've got a home. Well, it isn't. It's just it's a more efficient fire. You just control it with the door. It's it's personally how you know, Wilson's barbecue used. He was putting out probably the best barbecue in the UK at the moment when you look at his stuff. You look at moberg's Mills, cows productive, the big guys in the US. They've all got the same. So I'd sort of more cycle with what's going right there than not,

Owen - Host: 13:28

I suppose from an efficiency point of view as well, that fully insulated firebox. You said you had to go in for three hours. Yeah, that's that's more of a charcoal level, isn't it necessarily than wood to keep an eye on time,

Unknown: 13:43

we will start off with the log cabin. So I tell people all the time, though, not just because we sell wood, but don't be stingy with your first bit of fire, pull 10 logs, light and just burn. Once you've got solid covered don't don't smash it up too much don't interfere and put a log on and it will just run nicely. The amount of people that we've had seen one they bought someone else abuse or wow it it'll sit for 45 minutes at 250 or roll it up to something 500 Pick up take a look up. You can tell what's going to run out. Dave is fastidious about temperatures, CG within five degrees Fahrenheit or something stupid. Like if you if you got the time to sit there and manage it properly. Is that there's so easy to use. I think that's what puts a lot of people off. offsets is that they buy a cheap one like the first one I bought was a cheap land man offset 1.5 mil thick steel and you know, to use it right, you know, you have to leave the firebox door open and you could run it on logs and just let him sign up directly out and so you can do it but it's a chore and it's not something that's easy, you know That sounds terrible they spent a good there was at the offset master class he spent a couple of grand on turn off grand on the smoker. And he even though we weren't really managing we was kind of we're kind of hot and fast and it you know it all kind of busy doing other things we weren't really paying much attention. He turnouts he was amazed at how like consistent it was and how easy it was to run with just lit literally move just where we abused it really doing it in his first first run out. It was they look really nice and they get delivered. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I get a little bit obsessive I like like, yeah, nice scratchy, but nothing has to be perfect. It's Where's delivered showroom quality and they want us it's Yeah, first fire and it is fine. It is yeah, it is what it also explains why so some people have so chances are your prices are pretty steep. But when you're explaining the farmers, there's one one piece of six mail another piece of six mil, eight mil pipe, another six months, another video, this all adds up, plus, there's a time to put all that together. It can take this a couple of days just to do one section. It's Yeah, we're good kind of days, really with the door and everything else. It's just not. We've kind of streamline things and we've gained things laser cutter that we weren't to begin with. And we've kind of at the beginning, it was kind of hard Word templates, and plasma cutting around templates and just in tweaking it each time, each one will be allowed to kind of get it right. And now we're kind of now we've got that it all gets laser cut for us. And you know, so that's saved a lot of time. And consistency wise, it's a lot better, and it's a lot easier.

Owen - Host: 16:49

And how long is it now taking you to build a barbecue in comparison to say when you first started?

Unknown: 16:55

Well, first, the first one was when we did the cost in five days. I can do that. Okay, it's actually 1010 days for a comparable backyard. Really, they're long days. They usually run Yeah, easily. If they vibe that I build a really nice calendar with everyone's delivery date. Same. it all sits in a dream world of not actually picking up a welder or doing anything I'd put like, five dates. 10 Yeah, reality then comes in. We've got some real bad in January with that weather that cold, crippled us because you can't paint you're trying to use heat resistant pain in it was minus four in a year we work off with an old cow shed. We are looking at a new unit. It shouldn't be ready by the end of March. But yeah, I think what we're turning out in the workspace that we've got, I think is yeah, it was pretty impressive. Really, because it's not a side business for us. It's not like I'm doing something inside of a warehouse. This is not we've got a cheat unit, which was for doing that. Yeah, now it's putting out quality smokers. Yeah, I'm happy. We sent one to Vienna in Ireland. Oh, yeah. So yeah, 6000 miles away ago message message I really want to buy when you're smokers, can you export it? Well, of their export and everything. So that'd be a learning curve. Fun Learning paperwork and customs declarations. And luckily, we've got a really good company down the road that just assisted with it because I was going on holiday the day was packed. We got surprised two days for this to be a heat treated crate you can't send to an island and and all power. Oh. How much is a heat treat crate? 500 quid. All right, good. So luckily the guy was understanding and said, Yeah, I'll pay for it something to America. We sent it to him to press to someone in California. Yeah, they meant they didn't want to wait for the chance press. But okay, it's gonna cost you more in shipping than it is product. I want it now. Pay for air freight. And then we will export it to Ireland, which because of Brexit was house was always decorations, and it was careers and Hornet. Yeah, that's one of the most stressful bits getting it though we don't like to put it in the hands of someone else. And I like the one that we're using in Ireland one they dropped here, basically, because the kind of obviously the firebox is this very kind of like a one sided crate thing, obviously, because he's been off and on and off and unloaded. God knows how many times Someone's probably got into the side of it or whatever, with a forklift truck and it's just boom, falling off. And it fell flat firebox and it took photos center owner and said earlier it's all arrives in this hour. I looked around I was like, this got a bit damaged on the ply. And he's like That's weird. I was gonna zoomed in I was like, shit that's from the inside out. It's kind of say I think it was dropped. And it's it bent the bed. The firebox door handle basically was Was that was guy pretty lightly dented glue? Yeah. Because obviously I didn't expect it to get that night get rocks. So the flows kind of loosely put in into the box into the crate so. So our flow isn't steel, it's twin wall insulation that look bonus is quite, very delicate. Yeah, you don't you can't do that. I mean, you could punch it and then, but it's the wrong way then yeah, it's,

Owen - Host: 20:28

it's invisible

Unknown: 20:29

without nuts and bolts. Yeah. And because it's fully insulated, the temperature coming in at the top is the same there, you know, we don't have the luxury of Texas weather, we just don't have that humidity. So when you're cooking in the cold, you need something that's going to draw pull all out, we kind of we did to test when we add the catering business at home and finally began to get sign off from pollution control, it says the flu has been a meter above breach time. So so to get luckily, we lived in a Bongo. So you know, it wasn't too bad. But it was still good kind of like four meter flow or something, something like that, that was on the actual analysis about meters, or it's probably about five meters up in the air. still work just fine. Yeah, but we kind of, we took a measurement, you know, a temperature at the bottom in the, in the collector as it entered. And then as it exited, I think it dropped like two Fahrenheit or something. So and obviously, that's what you rely on, you know, we've is that draw if that if those exhaust gases start to slow down in the stack, then they and then they start to drop, and then you get a kind of Backdraft and everything like that. So that's, that's why we kind of initially went with the, with the twinwall, because through necessity, and then learn that it actually is does your job. And if you aren't, you know, you build the house in the back garden and you build a little kind of shack kind of thing and you want to extend the flow up on you know, to get up and out there, you can just pull up another section of by extra links. So it's just, it's got its pros and its cons that the you know, it's not like everything, everything that we've we've learned through building them for two years. ABS is a trade off between you know, it always got a cost, always got positive is always got negative why we do roller bearing greats for the 130s. Initially, we wanted to do a single great level on the backyard that way Yeah. And just kind of do like a more basic spec, that someone might have hybrid. Yeah, everyone saw it, well, I want that. One, those first one birdie. And then it's kind of sidecar II, we then put a twin level with roller bearing grants. So you get, you're gonna have six briskets in it. Yeah, there's your middle grades, not you're losing a little bit by box n is bidorbuy anyway, because you're gonna lose that because it's too hot. So you're not going to benefit. Yeah, 100 went away from that from that. And the blue end again, you know, you get in the air constantly, you get a hotspot that end. So really, the use of the usable space you get with a roll about fall rather than pull out great is that you can use every single millimeter of that great and you don't burn the top of your arm because when we're when we're catering we're single break level and then we put another one with 50 racks of ribs just this was just on a Wednesday and then leaning in to rotate will get them Yeah, but I really love I'm allergic to smoke by literally got to get a smoke ring around my face from it. So we'll get to that ago. So I want to go in and lean in to get this stuff. Yeah, now the role of the guys at the cave who have got they got three of our five hundreds, they can just pull it rotate your briskets around always in that back corner by the back of the collector is your warm is warm is bit apart from fireworks. So you put your biggest brisket there but then you want to move around. So I know Dave does that on his when he took seacock six verses on the 113 just quiet for a backyard and barbecue. It's quite a lot. Yeah, everyone I think every time we've delivered a 1/31 comment is wax big enough though. Everything was on. But yeah, they are a big smoker. But then that a lot of people have said you know would you want to would you build a smaller one? Well, it's not much point because it's still still the same amount of work late that the courses are really going to change that much. You know your welds are get a little bit shorter and your pipes going to be a bit smaller and you know it but overall, it's if we want to build it that We want to build, it doesn't matter if it's a 130, or a 500, they're built exactly the same way we're dealing with, when the early processes for finishing drawings off is actually today of our entry level pay. So we want to do something smaller, but we just need to be able to get it so we can buy the parts and put it together, we want to do it our way. So still, we see what our handles are great. All the bits that make us unique, we're not gonna give that up. Because the cheap smokers out there is no point, I wouldn't be arrogant, I'm not trying to compete, they're good at doing that, at that price point. And the sort of person that is going to spend two and a half grand, is quite the leap up to then go on to spend seven. So there's no point trying to get in someone else's market that's established. We're trying to kind of get the keep what we know works, adapting a few things to kind of make it cheaper, more affordable. Not scrimping on certain things. The full level like single level great will be will be their roller bearing grace, their shit on the work, but it's a lot of work. And it's worth it. If you're spending seven grand on the smoker, then yeah, you should you should have that. But when you want to, you know that's one of those things that you instantly started we said well, you don't need the role very great. It's just a single grade level. The intellect for those brain will go through we've been getting because there are compromises people can make. We'll do a thing like we'll always take will always take part x because everything's for sale. You know, you buy an insurable one car I love this two years time, we'll take it back. Because we've taken back a few pets and people talk right? We can sell them very quickly. Because our lead time we're out to July now. If we get one that's come back, people can just flip. So I think days 130 It was within a week it's gone when two people almost fighting over who was going to bind a month whoever pays first gets it. Yeah. Yeah, he and everyone would do it. It'd be not it will be kind of is something that we did Why rush rushing to do kind of thing. You know, we've been asked, like, day one, almost like, we're gonna build a small cheap box. It's like, no, no, now I think we've got to a point where we know what we know now we know what works and what doesn't work and what we can adapt and change to kind of to get where we want to be. Which is a big thing because we're not we're not prepared to compromise on like, fundamentally how it works. We should still be a smoker just get a cheaper price point.

Owen - Host: 27:45

Well, I think if you start compromising on build quality, then doesn't matter how cheap it is. You've compromised, you've compromised who you are. Yes, that's

Unknown: 27:56

what we have. The role of they're not a roller bearing that the roller handle roller oak candle that's something that you kind of initially, that brought up that failed first one was it good to kind of when later on when he's asked us what doesn't work? The best possible place? Yeah. Okay, handle snapped at me in the middle of utopia. My fault really, because there was a knot in the middle of it and I kind of was in a rush to get it out. And we didn't have time to cut on the handle and we had a load in time we had so we had a load of Tobacco Dock our militant about loading in give time up here an hour with four picks to unload. Okay, and it's all couples, so Oh, good, because we're all customers. And this is all couples with David Carter smokestacks rocked up in his land rover. That was his trailer. drove out. Okay. You've been in before? Yeah.

Owen - Host: 28:58

So you are at the backup tobacco rather than inside?

Unknown: 29:01

Yeah. We did put a couple of verticals inside Melissa. It was a Thompson used it inside to do jerk. Then we have two offices outside and a vertical which hot Karen from Hopper's was using the vertical and the offset Elliott Elliott is in Ellicott live on the Friday. Yeah. Robin Gill. She's the lien Baker. We have various people on and off. But yeah, it's back to the kind of the Pit Design and everything else that the roller handle and like the hinges be even down to the hinges that we use, you know, that all go through and the way we seal the doors and stuff like that, that the little things that make our pitch unique and kind of work as well as they do you want to transfer over. So I used to do CFD going FERS computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis. So there's a lot of that. And there's been a lot of discussion recently with Facebook who heard about Pit Design and Build and establishment and stuff like that. Yeah, I definitely understand how airflow works. I've cooked robots a lot. But Lauer's buddy, yeah, a lot we've done. And I think that's what, what kind of, we are different to a lot of other builders and a lot of people in general really like throughout even in America, we've, we started catering. You know, we split and cut on our own word, and we still do, you know, we've done it for like, almost every single part of the big parts, not raising cows yet, but maybe, yeah. We've done the cage. And we've spent hours and bucket hours, maintaining fires, and all nighters, you know, watching, you know, I can tell what the, what the kind of smoke is doing just by looking at the flows by looking at what the you know, what kind of smoke is coming out. And that's when you know, you can't really learn that overnight, something you get to learn is with experience. We had one guy who said that he put a load of wet wood into it to help it now then he put tea towel over the top of the flue, because he said it's very smoky that I've used and I've spoken before. No. Okay. Who's your boss? Yeah, is this is a problem when we give them to people to use the cup really micromanage and then the chef, but even when we when we're at any type of brand firm, and he had to stare at it, we think it was 4am We were lighting the fire, getting it all going for him ready to sort of run on the Saturday on a Sunday. I was Yeah, I was cooking. I was maintaining fire from the start to finish. So that was pretty cool. experience was with Brian Berman. And, you know, he got up. You know, he was the big name the big kind of like, headline guy there. But he got up just you know, at the same time as we did, you know, and he was there. You didn't just kind of rock up at midday and just kind of, you know, cut a few bits up and pass it to people he was there from start to finish. So I think it's an hour and 30 minutes sold out full 500 gallons worth of I think of a duck. Yeah, we're good. Which is the 50 Brisket. We wasn't allowed. Yeah. It's incredibly fat. Isn't it duck? Yes. So yeah, we had a panic because everyone brings their own equipment, but we need a gastro because there's gonna be a grease fire in a minute. We need to let the drain out and just duck fat just pouring another one Yeah, seems like a big six inch one one gastro and it's like filling up duck fat

Owen - Host: 32:52

so we're just talking about the catering side of things and had either of you had any experience in catering or again you just got nap or give it a go

Unknown: 33:01

just always build a smoked me basically. We kind of well John came around the mom and dad's first of all, cheap there's a Tesco kettle BBQ and smokes and ribs though we got the the charcoal that you like the back Oh yeah. lit up in a lot even a Weber kettle I was bound by a Weber kettle so oh it's 160 quid it's a lot of money. But then it was I remember so 500 pounds on a child gorilla thing this is gonna be great it wasn't great yeah and then we bought lamb and offset that are bought old practice jack off of eBay. Then we built about 500 So yeah, went for a little little cactus jack it was 16 inch Cactus Jack to 500 but yeah neither of us had any experience catering Yeah, what would you doing with a 500 gallon slider in the back garden like less? Yeah, have to. This was a gaming

Owen - Host: 34:04

listen, I suppose I suppose it'd be a lot to kind of burgers and sausages when it for the

Unknown: 34:10

five years I've done it wasn't the resources as well. So now everyone's sort of, there's a YouTube channel to teach you everything. We realize how do you make this substance learn how to do a lot of stuff. Now you can buy USDA brisket online. We can buy yours you can get well, we're asked to use this to try and find suppliers that sell brisket that haven't cut it to shreds or you know rolled in it just wasn't a thing go to your local butcher local butcher has all kind of just helpfully wasted time so yeah, we managed to get RP meats like a local wholesalers so we used to get pack of briskets from them but there are a wire each one so grass fed zero fat, no fat capital really have and we had a few that were kind of turned out okay, that you couldn't really do slice Bruce Get rid of it. Yeah to do chopped because it's just didn't have the intramuscular fat to kind of keep it more so it was just, yeah. So I cook in a lean bit of steak for 10 hours like, I mean, it's unless you've got intramuscular fat, it's not going to be great. So anyway, Linda catering, there's so many hidden costs that people are going to do this what we did our cost and detail person. So I have a spreadsheet that even we did last the weekend. Yesterday, I'm working out what our yield was, what our cost, how much it cost per bag, because it varies on different cuts. They're looking at why should somebody buy a black pepper? Black pepper is really expensive. Like during COVID latex gloves. Three, I think they two pound for a pack of 110 quid. So you sort of you know before your country like ours club on club, napkins and just the trays and stuff like compostable trays and all that stuff that because Musa we're not going to serve it in like polystyrene things, so you have to pay and it's just yeah, and the catering was a massive learning curve. It was very much any any profit we had got spent on something else for the next event. It was good. It kind of we're not doing it. I wouldn't want to go back to doing it. It's no it's one of those things. I'm glad that we did do it. But I'm quite happy to say that I'd never want to do it again. Yeah, exactly. But you know, we wouldn't we wouldn't be where we are now without it. Festival. We're gonna run some bits. So we're gonna do some things with gaming flowing. That's all right, because it's a bit fun. There's a lot of pressure on this is his me says we haven't got to do the costing the taking their money. You know, people are what sports brisket. Okay. attacco we have things where we put samples on the front of our counter and someone will like to show you what it looked like. Someone picks it up and started eating it and been there for about four or five hours. I make chili and the guy went It's really spicy. Yeah. It's called chili. It just gets your mayonnaise across ways. You just seem less cost. Yes. We do it. And then yeah, well yeah, it's an event and it absolutely pieces down and there's no one around the necks just you know we were a small outfit. You know, we when we went to the black they're right next to us. They had truffle burgers wherever, absolutely massive thing set up. And they were just dead the whole time. And I was just mad money. But you know, you have to a pay to get in there. Yeah. And then the money you have to give away to privilege of selling stuff. COVID was just insane. And I was just like, yeah, we're quite happy doing what we're doing now. I think now we've kind of it's been a couple of years really kind of knuckle down and graft in this summer is a bit more kind of like trying to do live events and doing the master classes and just trying to enjoy. Enjoy the weekends now by this could be done. We've done the graph. Now it's time to try to join it a bit more than

Owen - Host: 38:27

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Owen - Host: 39:30

Visit aos kitchens.co.uk Yeah, so you mentioned about her masterclass. You said check MK Wasn't it a couple of weeks ago. Although when this comes out it'd been a little while ago but

Unknown: 39:45

July That's February February box. Yeah, we got another book for July 8 is the third that was the third one we've done with him. So that sort of the format is 20 People can we cook racks of ribs trim brisket makes us Ah, Turkeys pre brined because it takes three, four hours, smoke a turkey. Then we do a little bit in the middle. So I've done chili before or shrimp banana put it, then we go through sites. So Dave does his pickles. His source is corn. Beans. Yeah. And then we just worked through plating and showing cutting and slicing. I still see it now people slicing the brisket, I still see restaurants and I just cut down the length. No, please, you've spent so long doing it. No more grains or even Turkey. And ribs as well. You spent six hours smoking it, and they turn it over the other way so they can see the bone. Lovely finish got gone. So Dave sort of goes through the how it works, to q&a on fire management, as well as popular would select selection. So we'll imagine if would have handled 12 I feel like pick it alone. That's gonna last a long time or that's just gonna burn, explaining that to people in general, tips, questions, whatever they want to know. And then we send out a thing at the end of here is everything you've learned. Yeah, I think it's an offset masterclass. You know, he's essentially all cooked on an offset. But I think the majority 90% of the people that come on, it haven't actually got an offset. They've got like a big green egg or whatever else. I just want to go there to, mainly to see Dave and see what he's doing is the what his attention to detail what he's doing that there's no, nobody else out there doing what he's doing. Like consistently, like time and time again, like he's just kind of have a little it's dangerous as a compliance manager. So yeah, sort of detail. Yeah, say that we're lucky that we first met Dave, prior to Mike and Ben and Oliver just imported the Franklin pit that Dave actually bought. And he Oliver was out there. And we have a couple of cactus jacks, and we took about 100 gallon. And we did a few like tests and stuff, just just comparing them just for kind of just to see where we're at, because it was our first 100 gallon wordless. Like, we just kind of measured the airflow in and airflow out and see kind of what on paper, what the what actually how it's drawing and stuff. And they Yeah, they're all They're all pretty similar to be fair. And then we kind of spoke to Dave after that. And he started his curbside collection stuff, and we're struggling for capacity. So we need to say we had 100 gallon, just sat in the lockup not doing anything. So we were just like, well, we sent it up to him. So you might as well use it sitting here doing nothing, which then he kind of managed, his capacity went up, so you can actually start actually making some money. That's the thing. It was just the feedback we were getting from him is kind of invaluable, like when you're when I'm bored a welding and stuff and John's got his full time job, like we haven't got time to sit and cook as well. You can't you can't do both and if you want to progress and you want to kind of keep upping your level you need that feedback and you need to know what works and what doesn't work and you know Dave gets into the adding 100 mil extra bit of flu to see you know, the result on the drawer with a smoker and it's little bits like that, that we haven't got the time to do that. You know, he's why he's so kind of valuable to us and why we looked after him you know, we built the he's one of the one that 30 was built for him to just just to happen to us. And then again he got to a point where he's struggling for capacity so we built them a 300 So people think he's gardens full now yeah. We you know we've given him that pet essentially to use indefinitely the same as Matt Burgess you know, if someone's comes to us with an idea or shows that they're doing top level barbecue we're building a smoker with for no charge, if we can get the feedback if it's then we do classes with them and other bits so we're just going to collaborate the amount of people that have bought a 130 and literally said I've bought it because Wilson's uses it. Yeah, okay. I think he every person has bought 130 as reference down with Yeah, and he's videos and stuff like that so annoyingly, he's got 300 gallon now which we can't get like a really odd size. And it's got family gun tanks, 1200 gallon tanks there. Yeah, but easy to get. Very straightforward to get horrible to process because they come to It's not the American ones. Well, I got that lovely patina, the ones here, but there's coating on sandblast it doesn't even take it off even with the highest grip. So it's literally me and Jack sat there. It takes us a full day with I think 20 grinding discs of just grinding and grinding, come home covered in green fluff. Goodness knows what we bring in. It's not nice, it's not a fun, nice. It's a solid day. Yeah. And then it's got to be sandblasted. After that. You just get away with just doing nice, it's got to do all that and then getting sandblasted. So we're looking at our new unit sandblast is moving into that next door. So he's always flat out and trying to get hold of him is sometimes very difficult. Now I mean next door, I think even use it.

Owen - Host: 45:43

I just want to circle back to what you were saying about getting that feedback. Yeah, and you're saying you know the things that are going well? Yeah, I want to I want to focus on the things that don't go so well. What about from your catering? Catering was Was there any kind of

Unknown: 45:59

was like cooking a brisket drinking too much beer? Drinking too much beer was always our downfall at home and the delivery of brisket says there was no good Well, ya know when your ex was with a vegan the excellent thing is that wasn't good. And the briskets turned up and one of the vaccines and split and it was just juicy but that was not a good day. Although now that's quite good news for me because of that like yeah, falling asleep was was these always the one because you start out the best intentions putting on an N by three I am. Yeah. But that's before we learn about holding others so we didn't know about the holding oven trick. And then we we've ended up with a WS an ex army Dometic giant thing. Yes, no, it's a fridge freezer basically like an army one that it's just sort of biggest Yeti cooler you ever see. Yeah. It's mental. But yeah, so we ended up just using that as a hold enough and really just kind of just stacking just putting everything in dashed rows and just shutting the door. Yeah, it was just because that's you know, that's any rate people won't even talk about the last couple of years of cooking for anyone who thinks that it now brisket is not as 10 to 12 hours and then a long rest at 114 so that other cakes were available. I've got all my fingers despite using a mandolin. Yeah, yeah. What else did we do? Oh, my satellite to the gazebo with the fryer 1.0 your chips. Some was a brainwave. Let's sell chips, because I'm still on tight because I wasn't buying deep fat fried from there. One by commercial one went to my friends helping us. I don't think they ever want to look at chip again, because they just want to do chips and an Argos home fryer. And then just bad it was bad. The marginal chips is great, but it's probably one one bought and paid for the bag. So we bought a gas fryer I unbanned from deep frying in my house it's not allowed to live melted my carpet so deep fryer oh my god yeah well I'm deep fry and I saw my wife come home so I've got the ladies been banned from the fryer basically yeah, so you must not be fine the house decided to deep fry so his wife comes home decided to run outside and the hot with the hot oil spill then spills it all over the carpet and then check two square meters of carpet later. Yeah, that's a disaster. Yeah, I don't think smoking Oh, the job the the event at a local gym. They had a powerlifting competition and moving the smoker at the end of it didn't take all the flu down and the flu felt like came on down or whatever. Probably would have put me in hospital but landed next to me. So that was a very an EMS. I've had Woodfall up there. Big woodpile, so we cut everything to one size ready. We build a big pile of that. Then we split it and we cut it in half. Man a giant pile of wood next to me that was just making taller and taller. And I walked off it fell. It would have been good. Yeah, we Yeah, I think it's been wise. Yeah. Majority was just falling asleep after drinking too many beers. Really? Yeah. getting bitten, because you're sleeping in fields and stuff and just getting bitten by sorts of things. And it's always involved in beer. Definitely. Yeah. Beer and barbecue go together. So well. That's yeah, yeah, as indicated one of the really important things that I think other people should realize. So if you've sold 100 Tacos, one person might complain. People really focus on that. And we didn't start with someone's dollar. You forget 99 Other people like to think if 10 People with one person was like your price is too much. I wouldn't pay that. I wouldn't finish McDonald's. Okay, go away. I think some people was too like But early, you soon realize when you, when you're sat next to all the other traders that they have, you know, they have their day, they're busy all day or whatever. And then they packed down or off home or they go to Travelodge or wherever, and you're still cooking all the fruit and I didn't express kits for the next day. And then you realize, like, the time involved in barbecue is unparalleled. There's nothing else out there, like catering wise, that takes us down to target is that and you kind of, you know, if you want to get paid for your all the time that you work, if you actually kind of work out as an hourly rate. It's not great. But I think that's like people do well with you because of the love of it really. And I think that kind of carries you through. If you were kind of doing it for profit in a business, like barbecues, number one, like you have to be doing so that the volume has to be ridiculous. And then you have to be sending it out day after day after day. So

Owen - Host: 51:08

what what plans have you got for 2023? What's in the pipeline, you'll see you mentioned the new smoker,

Unknown: 51:14

New Year New smoker, a new unit, that new unit is much needed. So our landlord is pretty cool. Actually, we've got two landlords one's really cool one isn't very understanding the other one is polar opposite. And it's like went to his site. So we use chainsaws locks, buzzers, welding, everything, do what you want. Okay, the other one, if you leave a little tiny piece of sawdust outside the unit, you're probably gonna get a phone call. See, if we've got two very different types of people. And we're trying to put everything we've got three sites at the minute, we're trying to get everything into one, because which is just, we need it. Because you need somebody to process your wood. It can't be residential, because it's noisy, and dusty, then the welding would like a little mini industrial unit. And then we've got another log store, which would win he's a distributor of. Yeah, yeah. It's just trying to kind of condense it and just kind of streamline things. Now I think, you know, we know what we're doing. We know what we need to do, we know where we want to be. And we just need to get the efficiencies and now to get there. Yeah, we're not gonna kind of get to the next level, unless we kind of step up. And, you know, and then we can get there. Where we are now like, I can nominate anyone that's welding and the only one that really realistically, even if we got another welder in to help, like, it's not, you know, it's not going to be, but I've probably been to my standard welding wise, if not better. But there's just a particular way I want things done. And if he's not done, that is going to annoy me. So I haven't got time to babysit someone insane. But that's how I want it and this app never. So realistically, it's easy as for me just to kind of do some longer days and just, like get fastidious about that if we're doing something I will use the same font on everything, the same type of text ever. And I've got funny about how things are written down. I want to dissect why the right language used always waiting i. However, they always write it this way. Because it just looks, it looks a lot better. And you really see an amateur it just looks crap. Both of us are pretty bad at spelling as well sometimes. So luckily copywriter before and now chat TV tech teams just helped me even more. Pretty much how did the website just asked him chapter 18 for things. And it was just helping do it all to us. Yeah.

Owen - Host: 54:03

Well, I think what we should do is sort of round things off with our barbecue. Bingo. Yeah, challenge. Barbecue Bingo is brought to you by lumberjack food company. Your tickets are flavortown so I'm going to share the screen. Right hopefully you can see that really high tech. Yeah. Spending Well, yeah. spent a fortune hours on this. Okay, so there's loads of different types of ingredients. Some have been left by previous guests. There's one here called my signature dish. And that would be your signature dish. So if it lands on that, what are you known for cooking?

Unknown: 54:42

Chili, chili. That's my 100% that. I spent that day barbecue sauce gears. Trying to get the chili that I wanted barbecue sauce on Yeah. really fussy about it, like ketchup based sauces. Not to monster day to day I've got a different ingredient that I use the chili I too much my wife's hatred I bring back chilipad from Texas that are custom made. And it's thinks the suitcase and the hotel and the Airbnb because it's kilos of chili powder. And they're set separate bags because don't want them to. It's always funny when we did the master class with Dave Dave spent 12 hours cooking everything I woke up some of them might actually some bollocks. Yeah, not the brisket. I spent hours on all these puddings, great ox cheek tacos with barbecue sauce, some of the best bit of the course. It's a good environment. So have fun with that. Yes, definitely chili barbecue sauce.

Owen - Host: 55:50

All right, so I'll give that a spin. And also just think of an ingredient. I'd like you to leave something for the next tough one for Okay. All right, so let's give it a go. Oh, humans. That's probably more of a mystery.

Unknown: 56:17

Ron Swanson in the Parks and Rec where? Where the other guy says I can make a turkey burger. Thank you. It's

Owen - Host: 56:27

a great one. Is it

Unknown: 56:30

all right. Pretty much tiny nuggets. Deep fried. Yeah, you're banned from that though? Yeah, no, it's great pearls. On the turkey nuggets, the old flour potato starch batter and then yeah, in some source. Sounds good. Yeah, Candy jalapeno. What you could have put on so if I had to make nuggets out of it, I use a potato starch corn flour mix. Fry them. Deep fry slash. And then yeah, Candy jalapeno sauce. A lot of people that bug you go might kill me for this. People buy red candy. Your mental spin 12 pounds for what is sugar water? Like literally just pick sugar and water and blend a pineapple and you've got pineapple rip trendy? It's yeah, it costs about two pound good advice. Yeah.

Owen - Host: 57:26

So what ingredient you said it was a hard one what you're going to leave for the next guest

Unknown: 57:34

Texas is a big thing. Mexico as well. lingo lingo they call this is the last step. Okay, someone keep telling me to do it. I'm sorry. It's one of the things it doesn't sound appealing. Doesn't sound like anything but apparently there's an ox chick obsessed with anything cheek related? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything cheek related. Monk cheeks? Yeah, see them on a menu now that can't see anything. Cheap is yet delicious. The wheelies in meat matters at the moment for ox cheeks. Incredible beef from that guy. But in some here, my I spoke to the PJ grill because I've never smoked at the time. So great little tool. And then that's what we use meat matters for the masterclass is just incredible beef. But shout out Ali there because he's a good guy.

Owen - Host: 58:27

Great. Well, is there anything? Is there anything that we haven't spoken about yet that you wanted to kind of kind of talk about before we kind of head off?

Unknown: 58:35

I don't know. Really? I guess I'd like to thank all the people have bought our smokers. And and I would, yeah, and yeah, just I just said thank you really, we had a bit of a tough a bit of a spot back before Christmas, where we kind of realized that we had work up till December and not a lot further past that. And we're like, park we need to do something. So we put it online. I don't I don't adhere to this, you know, fake it till you make it. We just actually had a post that look if you don't use it as we just won't do it anymore. Uses The losers. And then one of our guys buys would is he do a raffle. What how much of a scam? Yeah, I used to do the power tool raffles. And when he said about what I think of that, so yeah, we set it out within 23 hours. 24 hours. How about 300 tickets? One guy bought 15 And I've got 10 One guy James brace bought one people messaging. Can I really know that's why we use an external website. We're not looking to bring it does that mean they take 10% So we had to put the price up to cover that. So we'll we'll do another one. We'll get another guy but I think he bought me 20 tickets. He then bought it from us because he just wanted one. Yeah. And it was down at the shack one and both of us went yeah Okay everyone's gonna shout fix fix fix but he didn't know and did deserve that he's back to us you know he helped us with the first one post saying that and tickets I think the shack so yeah I think the biggest thing really just thank you to all our customers shut off separately awesome presently yeah having to go we've got our wood from he's a really good guy Harry he helps us out massively helps our prices and stuff we've got some really good guys we're working with zone can't really say like that but they're helping us with price and things like that yeah definitely both of our partners because we spend more time with each other than with them sometimes. Well yeah my son starts going Where's daddy with Jack Yeah so we'll be together

Owen - Host: 1:00:55

for all those new customers that are hearing you know hearing you guys talk about your smokers for the first time where can they find you?

Unknown: 1:01:02

Smoker bbq.co UK Instagram is that smoked barbecue same for Facebook. This thing is email us it's all the websites contact for new website and be live on Sundays goes out yes yeah mailing list that we do letter and stuff. Yeah, it's always, always best to email is best because DMS you get lost in amongst the reaction emojis and all that stuff. Yeah, I can track emails. DMS or it's a nightmare. I don't know Facebook. Already got it. This won't go public. Yeah, yeah, that's he has the screenshot the message and send it to me to tell me Yeah.

Owen - Host: 1:01:41

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you come on and talk about

Unknown: 1:01:46

Yeah, yeah. Like yeah, no, no

Owen - Host: 1:01:48

worries. No worries. We'll enjoy your weekend guys. And yeah, thanks for coming on to the podcast chance later. Right That's it for another episode of the meat & Greet BBQ podcast. Thanks so much to the smoky oak barbecue guys. It was such a pleasure to talk about their business, about their catering where they came from and just the level of detail that go into every single smoker as ever we want to hear from you. So if you can tell us exactly what you'd like to hear on the podcast get in contact with us through our usual channels at meat & Greet BBQ podcast on social media meat & Greet BBQ podcast.com And until next time, keep on grilling Today's episode is brought to you by aos kitchens. The selfs leading outdoor kitchen design and installation specialists