We cooked our first catering job in 2000, Kelly’s class reunion. We don’t remember what we cooked, but it worked and have been cooking for crowds ever since. After catering as a hobby and for a little extra money for a year or so, Kelly got to investigating smokers and BBQ.
Growing up and living in Southwest Nebraska, that’s right, we are Husker Fans, true BBQ was not very popular. Without any smokers in the area to look at we did a lot of research on the web, we built our first smoker out of an 18 inch piece of pipe and added a side box with a propane heater and cast iron pot for wood chunks. After modifying that first cooker several times, we built two more trailer mounted stick burners, and a trailer mounted 6ft by 8 ft grill.
We decided that if we were going to continue to do catering jobs, we needed a mobile kitchen that we could get licensed. So we went to Illinois to buy a 16 passenger shuttle bus and converted it into a licensed kitchen. Worked great, we could pull the cooker behind and cater or vend wherever we wanted. Team Ida Q from Idaho bought the bus in 2005 and they are still using it.
Our first contest was the River City Roundup in Omaha in 2003. I told Roni “let’s take the kids to Omaha and check out this BBQ contest thing” she said ok, and I thought well, if we are going just as well take the smoker and cook the contest while we are there. We came in somewhere in the middle of the pack and learned a lot at and have been cooking contests ever since.
We quit farming in 2003 and after several years of drought and opened our first “BBQ Joint” in December of 2004 in McCook, Nebraska. Our first restaurant was in a gas station (aren’t all “BBQ Joints” in an old gas stations) that had a very small kitchen and a small room out back for the smoker. We quickly built another smoker and got to work selling BBQ
While peddling Q from the gas station in McCook, we also competed at contests and vended burgers and steaks at Husker games in Lincoln. We got to set up on the east side of Memorial Stadium right in front of the main gate. We sold around 600 ½ lb hamburgers, 100 steak sandwiches and 200 hot dogs per game. We had a blast, the atmosphere at Husker games was just electric, we met a lot of old friends from college and made new friends, and made a little money – the University made sure they got their share! We enjoyed that event for 3 years until life got to busy.
In 2006 we moved our restaurant from McCook to Great Bend, KS. We had done the Great Bend contest for a couple of years and got to know Kent Romine the contest organizer. He called one winter evening and said he was looking for someone to bring a BBQ and Steakhouse to Great Bend and wanted to know if we knew of anyone that might be interested. Well, the rest is history and we are now going on our 3rd successful year here in Great Bend.
We won our first contest in 2005 at the BBQ At The Summit in Dillon, CO. I knew at the time, that God had to have had his hand on that, because the stuff we turned in was not that good. We had always had some success at contests, but not like that before. We were then fortunate enough to get the Jack draw for Colorado that year. So we took the kids out of school for a week and headed to Lynchburg for an amazing and educational expierence. We told Keelan and Kelsi to talk about the St Louis Arch, the river boat ride and some of the more educational things we did before they talked about touring the Jack Daniels Distillery and the Budweiser Brewery.
We have been fortunate to be blessed by God and all of the good friends that we have made in the BBQ community. God has poured out his blessings in our lives through the restaurant and on the competition trail. Without Him we would not be as successful as we are. We also owe much of our success to so many of our BBQ friends and peers, because of their wise advice, council, direction and friendship.
In 2008 God blessed us with 5 Grand Championships and 2 Reserve Championships as well as being the Grand Champion at the Jack Daniels World Invitational Barbecue Championship in Lynchburg, TN. Wow, what an honor.
We hope to be able to continue producing quality BBQ and Steaks at our restaurant as well as on the competitive BBQ circuit. Please stop by our restaurant and visit with us or stop and visit with us at a BBQ competition somewhere.
May you be blessed by God and know Jesus as your Savior.
Kelly, Roni, Keelan and Kelsi Wertz
December 2008
