Matt Pittman of Meat Church BBQ
Episode Details
Transcript
Justin, Nick, and Wayne delve into the journey of Matt Pittman, the founder of Meat Church BBQ, as he shares insights on content creation, the evolution of his business, and the challenges of balancing family life with a rapidly growing brand. The conversation delves into the art of food styling, cooking for celebrities, and the importance of community in the barbecue world. With humor and authenticity, they discuss the future of Meat Church and the personal connections that make this journey worthwhile.
Speaker 0
In the state of Texas, barbecue is a religion. And to that end, Matt Pittman of Meat Church is the televangelist. Whether it's rubbing elbows with or cooking for celebrities or stone cold Steve Austin ing a couple of beers in front of a raucous crowd, Matt is truly doing the Lord's work. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Clinton, and you are listening to Smokeless, the podcast of note and record. In the following episode, Matt discusses building his brand, growing his flock, some of his favorite celebrity interactions, the exciting life of a volleyball dad, and what he did only moments after having a vasectomy. We will pick up the conversation there as Matt joined Justin, Nick, and Wayne in the still under construction smokeless podcast studios from an undisclosed location somewhere in South Dallas. Enjoy. Speaker 1
So, Matt, hey. We're starting a podcast, and we don't Speaker 2
Looks like it. Speaker 1
We've never done that before. And it's not necessarily our podcast is not about barbecue. Barbecue is the thing that kind of brought us together in this world. It's something that we all have in common, but there's so many other things that we have in common. Speaker 3
I think what people wanna hear is the bullshit that we that we have to go through. We have our challenges. Right? Not everybody can see their way through the challenges. I think that's where most people fall off. But some people do, people like yourself, that, you know, you have found a way to insert yourself into an industry that you didn't come up in, that you didn't train for academically, and yet you are just crushing it. I mean, what? You're just under a million fucking subscribers on YouTube? Did you hit it this week? Speaker 2
Should should this week. Speaker 3
That's I mean, that to me just floors the shit out of crazy, Speaker 2
isn't it? Speaker 3
Because you I mean, you've built a whole business model teaching people how to cook, teaching people how to use fire, and you're self taught. Speaker 2
Yeah. You know? That's crazy. Speaker 3
Right. But you've made a whole business, a whole brand out of this. Speaker 2
Like, I've I've talked a lot about at least content creators. I'm like, I was doing this before that was a term and Speaker 3
Yeah. Speaker 2
But now, like, you go to big events and and they're being brought to events where they're the attraction. Sure. You know, they don't have the depth of knowledge that, like, any of you guys have with why they're doing this. They just could, like, watch you do something, like, oh, and they go repeat it. And now they're a thing. So Yeah. And they think it's a lot you know, like, since COVID, they think this is easy because they jumped on TikTok, which I did not. I was trying to keep my business afloat during COVID. But Yeah. You know, as fast as they all grew in there, like, you know, those guys have four or five million followers that are like, they really can't even cook. And and by the way, this is what I'm about to say isn't just, like, isolated cooking. It's the same in every industry. Music industry for sure. Oh, yeah. But, you know, these guys are amassing four, five million followers on TikTok, and they think they're a big deal. And maybe they are, but, they look for the easy way to, you know, create the long term business, which I don't I think that's what's gonna bite them in the butt is I don't think I think they're it's not a flash in the pan. Mhmm. But I don't think TikTok is a long game. What do Speaker 3
you think is a long game? Speaker 2
Well, I don't really know, but necessarily. But I think I have this belief that, say, this next weekend, somebody random is gonna go make ribs, for instance. I don't think they're gonna go on TikTok and look up how to do it. Now, they might. Right. But I use that short form entertaining stuff to, like, you scroll and you see something that looks good or delicious, and I might save that. And, like, one day, I might make it. But if I'm if I'm not say you're making anything, doesn't have to be ribs. It could be like chicken cacciatore. I feel like you're gonna go to either Google or YouTube to search it. And YouTube is the number two biggest search engine behind Google. Yep. And Google will give you YouTube results. So that's why we're about the long form. It's not shtick. It's like Sure. Truly educational. Yes. That now I don't know if that's the right answer. There's probably more than one answer because our social numbers are growing way slower than they used to because we don't we don't ever get together to go make clickbait videos. You know, like, we don't we don't get our team to go, let's go make a viral BS video tomorrow. This stuff drives me crazy. Yeah. I was I was with, this is, like, two years ago this happened, but me, Chris Lilly, and Tuffy Stone ran a truck going to a liquor store to look for bourbon. And I showed him a guy had made a video where he took a whole rib roast and, like, dunked it in, you know, peanut butter and aged it Speaker 1
for a month. Oh my god. Speaker 2
And then he ends up, like, you know, breaking off and cutting it and eating it. And he's like, oh, it's nutty and all this stuff. And Tuffy's reaction, the first words out of his mouth were, that is the stupidest shit I've ever seen in my life. But the video had a gazillion views, you know, because it was, like, outlandish. I'm not I'm not here for that. Speaker 1
It's like the chef reactions guy. Yeah. Speaker 2
He was the money. I didn't like him at first. I like him now. Speaker 1
Yo. I I love that guy. So Yeah. Have you seen it, Justin? No. There's this there's this he's a chef somewhere, and it'll be like a split frame of him. And then, like, one of these ridiculous I don't even know what they call it. It used Speaker 2
to be like a home cook making food and Yeah. Speaker 4
Talking about Speaker 2
what they're doing, and he's just commentating alongside. Speaker 1
It is hilarious. It's the people who make stupid shit just to Yeah. To frustrate you and be like, this is stupid, but they do it on purpose. And then at the end, he's he says whether or not he'd eat it or whatever. Speaker 2
But Sometimes you'll eat it. Speaker 1
Yeah. His I don't even I don't have TikTok, so I don't really have that, I don't I don't see a lot of that stuff, but I know what you're talking about as far as, people making ridiculous Well, Speaker 2
they're on Instagram too. Like, I we have TikTok, but and we have four hundred and fifty thousand. Like, it's not bad, but I joke when people come up to me like, oh, we know you from TikTok. I'm like, little part of me dies when you say Oh. If you please say you know me from somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Because what we do is we take our long form, like a like a ten minute cooking show, and then they'll distill it down into a minute video Yes. Which isn't as good as if like, if we're let's just stick with ribs. If we're gonna make ribs, a TikTok would do better if we said, alright. We're about to make a sixty second TikTok about ribs. That will perform better than if I take, you know, a ten minute video and shrink it down because my tone might not be right. You know, they're they're, like, trying to grasp a Speaker 1
little jump cutting. Yeah. Exactly. Speaker 2
So it's kinda kludgy. So, you know, to have half a million followers when we're just kinda not really putting a lot of effort into it is okay, but, also, the comments on TikTok are terrible. Like, that's like they're they're savage. Are they really? Yeah. Yeah. It's gotten a little better, but, yeah, you get a lot of people. I mean, I guess your stuff gets shown to so many nonfollowers there and your Mhmm. To your account can grow really fast on TikTok, much faster than other platforms. Yeah. There's a lot of idiots out there Speaker 1
for sure. You read it? You check it out? Speaker 2
No. I mean, I hear a little a little, because, you know, social media is how I accidentally started this business. I wasn't trying to start a business, but, I worked in downtown Dallas, IT job. My wife is, you know, we were dating. No. We were married. We were married then. We worked together. But, I ran IT and I I didn't have Facebook. In twenty thirteen, I didn't have Facebook because I hate Facebook. And today's a great example. You know when you open Facebook, you're gonna see all everybody's political crap that you don't care to see. Mhmm. It's that. I don't see that. I'm gonna see, like, picture of my niece or something. Right? So I and there's a lot of drama on there. So I didn't I I didn't have Facebook. But then when when Instagram came along, I'm like, oh, that's cool. It's visual. Speaker 1
Felt the same way. Speaker 2
So I could put my food on there, and and then I have to you know, it was easy. But, I always give the same example. Like, I put a steak. It was like, here's a steak I cooked on a Big Green Eggs, seasoned with Meat Church Holy Cow for, I don't know, I don't know, two minutes a side until it was, you know, one twenty five or whatever. But people were immediately, like, thank you for telling me how you did that. So then I just lean I I was always had a knack for teaching. So I was like, alright. Well, I can cook and I can tell you how I did it. So that's how I created the business, but I wasn't trying. So I just kept doing it, and it kept taking off. Speaker 4
That's and, you know, interesting hearing you talk about the business now compared to the last time you and I saw each other and what the business was back then. I mean, it was at the very, very beginning stages, and it was it felt, from my perspective, it was the spice rub was kind of that was just it. It was the spices, you know. But hearing you talk about it now, it's a it's a media business. Speaker 2
It's crazy because I don't so, you know, I just did this interview for this Texas thing I just came from, and they were like, one of the questions is what is meat church? And I always say it's two things. It's I say the seasoning first because that's where our revenue comes from. And I say, then it's Matt Pittman. And they're like, what's that mean? I said, whoever decided to cook for this week. And it's not just that. That's the flashy thing. But it's Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
Teaching and then, you know, we do a lot of, they're like, we heard you're you're the barbecue guy for the stars. And I said, well, I don't know what you call it, but we do you know, since we don't have a catering and we don't you can't pick up the phone and call to get catering like you can at your restaurants. Right. It's just like if I wanna do it or not. So we just do the flashy stuff. So then we get put on this unfair pedestal. They're like, oh, he cooked for post Malone Saturday, and he cooked for you know? So that helps too a little bit. Speaker 3
Of course, it does. Speaker 1
And it sounds fun too. Yeah. And that's the part of the I I love doing stuff like that. And I think we we realized the value of doing stuff like that before. What I think it was it was at a meat fight one year, and everyone was talking about, at the judges' table, shit that that we have all bartered for through barbecue. And, like, someone said that they bartered for a root canal. Someone was like, oh, a wedding cake. There was all kind of things that there was like, oh, well, let's let's use our thing or shit. I'm guilty. Go into shows to see live music. Oh, okay. Sure. I have reached out. You know, we convinced Texas Monthly to take us to Brooklyn Yeah. To do a pop up event around the fact that what I was trying to actually do was feed the Allman Brothers at the Beacon. Yeah. And both of those things happened. Except up the day we're flying out, Greg Allman got sick and so they canceled that show, but we still did this event in Brooklyn, me and Wayne Mhmm. And, Barrett Black. And, we partnered up with Hill Country Barbecue in in Texas Monthly. Yeah. Got on board, and we did a a Texas takes over Brooklyn pop up to, as a a way to just, you know Oh, for sure. Speaker 2
Mhmm. That was Shame in that. Speaker 1
Hell no, dude. Speaker 2
Good thing is we're in the food business. Everybody's gotta eat. Speaker 1
Right. Speaker 2
Go ahead. Speaker 3
And speaking of that, you know, and just looking at your website, one of the things that really stands out to me is your food styling and your photography. Speaker 1
Oh, man. So good. Speaker 3
It is just so fucking good, dude. It is really amazing because descriptions and text is is one layer. Right? I mean, people following the recipes, following the description sets. But being able to see it and see it stylized that way, it's it is you you do a it's a spectacular job. I Speaker 2
think that. Speaker 3
You know, any I I send people that way after if you really wanna know what food should look Speaker 1
like, go go Absolutely. I'm not kidding. Speaker 2
What was crazy is we don't have a food stylist, but, my daughter-in-law That's it. So my so there's two people now, but, my daughter-in-law who's thirty one, she started dating my oldest son in eighth grade, and they're married and have two kids. So she's, like, amateur photographer. Never taken any classes or anything. So she started shooting my food, and we're like, oh, this is good. Well, at the time, I had a video guy on my team, and he did still photos. And I I'm not saying his were bad, but I preferred hers to his. Meat Church, she comes to we shoot once a month. We try to do four cooking shows in a day, so we basically have the month covered out of one day. She comes to those and shoots the whole thing. Now she's on maternity leave right now, and so I got it. There's been other guys. Thank you. There's another guys doing it for the past few weeks, but here's a cool thing about that. I've said no to cookbook forever. I'm like, I don't have the time, and I'm like, if, well, I have this belief that you're not ready for a cookbook and, like, now all kinds of people are getting cookbooks that I think is funny. But I didn't I wanted to wait till I was, like, ready where I thought, okay. Now I can have my name on a book and feel good about it. Mhmm. Thought that well but I still wasn't gonna do it because I thought all the hours I can put into that, I could put it into something else and make way more money. Yeah. And that's how I operate. But one day after Kate was pregnant with Beau, her two year old, and I looked at her. We're seeing our living room, and I thought, one day I won't be here. And I'm like, what if Beau had a book that was his grandfather's recipes and his mom took all the pictures? So you're pointing the pictures out. I mean, literally her being pregnant with him was that's what broke me to, like, okay. I should do this now because it'll be here forever. But it's cool that it's all her pictures. Yeah. Like, you our trailer, anywhere you see photos in like, go in, like, a Shields and there's an end cap, it's her picture. So that's why I always talk about, here's how the family business is going. So it's it's neat. Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
Now, we've worked with brands, like, well, I used to be a spokesperson for academy for a little while, and they would bring, like, a food stylist on a shoot. So, you know, we watch and learn. But I have another guy on my team named Don. He's I call him the Swiss Army knife. Don does everything. Like, everything. Like, he'll go get you a bag of ice or wrangle a chute, whatever. But he is now, like, kinda mini food styling for and it's just like our last shot. When we do a video and we, like, make the prepared final thing, he's he's trying to make it look all pretty. But we're not in there like McDonald's with spray that you can't eat. It's not like that. Right? Speaker 1
We're not using Yeah. Inedible ingredients that Speaker 2
we would like. Eat it all. It's and it's all real, by the way. Our shoots are all real. Like, what you see is what you get. We don't fake anything. But, yeah, we have to make it look. Speaker 1
Do you finish eating it when you take the bite from the crude, everything. Speaker 3
There are Speaker 2
no leftovers. Like, we shot Thursday, and we had a lot of food, and it all got eaten. Speaker 1
How do you come up with what you guys are gonna do for the shoot? I I mean, I I have the hardest time at the restaurant of having we go through this thing of, like, oh my god. We have to create content. You know? There's just this pressure of constantly of having to create a shot or a thing to do to put out there, and it's it's exhausting. I think mostly it's exhausting for us because half the time, what we come up with or what we shoot looks like shit, and we don't wanna use it. But it's just the thought process of what can we make that is gonna stand out from the millions of other Instagram videos on the feed if you've ever liked one barbecue video or in my case, if you like one drummer, all of a sudden, like, your feed gets inundated. What's the thought process behind creating that? How do you decide what you guys are gonna do? Speaker 2
Well, the first little while, it wasn't hard because it was like, I this was before the cookbook talk. I said, YouTube to me is a visual cookbook. So there's certain things that we need to have. And so for, like, the first two hundred, it was, like, obviously, you know the core stuff. So we wanna make sure we had all of that. And then my my cooking, if I pull my like, barbecue is obviously what we're known for, but it wasn't the first thing I started cooking outside. Crawfish is where I started. And so I was like, okay. I I started looking at a calendar year, and I thought, well, my cooking is very seasonal. The beginning of the year, when crawfish come in, I'm doing that. And then, obviously, we're all doing grilling outside this time of year. And then, you know, I do a ton of holiday stuff, like, a real big focus on holiday stuff. So I kinda looked at the things that I do throughout the year. Like, I need a video for everything that we do that people like, and it's, hardly anything has ever been like, oh, I saw this thing down the road. We should go do that. It's all been Uh-huh. Pretty much personal experience. But then this year, when we went through the winter and got through the holiday stuff, got through the first of the year, that's like I call the nuclear winter barbecue January, February. Obviously, good weather here mostly. But in other parts of the country, there, you know, there's, I don't know, thirty, forty percent of our audience that their smokers might be put away, you know, under snow or something. So we shifted to comfort food because I love, like, chicken fresh, steak, meatloaf. Like, I would do southern I would do I'm from Tennessee and Alabama. I would do, like, southern food if I didn't know what barbecue was. So we were doing a lot of comfort food. So and it didn't get the clicks. It didn't light the world on fire. One one or two of them did really well, and rest of them are kinda, like, ew. But that was a new area where I'm, like, maybe like, people come to me. Let me say this the right way. One guy came to me and he said, dude, I come to you when I wanna make barbecue. I know you have video on it. He said, but I've known you for a long time and you cook a lot more things. You should start to video that. And I said, well, I do have four seasonings that are what I call gourmet seasonings, lemon pepper, garlic, and herb, things that aren't barbecue rubs. I'm like, well, if I did these comfort food meals, I could talk about those, and maybe I could start to get some stay at home moms or whoever just wants to know how to cook marry me chicken or whatever the case may be. It is mixed results, but we never regret anything we do. Like, we do a lot of fish, and that does not get the clicks at all. Like, we'll put out a fish video, and it gets, like, a third or fourth of the videos that a steak video would get. And we're bombed because we put it's a lot of money and time and effort into these productions, but I'm like, you know, I I don't just cook brisket. Like, if somebody wants to make salmon four different ways, well, we've got all those different recipes. Speaker 1
Well, let's be honest. We're we're all at the age now where we probably should be watching more fish videos and eating eating more fish. Speaker 2
Yeah. I should not touch eating already. Speaker 1
Yeah. My cardiologist was definitely being supportive of that. That's for sure. More fish videos. Speaker 2
So it's it's a mixed bag. I mean, I do get ideas. Like, last year not this year, but last year was my first year at the Masters. And when I walked out, I said, we should do pimento cheese for the Masters because at Red Dirt, the very first I did Red Dirt its second year. We served my pimento cheese on something, and I still can't remember what. So it's been on the website since twenty fifteen. And by the way, cimento cheese is, as you all know, pretty easy. You can just, like, mix five things together in a mixer. You're done. It was the easiest video we've ever done, and it crushed. But we put it out in Master's Week. So we'll we'll have some of that in our head. Like, okay. Is there something timely coming up that we should say, oh, it's Memorial Day. We're making ribs with your family. It gets a little added added push, but we're not we're not doing anything too crazy yet. We've yet to do anything that's clickbait on YouTube. And some people could call me an old man because I'm not budging, but I'm just really trying to stay true to who we are. Speaker 3
But don't you think it it provides you a more stable base Speaker 1
Mhmm. Of of viewers, actual fans? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3
You you have qualified viewers that want that are truly consuming your content because of the content, not because of the show value. Speaker 2
So that's why I'm talking about the long game. I'm thinking Yeah. If someone knows me, know what they do, I think odds are they might be like, oh, let's go see if Me Church has done it and look it up versus going to these entertaining click baity guys on social. Now I'm not saying what they're doing is wrong. Like, if I always say if if I was twenty eight years old and an engineer and could quit my job to go make a video every day, I'd probably do it. You mean, you know, if you can make a good living like that and be your own boss, I'd I'd get it. But I just try to show the difference and, so and and plus, you can have our food. We we we don't have a restaurant, but that's by design. We've turned down a bunch of offers to build restaurants. Speaker 1
But It's probably a good news. No one is smart. No kidding, man. Speaker 2
Well, it's because I've been mentored Speaker 3
by a Speaker 2
lot of guys. I was Speaker 4
like, you do better life. Right now. Speaker 2
But, you know, I mean, you guys would know better than anybody. But every single person, friends like you, you know, are like, no. Even when we've had very beautiful restaurants laid out in front of us. But I'm fortunate that we grew this business to where it's, like, okay. This is a really big business without like, don't air this part, but I made a comment to a friend, oh, Pitman doesn't even have a restaurant. And I'm, like, my business is way bigger than your restaurant. And I'm not saying that in a diss. Like, what you do is harder. I I, you know, I hold you guys in the highest regard because your food has to be awesome every single bite that you're open. Well, you can't have my food. So that's why I'm, like, unfairly up here. But, you know, we obviously do do a lot of food line festivals, barbecue festivals. We do a lot of events where it's not like we make crappy food or it wouldn't work. Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
We have to have good season. Speaker 1
Try Speaker 2
it. You do get to have it. Yeah. I'm not just making a and that's important to me. I don't wanna be there's a lot of people in our industry that you can never have their food. I don't wanna be that guy. I wanna be out there. I wanna be at events that our customers are at. I want them to have our stuff. That's why we like doing Troubadour and Speaker 1
Right. You're doing a live fire thing at Troubadour Mhmm. This next weekend. Speaker 2
But that way, for me, it's about that it's about I can go do things and I can be fulfilled. I can make my food. I can interact with people. Just like somebody walks into restaurants and says that's the best beef rib I've ever had. I can still get that gratification, but I can pick and choose when we do it. You know? I don't have to be at it all the time. Speaker 4
I'm kinda curious, like, what what does the structure of your business look like in terms of, like, the roles and just parts of the business that you have in order to support on Speaker 1
this? Speaker 4
You know, there's a lot there's a lot of different aspects to it. Speaker 2
It's mostly so my right and left hand, my oldest son, Christian, his wife, they are they are like, I say they run Meet Church. I two years ago, I tried to I talked about maybe stepping out to where we had interest to acquire us, and we weren't going down that road, but I thought, man, we've caught lightning in a bottle. I would like to be able to do I said I wanna be wholly creative. Like, I would love to just cook and do whatever I wanna do and not have to worry about the day to day. So someone advised me you should hire a president. Well, I thought it'd be better for them if I train them, which means I'm in more to train them. But it means a lot because they're family and they care like crazy amounts. So they're both over everything in the business. There's nothing in the business that has my name on it except for the personality and social media stuff. Otherwise, the business can now finally run without me. But under Kate, she has a wholesale team, which we have quite a few wholesale managers, because that's a really big part of our business now. Huge. Like, we're number one seasoning in Academy, Buc ee's, Ace Hardware. We sold Ace Hardware ten million dollars last year. It's insane. It's big. It's it's insane. Insane. Like, I don't even understand it. So the wholesale unit is extremely important. She's also over brand marketing, so her and I do that together. So she, is responsible for our we send an email every Wednesday morning. Our weekly videos come out every Wednesday, and Kate has an email that everything's free with us. It's like we're just giving you a free recipe. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
So the email is like, last week was it was pulled pork, like hickory pulled pork. But then beneath it is what I'm wearing for sale and, you know, there's other things we have for sale, but it's not a it's not a hard sale. Our emails are never like, hey. We're having a deal. Come buy this. It's like, this here is free content. So she does all that. And then, Christian has we have a brick and mortar store, which so he oversees that. I forgot with Kate. She oversees all production. Our stuff is made by co packer, so she's she's the one making sure that we're producing enough. She's buying all the supply, not the seasoning, but everything else. Christian has the store. He has, like, all, like, events. He has customer service, so all the support people come up to him. He has all facilities, so we have multiple, you know, multiple properties, so he has to do all of that. So they got a lot. But we're not the biggest company employment wise. Like, we have less than twenty people, which to be our size Mhmm. Is not a lot, but I strategically outsource almost everything I can. Like, outsource CFO services. Mhmm. I outsource, a lot. Like, I I growing up in IT, one of my bosses looked at me. And when we were taking our email to the cloud, we were really good at hosting email. And he said, it's great that you're good at hosting email, but we don't make any more money because you're great at hosting email. So I've always carried that with me. It doesn't mean you should outsource everything, but it does keep me from having a huge staff. Mhmm. Now my co packer, we're ninety nine percent of his business, and he's got, like, fifty, sixty employees. So if we if we did have manufacturing at some point, which I don't really wanna be in that business, you know, we'd have a lot more a lot more people. Mhmm. Speaker 1
So let's jump back to IT. K? There was a point in time where that's what you were doing, and that was your thing. And I guess you had a little something something going on the side here. But at what point were you like, you know what? I'm gonna try to do this instead. And, you know, was it scary as hell? Like, you know, any anyone who's making I mean, it's a big change to make. It's a crazy thing to say out loud. Someone who's you know, you have a degree in finance. Right? And you're doing IT to say, I'm gonna quit, and I'm gonna sell barbecue rub. Yeah. So it Speaker 2
it's crazy. It wasn't a hard decision for me because you have to set the stage that I tell people I didn't figure this out at twenty five. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
So I just turned fifty last late last year. So I figured it out in my forties. When I say figured it out, like, Meet Church is eleven years old as of last month. So halfway through that, five years in, I was like, this is a thing. I mean, first couple years was a hobby. The third and fourth year consecutively. Speaker 1
You were still had a day job in your okay. Speaker 2
Year four and year five, hardest two years of my life. Like, if my wife's here, she gives a great perspective. Like, I'm I'm not I'm not trying to be funny. I probably should have been divorced because burning the midnight oil, every vacation day I took was to go do an event, you know, to, like, go to Atlanta to cook for Big Green Egg or whatever. But, you know, the way we started the business, it was on the side. So I have a good career job, officer in a company. When I started dating my wife, she had boys in the second and fifth grade. They're now twenty six and thirty one. Well, they were both in one was at the end of his college career, and one was just getting in when it was time for me to leave. So she wasn't real interested in me leaving my, mhmm, comfortable officer of the company job. So but I'd only ever shared my numbers and our revenue stuff with one person who really kinda helped mentor me. And I was like, it, you know, it just kept going up. Like, our revenue was doubling every year. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
And I would tell him, like, we did this this month. We did this this month. And I said, when's it gonna go down? He's like finally, he said, Matt, I've been meeting with you for, like, over a year. He's like, if you keep doing what you're doing, it's not gonna go down, so stop talking like that. But, obviously, there's no guarantee. But I had got to the point revenue wise where I'm like, I need to go do this because now my bring home was a little more than my salary. And I wasn't trying to sell my wife on a bill of goods. Like, oh, if we do the sniffer do that, we can make that. And she wanted no part of me leaving, and she had a couple reasons. But the main one was she was like, if you she's not wired to be on the go and on the run like I am. And she's like, if you don't have a job, you're never gonna be home. So that was that's what I kept hearing. But then it clicked with me one day. It was Father's Day six years ago. My dad had been over, and he said, Tracy mentioned you might be leaving your job. And I said, well, she did? Because she had never really been open to it. So that night, I walked beside her bed, and I had printed out one piece of paper with, like, bullet points on it. And I said, I need I need to give my boss notice that I'm gonna leave, but I don't have to leave tomorrow. We can build a plan. And I said, and here's why. And I'm like, I'm not selling you something. I just walked her. This is what we did. This is where we're at. And she looked at me, and she said, Matt, why would you ever quit that job? And that's when the second thing hit me. She cared about the stability of that job. Mhmm. And I I I realized that, and I was like, okay. We're good. And, anyway, so that was right before COVID started. That was I think, that was twenty nineteen. Because twenty twenty ended up being huge for us, because Speaker 1
Everybody was at home. Speaker 2
Everybody's home cooking. Yeah. Everybody started TikTok. I didn't because but our business shot up to where we we, like, tripled our revenue that year. So that was that was helpful. But So the story is, like, really documented. I got interviewed over it even by our local channel eight here. And because I'll never forget, they said, did you leave the door open to go back? And I said, oh, the door is open, but I'm not walking through it. Mhmm. And I was in IT. Stuff's changed so much now. I wouldn't know what the hell to do anyway. Right. I could just, you know, consult or something. But, yeah, it was it was a big deal to her, but I wasn't nervous because I skipped this part. I told you. I start I figured it out in my forties, not being so good and bad. Not being twenty five, well, the bad side was that I end up having a lot more responsibility. I've got now I've got four kids, you know, mortgage, and, like, you know, they depend on me. Mhmm. My wife stayed home after the fourth one, so it had to work. But the CEO at Traeger, Jeremy's a really good friend of mine, and he said I get asked this question more than any question. He went to Harvard. He's like, when should I leave? When do I know? Are you gonna be nervous? Whatever. And I looked at him. I said, I'm not nervous now because our sales, you know, they're not just gonna disappear. So and then I'd also partnered with Traeger, and they, they had given me, like, a pretty good yearly I'll call it a salary to do what I was doing. So that helped her a lot mentally. I said, well, even if she was like, what if what if somebody gets sick off our seasoning and we get sued? And I said, well, if this station disappears, I still can at least pay the electric bill with this Traeger money. Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
But yeah. I mean, once you realize you're gonna leave, you can no longer be in America because every single meeting you go in, you're like, when is this gonna be over? When is this meeting done? And Yep. I I could Speaker 4
I could go back. No. The thought of being in that environment and being constrained by all the rules and everything else, it would, I couldn't Meetings. Speaker 2
Like, sitting in a room with a conference table where every meeting's an hour and, you know, just the rigmarole of Speaker 1
someone's tenure. The conference. Speaker 2
This is different. This is different. You know, if you need to go and talk about something for five minutes and schedule for an hour, you're sitting there for an hour. You waste your time. And then anyway. Speaker 1
Yeah. So I'd I wanna ask because I know that people ask you shit all the time about you know, we hear we get asked all the same questions all the time. Yeah. What kind of fire would you use? Blah blah blah blah blah. But I I wanna ask you this question because I know the answer, and, I just kinda wanna wanna wanna give someone some props. So I just wanna talk about the name Meet Church. Okay? And I just want you to talk about how you landed on that name and where it came from. That's a great story. Pretty Please. Speaker 2
Yeah. Great story. So, you know, we were competing in barbecue. My brother and I just did, you know, some competitions. But I always tell people we weren't trying to be world champions. It was like we're just trying to go have a good time on Saturday and, you know, do good and hang with our families and maybe drink a little. But Yeah. I had remembered that our friend, Alice, who, runs Meat Fight, had she was at Slowbone and on a Sunday morning, so almost lunchtime, and she had tweeted, like, a picture of her tray of barbecue. And this isn't the exact quote, but it said something effective, I'm about to have my hashtag meet church. Right. And and I have the tweet screenshot somewhere. I just remember the hashtag meet church, and I was like, that's funny. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
So it stuck with me. So fast forward, we were here in Oak Cliff at Barbecues Blues and Bandits, like a local unsanctioned competition. And I was there for that. Really? Her and her husband were there. And, I remember asking, like, hey. Can I use this name? And they're like, yeah. Whatever. Sure. But then Mike, her husband ended up giving me advice down the road on how to trademark it. So I heard through the grapevine I don't actually I don't think I've ever actually asked Alice this, but she told someone she gave away the only name Better Than Meat five for free. But that's where it came from. And but I was raised Southern Baptist, so I was really nervous about it. But I had other thoughts in my head. It wasn't just about seeing that, but, we always cooked out on Sunday. So I I played hockey most of my life, and my games were on Sunday early evening. So a lot of times, I could come home and cook out. And whether yeah. Speaker 1
Okay. Obviously, indoor. Like, it's not like you're going out to the pond. Right. Speaker 2
Yeah. No. No frozen ponds here. Speaker 1
Tennessee. Okay. Speaker 2
Was nervous until my granddaddy, who's a deacon in the church, he just asked me what the name meant. And I told him, he's like, okay. And he on he went. I'm like, okay. I'm good. Nice. Did have one other moment. I was at a egg fest in twenty fourteen. Aaron had Aaron Franklin did a demo right in front of me, and I remember he walked off from talking to me and up is walking like a priest, like, black shirt, white square, all the way. Speaker 1
That's right. Yeah. Speaker 2
And I was like, oh god. Here we go. And he was like, meet your son. I said, yes, sir. He said, that's a church I can get behind. I was like, we're good. Speaker 1
That's awesome. And Alice is Alice Lassade and Meat Fight is one of the greatest charity, organizations that that exist on this planet. So it would do anything for Alice. I'll go to Meat Fight and judge anytime she asks. It's, you know, it's just something that it's one of those things that you participate in, and it's fun, but you also get to really see the impact of from a charity standpoint of changing and helping people's lives who have MS. So Yeah. It's a really amazing thing. It's and I and I would love to see it grow. She had talked before about it possibly being able to be in other cities, and I hope that that happens one day. But Speaker 2
We've donated to it every year since. Yeah. Like, we always try to, like, really Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
Help and pay it forward with that. And it is a lot of fun. And, like like, the the lady that taught my kids to swim literally has MS. And I didn't I don't know if I knew at the time or after, but she's, like, received, like, meat bite from them and so kinda full circle. So super cool, but great great charity event. Speaker 1
It is cool. And I think part of the reason she keeps inviting me back to Judge is because I always donate every year when I'm there. And I'm just like, when they start auctioning off the bikes and everyone gets fired up and you see the people on the stage that talk about how that bike changed their life, it's just like you keep raising the ocean paddle. You're like, I'll take another one. I'll take another one. It's a really amazing thing. So y'all y'all check out and see and see cool. And and see, what they're all about and, see where Meet Church's name came from. Speaker 2
They have a lot of a lot of events now too. It's not just that one. Yeah. Speaker 1
You know, they're Burger thigh, chicken thing, and Yep. The the whatever they do, it's it's worth going and being a part of that. It's for sure. Speaker 2
It's it's worth going and watch all these classically trained chefs make barbecue and Speaker 1
Right. Speaker 2
It's fun. Speaker 3
And barbecue guys judge it. Speaker 1
That okay. And that is what it's all about. You have all these fancy chefs who are made to cook barbecue. They always do brisket, sausage, ribs, and then there's a wild card. And then the judges' table are all Texas barbecue guys, pit masters, and restaurant owners, and we get to judge the shit out of them, which is awesome. And it's usually sponsored by a bourbon company or a brewery, so we just get to sit on the stage and and drink and eat food that's sometimes good, but mostly bad. And we talk shit and Speaker 3
But it's it it has progressively gotten better over the years. Speaker 1
It really has. Because that first couple of years is Speaker 3
rough. Very rough. Speaker 2
That's where we first met. I had a picture with you out front of the one of that old was it Four Corner or it's one Yeah. It was the old movie. Speaker 1
The old Four Corner? Speaker 2
Before they moved here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna go back and find the first picture I have with each of you, and I know for a fact that's that one. And yours was at Texas Monthly when you gave me a shirt at one in Austin. Probably won't remember that. You gave me a Stanley shirt. I still have it. Speaker 1
I do remember that. I mean, I don't remember that being the first time I met you, though. Speaker 2
I thought it was, but maybe not. I definitely know it's when I'm I'm with Justin. But anyway Speaker 1
Probably. We've all met each other through some event like that, whether it was pit now Pitmaster's pitnick for Cafe Momentum or Mhmm. Meat Fight or the or the barbecue fest. I miss I miss going to those things for that reason because I feel like that where the world of barbecue was kind of at that time, those things hadn't really been happening. And so we were all Speaker 3
Right. Speaker 1
Really excited. And it was the only time we ever got to see each other, you know, in a year. Like, we would see each other once or twice a year at these things, and it was really, really great. And then, I don't know what happened. It just kinda it became not really about that anymore. I feel like from some of the organizers' standpoint, we kinda got lost in in the oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a barbecue thing, but, you know, we're doing this other thing. You guys are Speaker 4
It started out a little bit where the it was the focus was on us, and it was kinda elevating the stuff that we were doing. And then it shifted to where we were there to basically draw attention to what they were doing and elevate what they were doing and became a backstory to it. Speaker 1
And then you still only got the same amount of money to show up? Speaker 4
If any. Speaker 1
Yeah. And it never covered everything that you needed to be there. And then it's just like, I I can't shut the restaurant down Mhmm. To go do this this year again. Speaker 4
Or you're, you know, you're in the restaurant grinding six, seven days a week, and then there's an event, you know, on your day off or whatever it is or your afternoon or your evening. Five hours away. Yeah. You know, and it's kind of like, well, I can take the time for myself, or do I am I obligated to do this because I need to do this to build a business? And so often that that takes the case. You know, that takes the precedent. But for me, anyway, making that choice over and over and over again took its toll. Speaker 1
Right. Is that when you kinda Speaker 4
Yeah. We just we had to we had to start backing away Speaker 1
The the whole a little bit. I am what comes to mind is the the the GIF, the meme, whatever GIF. Yeah. How do you say it? So I'm the I'm the not cool dad Speaker 3
Yes. Speaker 2
Of always have Speaker 1
our substance back in into the bushes. Yeah. Or he just disappears into the bushes. When well, I think what we all really want is just to to run our restaurants and take care of people and make people happy. And, you know, there's this whole other thing that you have to entertain, you know, that you've been really great at where me, the opposite happened. Social media, I was like, fuck this. Like, I don't wanna have anything to do with this, and I don't have it. And we hardly post shit. And, Speaker 3
I'm absolutely guilty of all of that. Right. I mean, I forsake. I I just walked away from it all. I'm like, I just don't have time. Speaker 1
Right. Because it's never gonna look like a time. No. That's not true. Well, no. No. Speaker 4
It is true. It is true. Yeah. It's a hundred percent true. Speaker 3
That's not no. This is we're not just placating here. We're that's true. Speaker 1
You have to say that. And that's why Speaker 3
I made a point of telling you earlier. It's like, dude, your photography, your shit is just on point. It is on point. And it's like This Speaker 2
is not fair. Like, my barbecue is not as good as y'all. So Well, we don't know because we never get to eat it, man. Speaker 4
This has come full circle. Speaker 2
Do you remember that Pecan Lodge is where I came when I got my vasectomy? Do you know this? Speaker 4
No. Okay. Anyhow, this has to be But I wanna hear the story. Speaker 1
Yeah. I Speaker 2
I There's your clickbait right now. But think I I think I think you probably knew at one point, but we didn't know each other very well. But, Speaker 4
I I do vaguely remember something. Speaker 2
So this is this is true. And I've told this story about two hundred times in the last couple years because anytime a guy tells me they're gonna get a vasectomy, I'll roll the story out just to make them feel better. But so, you know, we had so my wife was gonna have more kids. You know, she had to, and I was like, she understood I wanna have my own, you know, my own as well. So so we had two more. And then at one point, she was like, you're getting a vasectomy. And it was, like, quick. It wasn't, like, a lot of tongue. And then I joked that she gave me the ultimatum. She's like, no. You're gonna do it or we're not gonna have sex. And it still never worked, by the way. Right. You're married a certain amount of time. So we go to Big Baylor. You were still in the farmer's market. So we go to Big Baylor, and I go in It's really high up, like, urology office. And we sit down in the waiting room. It's just like it's literally all these old men, and they're not talking. Then she's sitting beside me, and she texts me. She goes, why are they so quiet? I go I said, because they know because Speaker 1
they know what's about to happen. Speaker 2
So we go to the back. I go to my appointment, and I was I remember I was wearing this, like, Dallas Stars, like, tracksuit. And so the nurse comes in, and, I'm I'm hot. So I'm just taking my jacket off, and she's, no. No. Don't take your clothes off. I said, I'm not taking my clothes off. I'm just hot. And she's, like, okay. All these old men in here, they just, you know, just get stripped real quick. So we get the consultation, and we go to the counter. And, and they're like, okay. When do you think about doing this? Like, when can we do it? Dog, tomorrow noon, let's do that. And she's like, no. Wait. Wait. Wait. I I said, you told me we gotta do it. So made the appointment. Came back next day or two. Got it done. I don't think she feels bad because this happened at, like, warp speed. It went from idea to I could smell it being cauterized. Sorry. I'll never forget it. Speaker 4
Yeah. I've been through that. Speaker 2
And so she uncharacteristically extremely nice to me after, and she goes, what do you wanna do? I go, I wanna go to Pecan Lodge and eat. So we go we go to Pecan Lodge, and I got, like Speaker 4
Right after the Speaker 2
Yeah. No. Straight straight there from Baylor over. So not even five minutes. Right? Like Right. Yes. Right now. Straight over. And, I got a beef rib. And I'll never forget it. So the vasectomy, Matt, I've told that story a lot. So anytime Pecan Lodge comes up for a vasectomy, I I bring the two together. Speaker 1
That's awesome. My vasectomy was performed by my my neighbor that was my best friend, when I lived in Texarkana, Texas. I hadn't seen this dude since I moved away in seventh grade. Right? And I'm in line at Stanley's. I'm walking one day, and I see this guy. And I look at him, and I'm like and he looks at me. I'm like, Matt? He's like, what's up, Nick? And I was like, holy shit. Where hadn't seen you in forever. He's like, I'm a doctor now. I work across the street. I'm a urologist. And I was like, wow. Okay. Cool. Good to see you. And and I'd see him for lunch, and then finally one day, we started talking about it. And I was like, yeah. Okay. That's fine. I'll do it. And I was like, oh, I know. Urologist, he was my neighbor when I was a kid. And so I go to doctor Kinkade's office, and and it's the whole thing and make the appointment. Me and we're talking. We're just in the, you know, catching up on shit, talking to and he just finally, he looks at his watch. He's like, alright, man. Let me see your nuts. And just just like that, it's just we changed direction, then I'm standing there, and I'm just and Matt's got his my balls in his hands, and I'm just like, this is crazy. And, yeah. That's my vasectomy story. Speaker 2
You didn't go get beef rib after? Speaker 1
No. I did not. I did milk the shit out of it, though, that that weekend. Like, it really wasn't that bad when it was done. But I was like, oh, shit. Oh, like, I looked at all weekend. I was like, don't leave me alone. I'll come in here. And I just watched basketball and whatever was going on all weekend and sympathy, bourbons and, you know, lots of bags of cold peas. You're supposed to use cold peas as your Speaker 2
Sympathy burger. I'm gonna try Speaker 1
that tonight. So, doctor Kinkade, wherever you are out there, I appreciate that. It worked worked great. Thank you. And it was good to see you again, buddy. He left I have my balls. Like, no. Yeah. Yeah. He left it right after that. I don't know where he went because he moved his practice. Oh, he was there just for you? Traumatic? It's very I was the only patient he ever had. First and last, and then they Done. It was wild. I remember watching Back to the Future for with him. That was that was old school. Yeah. Not not knowing that somewhere down the road, this kid was gonna have my my ball sack. Not again. Speaker 4
Not since the eighth grade has man had his hand on my balls. No. Speaker 1
I left in seventh grade. Hey, Shavu. I left in seventh grade. Way to way to get us talking about ball sacks, man. Yeah. I Speaker 2
know. Some we needed some clickbait, so I got it. Speaker 1
Matt, is tailgating still fun, or is it just work now? Speaker 2
It's definitely more work than it used to be because we're getting to a point where, like, it it is fun, but I'm, like, wired to, like, entertain. You know? And so people come by like, oh, sit down, enjoy yourselves. And let's just I don't know. That's why I do what I do because I've always been, like, walking around, like, taking care of people. Same thing our grandmothers did to us growing up in their homes. But but now we've got, you know, partners. Like, we're doing a big tailgate with Pepsi. So we did one last year with Miller Lite. And, you know, they'll do a lot of the heavy lifting, but they're that definitely is not just, like, having fun. You know, there's the work aspect. So I do try to limit those to, like, one or two so that the rest can be fun. But it is a production, especially now that we're, like, official with the Cowboys. People have this expectation and, you know, we're not always gonna we're not trying to blow it out. Sometimes we're just trying to hang out with our buddies. And Right. I mean, there has been there'll be a tailgater too where it's like, we're just drinking beer. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
And we're not doing anything, you know, just to just to have fun. Speaker 1
So Do you have to wear a disguise? Speaker 2
The cool thing about when I walk around Cowboys games now, people, like, bring me Miller Lights. Like, brand like, we're like, oh, you know, they I don't know them. They're like, oh, heck. I bought you a beer. I'm like, oh, this is kinda cool. Speaker 1
Nice. Speaker 2
Wish they'd bring me bourbon, but, you know, we'll take the beer. Speaker 1
Do they have bourbon at the Cowboys game? Speaker 2
Not not in gin pop. They probably have in the fancy sweets. Speaker 1
Well, that's where you're at, though. Right? Sometimes. Didn't didn't you, barter one time to get box seats at a Cowboys game, Justin? Speaker 4
We didn't barter. We've we've been out there to cook before. I did barter for some landscaping recently. Speaker 1
That was Smart move. Smart move. All day, every day. Speaker 4
Do you have do you have any culinary resources on your team to help with the prep and so you're not I mean, I think about having to do the events when it's, like, the events that we do. You know? And if it's you never wanna pull people from the restaurant Yeah. If if you if you can avoid it. And so you end up doing a lot of the work yourself, but that the lead up to it and all the logistics of getting things there and getting it set up is a lot. Did you have help with that, or you'd Speaker 2
slightly have to I do now. So I have full time chef and then another guy. So there's two guys on that team that, you know, they shop all the food, whether we're using food service or if it's not big enough, we're, you know, shopping in grocery stores. And then they're doing a lot of the prep. But that was new in the last two years. Two Octobers ago, I was driving to an event in Tennessee, and I literally never turned music on, if you can believe that. And I live for music. But I did it because I was at this time in my life where we were so chaotic, and I was like, what is making Matt Pittman busy in making lists and trying to strategically solve things? And the number one thing kept coming back to food. Like, I did it all. I bought it. I prepped it. I cooked it. And, obviously, as you guys know, we're in the wrong cuisine. Like, we should have been hamburger guys. Speaker 3
Shit or Speaker 2
You know? Or maybe maybe a fried chicken or something. But, so I finally did bring people in. It's not perfect, but it's way better. But the challenge also there is, you know, I don't want that part of the business to be a complete sinkhole for money. Right. So we we've bought this new headquarters building that we've been in since last year. It has a big warehouse in it, and I've acquired all the commercial kitchen equipment. And now we're actually literally about to start building the actual kitchen to have an even better facility to do stuff in. So definitely something we've been focused on for a couple years because that's where things got rough with us when everything was on me. And events, like you said, take up so much time, whether it's a catering or a Mhmm. Festival or whatever. They're running around and getting it and prepping it and, you know, making it at a level that people expect it to be at while getting everything loaded and everybody on the road is is a huge pain in the ass. So that was probably the best thing I could ever do is actually get people that could do that. So now it's it's awesome. I've got people that will like, for Troubadour, I've got two guys driving smokers down Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
You know, in advance. And so it's I do enjoy cooking things, obviously, like we all did. So I try to remember the joy in that. So, like, at this festival, I'll be doing the whole hog because it's something fun to do. Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
But I definitely finally have people that can help. Speaker 1
That's good. So if someone buys something off your website, does that, like, come to the headquarters? Like, you you got folks that ship and pack it pack it there? Speaker 2
We do. So all of our direct to consumer, we actually handle it all. So we pack it, we ship, and it's quick. Like, if you order by I mean, this is no guarantee. But, basically, if you're ordering by midafternoon, it's going out that day unless we're in peak holiday season or something like that. But we take a lot of pride in it. Our stuff is blended, in between Fort Worth and Dallas, and we we literally truck it over daily. Six days a week right now, seven days a week during the holidays, and multiple times a day during the holidays. We averaged a thousand orders a day in the fourth quarter. Orders, not bottles. So it was it's pretty pretty crazy. And then our wholesale stuff goes directly, out of our co packer. So it it's really big now, so we don't we don't actually bring that to us to to ship out. Speaker 1
Yeah. I can't imagine. I mean, we we have stuff all over the place, and and I I know we're not doing what what you're what you guys are doing. It's gotta Speaker 2
be crazy. It's a blessing and a curse, but during the fourth quarter, we do a ton of our business in the fourth quarter. There's a lot of usually for the holidays, we're not very relaxed, if you can believe that, because we're we it means a lot to me personally. And I'm not just saying this because we're recording this, but, you know, we wanna make sure it's going out the door. And and as you guys know, post office, they like, their updates suck Yeah. During the fourth quarter. And we're the biggest postal customer in Ellis County. They don't care. They would prefer the post office would prefer not to have us, if you want my honest opinion. But we send them so much that they don't scan it during the holidays. So the customer experience is actually pretty poor. You'll, you know, you'll get a notice that we shipped it, and then it just sits there until it gets to their post office. It looks like we're twiddling our thumbs, but we're not. But it's cheaper and faster than UPS and FedEx. So that's why we do it. But, anyway, it's it's stressful in the in the fall. Speaker 4
Do you have any is there anything that you're not doing now that's been been kind of percolating in the back of your brain that you think you'd like to do? Speaker 2
Like, in this business or in Speaker 4
I mean, in this business or something else that that's been interesting interesting to you to Speaker 2
I mean, so this super low hanging fruit is we sell seasoning, and everyone's asking, like, why don't you do barbecue sauce and stuff like that. And and I don't wanna we've always tried to say, I don't wanna be all things to all people. Mhmm. But we obviously have a very captive audience of what we do, so sauce makes sense. So you'll see that come out later this year. Speaker 1
You Speaker 2
know, it's interesting. Like, I love what we do, and I don't think that bigger is always better. Mhmm. And but I'm very competitive. Like, I wanna be kinda like the number one backyard seasoning. But people say, well, you should open up multiple Meat Church barbecue slides across the country, and I really don't even wanna think about it, much less do it. Everybody works to make money, but I'd you know, ultimately, you'll realize money shouldn't be the first reason you do anything. And so we're really very fulfilled with what we do. I gotta figure out a way to slow down because I've never honestly worked more hours or harder than I'm working right now. And it's like, no matter what we do, it seems to get worse. So I think right now, it's kinda hard for me to be strategic, which sounds silly because I lead the brand, and it's my job to know where we're going when we're you know, what we're gonna do. So we're just kinda slowly, organically grow continuing to do what we do because we're happy with the business. Mhmm. But we need to get this headquarters building we bought, built out, and, like, just we're we're right now, we're currently focused on making it a really cool place to work, so we just decorated it and really trying to make our employees dig it. But I wanna add some more buildings where we can possibly do our own direct our own shipping of our wholesale stuff and just to do a better job with it for people. But I don't really even currently have, like, major, like, oh, I wanna go do this or I wanna go do that. I think it's right now with my daughter being on maternity leave, my daughter-in-law, I am, like, sucked in way more than I would be into the weeds. And so it's kinda hard to be real strategic outside of knowing we're gonna launch sauce. We're looking at launching fuels. So, charcoal, chunks, chips, like, those things all make sense. Like I said in the beginning, I'm not really trying to be all things to all people. You look at, like, a Myron Mixon Mhmm. Who's got his own smoker and, you know, I'm not That's your buddy. Speaker 1
Right, Wayne? That's my buddy. Speaker 2
Not trying to have everything. So Mhmm. Just expand where it makes sense. I mean, we're having fun right now, so it's, you know, definitely a good time. But one reason I don't wanna go nuts is you guys all know kids grow up really quick, and our youngest being twelve and fourteen, I mean, she's two thirds out of the house. I'm thinking she's got high school left and she's gone. Right. So we we shut things down for the summer. We have a home in Florida. And for the past three summers, we've gone there for the summer, and I've not taken an event. We did leave That's good. To go cook in Telluride for July fourth for the past couple years. I passed on it this year to just hang with the family, and that's been my wife never thought we'd do it. I was like, hey. What if we go to our Florida house and I don't work this summer? And she said, yeah. Right. And we did it, and it was amazing. So, you know, life goes super quick, and I run them ragged. So to be able to do that was good, so definitely looking forward to that. But, yeah, back to your question, I don't have any, like, major, like, oh, we must go do this. There's still really cool people I wanna cook for. I kinda have got this weird list. Then, like, when I do that, that feels cool. Speaker 1
So how does that happen, though? Like, if there's someone you wanna cook for, how does that connection get made if, you know, whether it's Post Malone or whatever? How does that actually come to fruition that they know or that you I mean It's a good question. Have your people call their people? Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, so we don't I don't, you know, I I don't have any representation or I don't even have PR. No agent, no manager, no nothing. So it's all been word-of-mouth. But the one I talk about a lot is, George w Bush had been the number one guy I wanted to cook for for a long time, and it's really not a political thing. But when I my corporate job, we cleared stock trades, the place my wife and I worked, and we were on two separate floors. In September eleventh, I didn't see the first plane hit, but we all saw the second plane hit because we're watching TV. And I just thought, man, like, could you imagine being the president, like, during that time? Crazy. And then, obviously, he owned, you know, the Rangers, and people say he's a great guy. And I know Aikman, and Aikman says he's wonderful. And so for whatever reason, beyond Michael Jordan, anybody else, I was like, I wanna cook for that guy. And I'd get asked that on social media all the time, and I'd answer it. And finally, one guy DM'd me, and he said, I think I can make it happen. No worries. And it ended up taking almost two years. But, yeah, somebody reached out to me and said that he knows him and, you know, the backstory doesn't matter. But, it went away for a long time. And then, like, in November, he calls me and says, hey. I know it's been a while since we talked, but it's about to happen. I knew exactly what he meant. So we went down to his ranch in Crawford, and that was the one of the coolest days of my life. So super cool. So it's always like that. It's like, I believe good people help good people. Right. You know, it's that. But we don't we don't actually we don't actually literally try usually. We don't Speaker 1
Mhmm. Speaker 2
We don't reach out. So we've been we've been lucky. But I'm kinda shy and don't wanna overstep, and I probably don't act shy. But I don't wanna wanna stick my nose where it doesn't belong. Like, oh, go ask that guy if I can cook for him. Speaker 1
I don't really do that. Well, what what are some of the other top experiences of of getting to cook for somebody? Who was, like, not what maybe people would expect out of a celebrity? Like, who was just super down to earth and and a lot of fun? Speaker 2
Well, I didn't cook for this guy, but, you know, we went on The Tonight Show two February's ago, and Jimmy Fallon was, like, the coolest dude I ever met. That was and my wife was there for that. Jimmy Fallon. He's amazing. She always tell people she doesn't care about celebrity stuff I get, which is good. Like, she's very grounded and, like, I don't care. But the day I got an email, I got it from NBC, and I called her. She was at lunch with her friends, and she was like, what? What? She went crazy. So she went on that one. I watched that. That was neat. It was there with Billy, Durney, crazy enough. But went backstage, met him during rehearsals, and he grabbed a ball of my holy cow. He goes, man, I put this on everything. I said, what? And he's like, yeah, man. And I said, well, how do you how do you know about us? And he said, well, during COVID, I started cooking. He's like, I was I started watching this guy's videos. I'm like, who is this guy? He's pretty funny. I said, wait. You said you think I'm funny? He's like, yeah, dude. You're hilarious. Speaker 4
So I hit my wife. I go, Speaker 2
you hear this? Guys, I'm starting that live. He says I'm funny. She's like, you're not funny. That's awesome. But he's I mean, the nicest guy ever. Speaker 1
I love you. Speaker 2
I know you would appreciate this, Wayne, especially, but they told us we could bring a secret weapon. So I brought I literally found the biggest rack of beef ribs I've ever seen in my life, humongous. And I took beef ribs. And what's funny is I froze them, put them in my suitcase wrapped in sweatpants, go to hotel, and, yeah, like, literally, that's real food safe. They were frozen. But so I go in my secret weapons, beef ribs. And then Billy gets there his secret weapons, beef ribs. Yeah. He said, because I knew he goes, because I knew you'd bring beef ribs. Speaker 1
Touche. I watched that. What was Questlove on your team? Speaker 2
No. Questlove is the one judging. Speaker 1
Okay. He was a judge. Speaker 2
He was the one that screwed me. Speaker 1
Did you get to hang out with him? I he's he's just the coolest guy. Speaker 2
They were all so cool now. Just just there in that moment. But, you know, he went away to judge it and had his cone of silence or whatever and came back. Yeah. He looked at their food and started laughing. He knew it was theirs. So he he pointed I can't remember. He he wrote he wrote one or two down wrong, so he put it in the ballot box wrong. But I I see I mean, if you watch it, you see me going. There's some confusion there. But my kids were highly upset because the prize was this big golden chicken wing, and they thought I'd be bringing it home. You weren't literally bringing it home. It's just a prop. They were they were fired up. Like, they were literally weren't mad. Speaker 1
You don't actually get it. No. No. I'm writing a letter for you not Do that. I'm gonna talk to you. Speaker 2
CC it to Billy Durnee Hometown Barbecue. Speaker 1
You got it. You got it. Speaker 2
No. It worked out good because Billy was like, yeah. I wanna go eat after? And, you know, Billy knows everybody in New York. So we proceed to go down and have this amazing Italian meal with all this wine and Oh my god. You know, Billy's got it all handled, like, perfect like, mob boss style. You know? Totally. He's King of hospitality. Yes. He is. Worked out good. He's great. I know, like I said, didn't cook for him, but, I think, you know, one of the ones I was more taken back by was Troy Aikman when I first met him. Just he's the most healthy Troy Aikman? Yeah. You sound like my twelve year old. He met him at eight and was like, I heard you played true story. Sam didn't care about football. I took him to his house to take a Traeger to his house. Sam looked at Troy and said, I heard you played football. Troy said, I did. And Sam asked me, he goes, well, were you any good? And Troy said, I was alright, and then this Speaker 4
is best. Speaker 2
And Sam goes, well, do you have any trophies? And Troy goes, yeah. I've got three. And I was like This is amazing. So he loved it. And now Sam's a big football kid ever since, and Troy will tell you that story. Speaker 1
And and I bet Sam tells that story completely differently to his friends now. Like, my daughter, when she met Dave Grohl, was crying and complaining and screaming and flipping out and not wanting to be there. And now when she tells the story, she's like, yeah, Dave Grohl came to our restaurant. And I was like, yeah. And and you were the reason why he left. You were you were not very nice. Speaker 2
Talk about the coolest guy in I mean, I can't say in barbecue, but, you know, he went to Memphis in May years ago. I was landing. You know when your phones finally starts working, you're about to land, and and all the guys are like, you just missed Dave Grohl. Uh-huh. And I'm like, dude, huge Foo Foo Fighters fan. So, anyway, ends up being there for the whole weekend, but I was on a shot luge with him. No. And he doesn't know me at church. Knows nothing about me. And oh, yeah. So we're both doing shots, and I was like, alright. I mean, I got asked, can we take a picture? And he said, well, if you didn't ask me, I was gonna ask you. I was like, I'll never forget that line. He didn't know who the hell I was, but it was cool. Speaker 1
And that's what's funny. When he was at our spot, he has a selfie with me on his phone, and I don't I didn't ever got a picture with him because I just I didn't wanna I was just trying to treat him like anyone else who was there. And we were, you know, telling everybody, like, chill the fuck out. Like, he's just here eating. Don't fucking bother him. And and we talked about Billy Durning. He loves Billy, and he's like, oh, man. Billy's my friend. And, he's like, let me get a picture for Billy. And he took a picture. I don't on his cracked ass, beat up ass iPhone, you know, this millionaire mega Mhmm. You know, dude's got this shitty phone and Speaker 2
Maybe my picture. Speaker 1
Yeah. Maybe. Maybe so. But I didn't I I don't have a picture of me and Dave. Speaker 2
Maybe you can get the selfie and my chicken wing trophy. Speaker 1
I'm writing a letter. I'll include that. I mean, you probably can't talk about who you didn't enjoy working with or because they always say don't, you know, don't meet your heroes because, you know, someone could be a total dick, but not that I want Speaker 2
to make you think, normally, you're going in to do something like this. They've all been I haven't had any bad experiences. I did I did run into I did finally meet coach McCarthy, you know, of the Cowboys, a couple weeks ago, not in cooking, but at a volleyball tournament, and he was not cool. Speaker 1
I met him at a volleyball tournament too. Yeah. Dude, does your daughter play volleyball? So does mine. I was at nationals last year in line at Starbucks, and I turned around and Mike McCarthy's standing in line behind me. Speaker 2
I saw him at Lone Star, the one here. The huge one here. Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
Month ago. And I know I know that his daughter plays the same I know that his daughter's the same age because I've seen him at tournaments. But, yeah, fourteens. That's right. Fourteen. Yeah. Mine mine just made fifteen. So Speaker 1
We gotta talk about volleyball some other time. That would take five more hours. Speaker 2
Well, the good news for you is is, the volleyball dad is your demographic. Like, I can't wear meet your stuff at a volleyball tournament. Speaker 1
That's dude, when people find out that okay. At volleyball tournaments, generally, or other team dads, when word kinda gets around like, oh, Nick's he's got a barbecue joint in Texas. One of the first people things people ask me, I swear to fucking guys, do you know Matt Pittman? Do you know me church? Speaker 2
Lies. I swear to God. Tells all the guests. Speaker 1
No, dude. There's messages on my phone right now where I had to tell the Volleydads, like That's funny. Going to Texas to do my my podcast, and I get to interview Matt. And they're like, no way. So yeah, dude. You're you're in the Volleydad group for sure. Speaker 2
That's that's for sure. But he he you know, she's playing the big hundred and twenty court tournament Speaker 1
Yeah. Speaker 2
You know, not long ago. And, so, obviously, he's been gone for a while Mhmm. From the team. But he was sitting his daughter's plays for Skyline, really good team. So he's on that by, like, stadium court, but they're not playing. They're, like, not even warming up yet. He's just sitting there by himself, and I went and talked to him. And I never say this about people because I don't wanna judge people in one interaction, but he was the opposite of cool. And all I did was I I didn't bring up the team. I mean, indirectly, I said, he does a thing called family day where home game Sundays, they bring the whole family in on Saturday, and they have food. It's mostly ice cream, but they have, like, they have a the Cowboys, you know, feed them, but they've brought me in each of the past couple years to do barbecue on one meal. And it's super cool. You know what I mean? It's like kids' parents and Right. It's neat. So but that was my foot in the door with them officially. Mhmm. And, anyway, I just say, hey. Appreciate you. Just wanna tell you, hey. Mountain Meat Church. Just wanna tell you thank you for letting me cook family day. Cool opportunity. He goes, yep. Speaker 4
I was like, hang on. Speaker 2
Yeah. And so then I said, I shifted to volleyball, and I brought up the club. I said, Skyline, I said, my daughter-in-law played four years at Skyline, went on to play at A and M. He goes, yep. Great club. And I was like, see you later. Speaker 1
Have a good day, man. Speaker 2
Yeah. And now our new coach, Brian Schottenheimer, the nicest, most talkative guy ever. No. Total opposite. So, anyway, that wasn't a cooking experience, but, yeah, I thought that was odd. Speaker 1
But Volleyball tournaments are wild. You have so, McCarthy, freaking Steph Curry at a volleyball tournament. Vince Vaughn was at nationals last year. I mean, you, my daughter hit Peyton Manning's daughter in the face, when they were warming up, and Peyton was sitting right there. And I was like, way to go. Like, I was gonna go say what's up to Peyton Manning and daughter. Yeah. Speaker 4
Sorry. Be the bill. Speaker 1
His his girl needs an ice pack now. Yeah. Speaker 2
I don't know that girl that did that. I just wanna see. Speaker 1
Yeah. No. No. Yeah. Not don't know her. But it's pretty wild. That that whole community is nuts. And, I Speaker 2
went I I went down to Waco for a tournament, and, you wanna who gets a who gets a crowd way more than a meat church guy. Joanna Gaines was down there do. In Waco. I cooked for them in January, and I told her I said, I saw you at that Waco tournament last year. I said, I felt bad for you. Like, shoot. All the moms are on there. Speaker 1
Does she have a kid who plays volleyball too? That she said they Speaker 2
were taking off this season. I said, well, good for you. Yeah. Same age. Speaker 1
My entire life has been consumed by travel volleyball for I mean, it's been never ending for Speaker 2
It is. Speaker 1
For years. There's supposed to be a break, but there's not. Speaker 2
Because Well, my daughter just made our top team last week, so it's gonna get ratcheted up for me. Speaker 1
Well, congrats. Speaker 2
I'm I'm super stoked for her. Speaker 1
I'm gonna see you at a tournament one day. We're you gotta talk to See, Speaker 2
I don't have this height that you have, so my daughter's gotta be a good defensive player. Speaker 1
She's not tall. Speaker 2
Yeah. She is. Speaker 1
Okay. Speaker 2
She's not tall. Speaker 1
Sorry, guys. We we got you don't understand the life of a Volley dad. Speaker 2
What are you talking about? Speaker 1
You just you don't know. Speaker 2
Yeah. It it's it's it may have potentially ruined kids' sports, but we could talk about that later. Speaker 1
Yes. We can. We can. It's a good thing that we have good jobs because it's Speaker 2
It's not cheap. Speaker 1
It is, The travel? Yeah, dude. It's just a racket. Someone thought Speaker 2
it was a they will tell you it truly is a business. Like, it it has to work, you know, certain amount. It it is a business at the core. They might want these girls to go do something. I'm sure they do, but it is a business at the core. Like, tournaments we go to are, you know, like, thirty five dollars a person to go in for each day. And, like, I'm doing the math. I'm all cheap. I'm always doing the math. Like, oh, look how much this place just made. Speaker 1
Yeah. You have to pay to go watch your own kid play all day. Speaker 2
We play at one gym this year. We had six tournaments seven tournament six or seven tournaments at one gym. And on the concession stand menu, I I always take picture. The first two items are ibuprofen and earplugs. That's a weird story. Speaker 1
Yeah. My my tinnitus is so bad right now because of that the sound the tournament sound that is nothing but and I just I took out my decibel meter at the last tournament. It was a constant about ninety six decibels Wow. Of sneaker squeaks and and girls screaming The whistles. And the referee whistles, and then everyone's celebrating. I mean, it's just it's nuts. Speaker 2
I'm just when you called me for this, I was like, you three people don't need anything else to do. So I gotta know how did this come about. Oh, I got an idea. Speaker 4
That's essentially it. Speaker 1
He text me at at, like, five in the morning. He said, you up? And I said I said, Justin, is this a booty call? That's the way. He said, I no. I had a I had an idea. Never mind. It's stupid. And I was like, dude, you gotta spill it now, man. And so that that text came in the morning. It's like, what if we did a podcast? And I was just like, well, with who else? And fucking, hey. Here we are. There's just something about being here together because that's a huge that's a huge part of it to me is getting to see Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. Asness, I get right here winning before you even start doing this. Speaker 1
Yeah. And even if nothing happens, like, I will forever be grateful for just the chance to to rekindle with these guys and get to see you again and have a chance to just sit down and talk. Speaker 2
And that's why my system is like, I can't believe you're going to do a podcast because I say no about ninety times a week. I was like, no, I'm not saying no to these guys. Speaker 0
And I mean, if Matt Pittman isn't going to say no to these guys, why would you? Well, there you go. Episode one in the books. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast wherever you find it. Follow us on the gram at smokeless underscore podcast, and hit us up on the web at smokeless podcast dot com. Thanks again to our guest today, Matt Pittman. Oh, and one more thing. Texas Monthly may not know where to find the best barbecue in Dallas, but our newest friend, Tom Cruise, does. Thanks again for popping in, Tom. It was great seeing you over at the Pecan Lodge. For Justin, Nick, and Wayne, I'm Clinton. Thanks for listening to Smokeless. 
