Picture this. You’ve fallen in love with barbecue. You’ve invested in a pit. You’ve wowed your friends and family, and you think to yourself, “you know what, I want to turn this into my career.”
But you don’t know much about running a business, and you’ve got some questions. Where do you turn?
Enter Nextep Q, a website for pitmasters to ask questions and get business advice. Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, shared more about the new resource and its creator.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about Todd David. Who is Todd David?
Daniel Vaughn: Todd David, man, he really made a name for himself with Cattleack Barbeque. He and his wife Misty opened it in 2013 in Dallas and turned it into a top 50 barbecue joint. I mean, it’s been on our top 10 list a few times. This is a fantastic barbecue joint.
So he starts up Cattleack, but he’s not done yet, right?
Yeah, that’s right. He started up Cattleack, turned it into a really successful business and decided that, you know, he wanted to still cook barbecue, but he didn’t want to deal with all the business stuff.
So he actually sold it to a longtime employee, Andrew Castelan. And he remains on as an employee at Cattleack, but it helped free him up to, you know, tutor, be a mentor to some of those young pitmasters out there.
You mean, he’s a barbecue mentor?
Yeah, absolutely. He’s essentially got a free barbecue hotline. You know, with the amount of knowledge that Todd David has in barbecue, he could be demanding so much money to be a barbecue consultant.
And so the fact that he’s basically just offering up his own advice for free is pretty generous, that’s for sure.
When you’re talking about offering up this advice for free, this is Nextep Q?
That’s right. He created a website – he said in the future he hopes this website has different videos and maybe some interviews with different pitmasters, but right now, its main purpose is to allow people to sign up to be part of Nextep Q to get their monthly emails.
But also, it’s a calendar where you can book time directly with Todd David and set up a 45-minute or an hour-and-a-half-long conversation with him to ask him anything you want about the barbecue business.
Like, what kind of advice would he give someone who might be a prospective pitmaster?
Well, you talked earlier about these folks who are really great at cooking barbecue and they want to sell it to people because their friends and family have told them how great it is.
But that’s the thing, their expertise is cooking barbecue. Turning it into a business is a much bigger hurdle.
So how’s business for Nextep?
Business is going great. He’s got a lot of people signing up from really all over the country, and he’s really happy to be talking to these folks who, you know, some of them just want help with payroll issues.
He talked to a really successful pitmaster who’s got a lot of people coming in the door, but he had been paying all of his employees essentially cash out of the cash register. And he needed help like setting up an actual payroll to be able to keep track of taxes and things like that.
People who have problems with inventory, trying to figure out how to go from being a one-day operation to a place that’s got to do it five days in a row.
It’s funny, though, because this sounds like – I don’t know, you’ve heard of the MBA –MBBQ&A? Maybe he could, like, open up a university. Does he have those kinds of aspirations? I mean, does he want to take this into a full-time gig – or maybe it’s already a full-time gig?
There don’t seem to be grand aspirations with this other than giving back to the barbecue community. I mean, he’s doing it for free. And he’s really offering the service because he sees that need out there.
He also understands what it’s like to open a barbecue business basically from scratch, and to build it up. So he’s learned so many lessons along the way that he feels like he can share with folks.
And, you know, he is essentially retired now. He’s still working a side job cooking barbecue at his old barbecue spot, but he’s got a lot of free time, and he really feels like giving back to this barbecue community is something that he feels like he owes it for all the success that he’s had.
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