How video will make future barbecue stars
Growing up, Evan LeRoy watched the Food Network and became fascinated by chefs who could tell stories with their food and cooking style.
If you’ve ever watched a food competition show such as “The Next Food Network Star” or
“Top Chef,” you will recognize this phenomenon as the allimportant “point of view.” This refers to techniques and ingredients about which the chef is passionate and often factor in his or her cultural background and influences. Marketing professionals refer to this is as a “personal brand.”
When LeRoy and business partner Sawyer Lewis opened their highly acclaimed barbecue truck in 2017 in Austin, they clearly delineated their point of view, literally writing it into their logo: “New
School BBQ, Old School Service.”
They delivered on that mantra and then some: LeRoy and Lewis became one of the most celebrated barbecue openings in recent years, gaining a coveted spot in Texas Monthly’s Top 25 New Barbecue Joints in 2019.
But LeRoy knew that telling stories with food, particularly barbecue, as effective as that can be, would be only part of their business.
“We always planned to have a media component,” says LeRoy. “We just didn’t know when.”
That “when” came in March 2020, when restaurants had to close down because of the coronavirus pandemic.
LeRoy and Lewis had just completed an in-person cooking class — one of their first forays into a more expansive media strategy — when they had to shut down the truck while still supporting their families as well as staff. It was at this point that their ambitions really kicked in.
“If our customers couldn’t come to us,” says LeRoy, “we’d take our barbecue into people’s homes.”
He and Lewis created a video series showing behind-thescenes workings of their barbecue truck, from the economics and accounting practices to the exact techniques used to produce menu items including sausage and pork ribs.
They chose a web-based selfpublishing platform called Patreon to publish the videos using a subscription model: for $30 a month, subscribers get one new video per week.
This “inside baseball” approach to barbecue proved wildly successful: Their channel now features 79 videos, 259 subscribers and over $6,000 per month in revenue (Patreon takes a percentage). Even though LeRoy and Lewis is back open and serving barbecue, that’s a financial cushion any small business will appreciate. They have continued to diversify their media interests by launching a podcast and planning an upcoming cookbook.
Other professional pitmasters who have made a mark in video instruction include Bradley Robinson of Chuds BBQ (a colleague and collaborator with LeRoy and Lewis), whose YouTube channel has amassed almost 75,000 subscribers and 5 million views, as well as Austin pitmaster extraordinaire Aaron Franklin, whose video series on the MasterClass website has become the de facto standard for Central Texas-style barbecue training.
Certainly, opening a barbecue joint will always be about cooking and serving smoked meats, whether or not there is a personal brand or point of view as part of it.
But for those aspiring pitmasters who want to stand out in an increasingly crowded field, telling your personal story through media — both social and video — will become a necessary skill along with trimming briskets and maintaining fires.