Welcome to Our Dream

In 2001 Korey came home from work one day and announced that what he really wanted to do was open a BBQ business.  We had no food-service experience.   Neither of us had ever worked in a restaurant.   We’d never even hired a caterer.   We didn’t know what all the arcane acronyms of the commercial real estate world meant.   We had no idea what equipment we’d need.

Really, we only had a few things on our side.    Our competition barbecue team had won a few ribbons. We had some capital to invest.   Most of all we were young so if we tried it and it didn’t work it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

We said we’d rent a catering kitchen for three years and at the end of that time if it wasn’t working we’d quit and get a real job.   And if it worked, we’d buy the building for our catering kitchen and never look back.

We are now in our second decade of catering. We’ve been honored twice as one of the 10th fastest growing small companies in Northern Colorado (Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley and Longmont.)

We bought our catering kitchen in 2005 for a vast sum of money, two slabs of ribs, one smoked chicken and barbecue sauce. (Really—look for the receipt on the wall.)

We’ve catered events as small as a relative’s wedding to as vast as a corporate picnic for several thousand.  We’ve sponsored fundraisers for youth mission trips to malnourished areas and supported the World Food Program.  We’ve mailed ribs to our furthest customer, Tony, in Mason, New Hampshire.   Realizing that we didn’t just like barbecue catering…that in fact we just like catering in general…we expanded our catered cuisines to include three regional comfort foods:  southern BBQ, Italian from Bologna and Central Mexico cuisine.

It has been our pleasure to make great barbecue and to serve it to you, our friends and family. We are grateful when you recommend us to others.

Welcome to our dream.

Our Barbecue is As Good As the Best

Korey is fond of telling people that our barbecue is “as good as the best.”  This claim may seem strange when every barbecue company in the world claims the same thing…that their barbecue is the best in the city…the county…the world.

Korey simply thinks that saying we are as good as the best is respectful of the long line of barbecue men that came before him.

African slaves that were given the worst cut of meat and made the best of it. Southern men that woke early and worked late to smoke meats that helped them to feed their families. Church groups that dug enormous pits and tended the smoke all night in preparation for Sunday’s Fundraiser to add a new roof to their building.  Men that turned an old shack into the best rib joint in the county.  Women that made fruit pies and secret sauces.  Restauranteurs that worked hard all their life to make truly great barbecue.  We are proud to be at the end of the line.

We take our position in that line seriously.  We have a competition barbecue team (but thankfully our client’s keep us too busy to compete much anymore.)  Both Korey and Barbara Albert are Certified Barbecue Judges. Korey has an extensive collection of barbecue cookbooks and has read every book on the subject.  On vacation, we eat BBQ (as well as at every greasy spoon and diner we can find at a meal time.)  We go to professional conferences where adults spend twelve hours daily for many days in a row dissecting every aspect of the catering business.  To be as good as the best takes commitment.

Barbecue is one of the three slow foods still made in this country. Along with pickles and beer, barbecue still tastes best when it is made the old slow way. We smoke our meats all day long.  We never take the shortcut of using propane.  We hand pull our chicken and pork instead of using the machines that are made for that purpose.  We use only hickory wood and time to make the meats that we serve to you.

The next time you are in, see our collection of pictures and postcards from some of those that came before us.   Like many of these folks, we too are happy to be a  family business. A family business that doesn’t plan to franchise or  have a chain of restaurants.  We are not trying to get our sauce into the grocery store.  We don’t imagine we will ever be a household name.   We just want to do our best to cater BBQ to our community in a way that pleases our clients and pleases us, too.  And we’d be mighty glad that if at the end of our time in this service,  we could look back and say that we fed not only our neighbors but by supporting international food aid agencies we fed some of the hungriest people in the world as well.

Yep, if someone tells us we are as good as the best, we take that as a fine compliment.