The journey of opening my BBQ Business started when I was five or six years old. I spent a good amount of time at my grandparents home in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood of Chicago. My grandmother, Margaret Wyler, always had home cooked meals. One day she asked me a question. She said, “Tom, do you want to starve when you grow up?” How was I supposed to answer that question? I said, “No.” She replied, “I’m going to teach you how to cook. That way if you marry a girl that can’t cook, you won’t starve.” That is where my love of cooking began.
It started off by stirring gravy on the stovetop, and by the time I was ten or eleven, I was cooking full meals, including being a big help prepping and cooking holiday meals. For me, cooking was something relaxing. It was a way for me to forget about things and just focus on making something that tastes good. I have always enjoyed the process.
My other love growing up was drawing, photography, and making movies. My creative side came from my Mom. She always encouraged me in my creative endeavors. Anything from drawing cartoon and comic book characters, to making stop motion movies with my cars and action figures. I’d write scripts and found a way to splice my stop motion movie clips in with 80’s movies, using an audio mixer of all things, hooked up to two VCRs. That was my first editing system.
I also spent a lot of time drawing up menus for my restaurant that I would open one day. It has nothing to do with BBQ. I did not know about it back then, but I remember spending hours drawing out what I would have on the menu. I even drew out floor plans of what it would look like and also what the plates, silverware, and glasses would look like. It was very clear I had a love for both filmmaking and cooking.
My decision came into focus on June 11, 1993 when my Mom and I went to see Jurassic Park at the movies. It was a groundbreaking film for visual effects and computer generated animation. I knew walking out of that theater what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I still loved cooking, but in my mind I thought that if I became a chef, or went that route as a career that it would take the relaxation and fun out of the process. So, I made up my mind to pursue a career in video and film.
Flash forward twenty-two years to 2015. My wife Laura and I were approaching our first year wedding anniversary. She asked me what I wanted as a gift to celebrate. I was 35 at the time, I had a successful career as a videographer and editor, and I said I would like a smoker. She replied, “Why? You wouldn’t use it enough. Is there something else you want?” I said, “No, I would like to have a smoker. I would like to try smoking meat.” She just nodded and we didn’t speak about it much after that.
On our anniversary, July 12, 2015, she asked me to break down empty boxes in the garage for garbage and recycling. I went out in the garage, moved a few boxes, and to my surprise there was a brand new electric box smoker by Masterbuilt. I was so excited, I ran up to her, hug and kissed her, said thank you a hundred times over, grabbed my car keys, and drove straight to the store to buy the biggest pork shoulder I could find, and a bag of wood chips.
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so I did what anyone would do, I looked up smoking a pork butt on YouTube. I followed the directions on the one video I found to the letter. 10 hours later, I removed the pork butt from the smoker. It looked good and smelled good. When I went to pull it apart, it would not budge. I scratched my head and wondered what I did wrong. That night we ended up ordering a pizza.
That hiccup didn’t stop me. I spent that night doing a lot more research and learned a few key things I didn’t do that I should have done. The next day, I tried again, and the results ended up being great. In fact, after that, using the smoker was my primary way of cooking any kind of meat. I quickly started to learn about different kinds of wood, why each kind was different, and which ones to use for different types of meat. It began my long journey of becoming a BBQ pitmaster.
That first smoker lasted me two years. One day I went to fire it up and it just wouldn’t start anymore. At that point, I already had dreams and aspirations of cooking with a stick burner, and offset smoker. Laura strongly encouraged me not to buy one, but I had my mind set on one. I bought the cheapest Char-Griller offset they had at Walmart. I think it was $99. I bought some charcoal, a charcoal chimney, and one of those big bags of pre-dried wood.
This was the period in my BBQ journey where I learned the most about making good BBQ. I had no idea how to start and manage a fire, so once again I turned to YouTube. Over the three years I cooked on this offset cooker I learned everything from fire management to smoker build quality and why that matters. Then in 2019, when we had our second son Eli, Laura expressed that I couldn’t be outside every 20 to 30 minutes tending a fire while we have a newborn.
I sold my offset on Facebook Marketplace for $50, and I invested in a gravity fed charcoal smoker/grill from Masterbuilt. It still allowed me to cook with charcoal and wood, but it had the electronic control box to maintain the fire for me. It was around this time that I started to think about what it would look like to do BBQ as a career. Clearly my heart was in it. It was a passion of mine. I also felt that I hit a plateau in my video/film/marketing career.
Then we had the pandemic, so that definitely pushed off my plans for a while. In January of 2022, I reached out to a local restaurant owner that I knew and asked for some resources on how to get started in catering. I was immediately invited by this restaurant owner to meet in person and that is where my path to starting a business in BBQ catering began.
The restaurant owner was gracious enough to let me use the kitchen as a ghost kitchen, and I began to offer Sunday night dinner packages, which to my surprise, people started to order. That turned into getting a few catering gigs on the weekend.
In 2023, I decided to join a networking group in Plainfield called Above and Beyond Networkers. It was there that I met Rick Wolf, The Business Account Executive, for the Joliet Slammers Baseball Club. In early February he called me and asked for me to pitch my BBQ to the front office staff to be a concessionaire for the 2023 season.
I said absolutely. I told him I would bring samples and I would be prepared with a presentation. On February 20, 2023 I had my meeting with the Slammers. It was a huge success, and the new Food and Beverage Director, Joel Sigel, showed me where I would be located if I were chosen to be a part of the food and beverage offerings at the ballpark. Two weeks later I received the contract, and then the real work began.
I had exactly a month to get my LLC started, get business insurance, file all the proper paperwork, get a new smoker that would be able to handle cooking at a larger volume. Securing my food permit for operating, hiring staff, getting my accounting set up. Quite a daunting task, but I was determined to do it, and I got it done.
That 2023 season was the year of establishing the brand and the quality of the food that came out of the concession stand I operated out of. I had to cook everything on site, so I would show up the day of a game and begin the cooking process at midnight. I would work through the entire game. Let me tell you those six game stretches were exhausting. I learned in real time how to begin running a BBQ business. I had a lot of help from friends and family, specifically my wife Laura, my Mom, Ruben Ramirez (my accountant), and Joel Sigel, who mentored me and helped guide me to being successful.
From the end of 2023 through 2024, I learned a lot of hard lessons about being in business. That is documented in another article I wrote that you can read from my blog on my website. As 2025 is beginning I am looking forward to continued growth both personally and professionally.
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