Blog 4 Hogback History in BBQ Part 3

Part 3- By 2008-2009 I have become a full-time barbecue junkie. In 2009 while at a competition called Que and Crus in Louisa, Virginia we had been struggling with pork scores from judges. We were using our vinegar-based barbecue sauce and after talking with several teams we were told judges for the most part judges preferred a sweet sauce. Unfortunately, we didn't bring any to the competition that day. What I did bring however was pretty much everything else in my kitchen and decided on the fly to make some sort of sweet barbecue sauce. There at that moment, in 40 minutes time, our Hogback Mtn Sweet & Tangy Barbecue Sauce was born. There were no months of research, trial, and error. The development of our signature sauce that most of our customers crave today was developed in just 40 minutes. It helped us get 2 calls to the stage that day and 3 calls and a reserve grand championship just 3 weeks later. I was eating, sleeping, and dreaming of barbecue. When not competing on weekends you can bet we were practicing. We spent much of this time cooking for family and friends when possible and the question kept coming-"When are you going to start catering?" I had no real ambition to open a catering business nor did I have any knowledge of the food business so why would I open a catering business right? The answer to that question kept coming to me in my sleep. If you didn't know, competition barbecue is an expensive hobby. The average competition during that time period would cost between $700-$1000 by the time you paid entry fees, and purchased competition meats and supplies so naturally my thought process. When the catering question kept getting asked, I thought if I were to start catering 8-12 events per year I could make enough extra money to do more barbecue competitions per year. With that, I began the process of examining what would be involved with opening a catering business. Contact the health dept., design a mobile kitchen, decide what equipment is needed, type of company to form, lawyers, accounts, and many other things all checked off the list and done and it's now August 2009 and I'm thinking about opening a business and that's when the economy crashed, the housing market fell and everyone who had money scrambled to see what they had lost in the stock market. By all practical means, it was not the time to invest every asset and available resource you have into opening a food business with no food business experience and not having a clue how to make it work. You guessed it, I've never been practical at anything I've done. We were on a cruise vacation in September 2009 and for whatever reason, I felt it was the right thing to do after discussing it with Jennifer we decided to pull the trigger on opening the business and go for it. When we got home from vacation we ordered the mobile kitchen which had to be built to our specs and formed an S-Corp along with the rest of the legal process. The trailer was delivered in late November and on January 1, 2010, what started out in 1991 as a glimmer was now Hogback Mtn BBQ Incorporated.
We spent the winter getting the mobile kitchen ready. To advertise we had a wild and crazy idea that we'd make two entries for the Lexington Christmas Parade. The first entry was our mobile kitchen, we decorated it up for Christmas and placed all of our competition trophies in the window and Jennifer, our kids, and several others rode in the kitchen waving as a parade float with a sign stating we would open for business in the spring. The second entry was our barbecue cooking being pulled by Marty with his Kubota Tractor. We fired the cooker up, filled it with brisket and pork, and pulled it in the parade with smokey goodness pillowing out the stacks. I'm sure not too many parades smelled as good as the Lexington Parade that year.

18th Place Briskey out of 160 teams at Pork in The Park 2009 Salisbury, MD

As spring arrived my friend Mike Camden found out we were opening a catering and concessions business and gave me permission to sell barbecue on his lot at Nelson St Service Center so we decided to hold our grand opening there on May 1st, 2010. We were preparing for the first competition of the year at Pork in the Park in Salisbury, Maryland on the Eastern Shore in mid-April. This was at the time the largest regular contest east of the Mississippi River with roughly 160 teams competing. With May 1st fast approaching we advertised for weeks that our grand opening would be a concessions/food truck sales event at Nelson St Service Center in Lexington, Virginia. We're all prepared and ready to get things started....


Our Barbecue History Part 4 coming soon...