So something big is happening in the world of competition
barbecue and it's a special episode of the show.
We're going to go through the whole thing.
A big welcome into the studio in Port Macquarie.
It's Scott Erdman from the BBQ World Cup.
This is a big deal. Yeah, man, we're fired up and
thank you for having me. And hell of a journey to get to
this point sitting down with you.
All right, so if you've been wondering about the BBQ World
Cup, we're going to go through it all.
Yeah, excited, man. It's a lot of good stuff and
excited to share a lot of good updates.
All right, so before you got into BBQ, you had a history in
sports. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, so I started my career in professional sports.
So I started working with the Florida Panthers hockey team
down in South Florida. I feel like I have to say that,
especially in the states, because most people in the
states don't even know a hockey team exists in Florida.
So spent five years there, spent 10 years with the Dallas
Cowboys. And so again, just learned a lot
it, you know, a very high level on sponsorship, how it works.
You know, they're one of the they are the best team in the
world from like a valuation standpoint, how they run the
business. And so learned a ton there, took
that, went to the Las Vegas with the Raiders, really helped
relocate them out of Oakland to Las Vegas and tried to
replicate, you know, things that we learned, you know, there and
had a very successful lie, you know, business on the
sponsorship side with the Raiders.
And yeah. Awesome, so BBQ like before we
get into the competition side of things, how did you discover
BBQ? Yeah, good question.
So and first of all, that's my wife.
Shout out to my, my, my wife on the screen.
So and we met at the Cowboys. Ironically, we worked together.
We sat right across the cubes together right next to each
other. So but yeah, so BBQ ironically,
it brought me back to AT&T Stadium.
So an old sponsor of, of mine that was a client at the
Cowboys. He owns a company called Fun
Town RV. So he calls me up.
He's like, Hey, I want to do very similar.
You know, we talked a little bit about this very similar what you
do at meat stock. You know, he wanted to, he had a
BBQ or he had a, an Expo for RV's and he wanted to bolt on
all these different experiences around it.
And then we're sitting there and he's like, you know, anybody in
like competition barbecue and I'm like, no, like, you know, I
know one guy and he's like, do you mind helping?
And I'm like, you know, sure. You know, next thing you know,
you know, I'm thinking I'm going to help him out.
And it's like 1 hour a week, you know, it's next thing is.
So it's like 30 hours a week, you know, now I'm in the thick
of this, of putting on this, you know, Texas BBQ shootout at AT&T
Stadium. So we organized this all within
like 2 months. We're talking to all of these
teams. And yeah, next thing you know,
I'm, I'm, I'm an organizer and we had 85 teams that showed up.
And yeah, it started my my cut my teeth and and organizing a
BBQ competition. So that's crazy.
A lot of people might not know this, but you've already got a
history and competition BBQ. You did the Texas BBQ Shootout.
It was at the AT&T stadiums where the Dallas Cowboys play.
It was CBA sanctioned 85 teams. You gave away over $100,000 in
cash and prizes. Yeah, You know, the guy who owns
Fun Town looked at me and he was like, hey, I just don't want to
lose money. I was like, all right, I got
you. You know, we'll figure it out.
And then once I started learning that, like all of these
competition teams travel and they pay to enter and compete, I
was like, this is this is wild. So I was like, yeah, we're for
sure. You know, at the very minimum,
we'll break even. We just got to make sure
expenses, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, so we gave away an RV,
you know, shout out to Phil. He was the first comp team that
that won the event that I put on.
And the crazy thing, this lady Brenda, who works for CBAI,
remember Friday night we're loading teams in and people
like, I got to be next to my buddy.
And I'm like, I don't know who the hell your buddy is.
Like you're parking over there, you know, and it was just, it
was mayhem. And I'm like, I'm going to judge
this too. I'm like, if I'm going to be
here and do all of this, but, you know, on Friday, we're
loading teams in, I'm walking around the trailers and I'm
having beers with this guy. And he's telling you, like, how
you do this and then you going to get other guys to trailer.
And he's like, a guy's a fucking idiot, you know?
Like, you don't do that. You do it this way, you know?
But yeah, so Friday night, I asked Brenda, I go, who do you
think wins this thing? You know, and she's done a lot
of these competitions in Texas. And she's like, oh, it'll be
Phil or Bill. And it blew my mind because we
grabbed festival people, zero training.
Like we didn't even sit down and have them walk through the, you
know, the app of what they were doing, right?
We were just, I was running around grabbing people and like
you want to judge, you want to eat some of the best barbecue in
your life, come over here. You know, we actually had like 4
Aussies that were randomly there on a bachelor trip and they came
in and like they were like, mate, that's like the best
barbecue I've ever had in my life.
So anyway, like it just blew my mind that, you know, Brenda
picked and then Phil came in first and Bill came in second.
It's crazy because all the BBQ teams always say they want the
judges to be more credentialed right?
But at the same time their cream always rises to the top.
It doesn't. Matter and I I'm that's my first
experience ever, ever kind of going into that.
And it was super interesting because, yeah, you know, some
people say, you know, they want, you know, judges that know how
to taste barbecue. And I was just shocked.
Out of 85 teams, they were first and second with random people.
Crazy. All right, before we jump into
it, you're not just doing this by yourself.
You're partnered with Shannon Pruitt.
She is ex American Idol. Now.
Tell us a little bit more about her and the partnership that you
guys have to put this event together.
Yeah. So I had spent probably a year
and a half, you know, building all of this and getting it to,
you know, a point where it was a legitimate business.
We, you know, I mean, probably 3-4 hundred meetings with
investors and, you know, just leveraging the network that I'd
built in business for 20 years and finally finding something
that I'm like, this is a blue ocean, you know, everybody does
BBQ. So anyway, Fast forward, I get
introduced into or I meet Shannon and in Vegas at a big
conference, we start talking. They're not talking BBQ.
Four months later, we were at the golf tournament, the
Masters, and we were just sitting down talking and you
know, one of our friends read was like Scotty share the BBQ
idea with Shannon. So I start talking to Shannon
about it and she's like, I love this.
And then she starts sharing her background of helping build
American Idol and she laughs like anything with a shiny floor
she had helped build and sell, right.
So she comes with a lot of experience.
She's worked, you know, the global CMO at The Honest
Company, right? So again, I enjoy building with
people, right? I mean, it's it when you go down
these roads and sure, you guys have all been there.
You know, it's, it's a dark Rd. when you go down, you know, am I
doing this like I left my job and sports for 20 years and is
this the right thing to do? And so anyway, doing it with
somebody is massively important, at least for me.
I realized, you know, I, I need to have somebody to be like,
hey, it's all good. We're, you know, we're, we're
making progress. You may not see it.
So yeah, she's been awesome, you know, and super excited.
And then, you know, we got the team EJ who helped Sandals
social and things like that. But yeah, we got a, a solid team
and working with another guy who was a former founding CEO of
Shake Shack, you know, as as as a part of the team.
So we're working with him. So yes, takes an army to start
to build these things. Yeah, and you're willing truly
down the BBQ rabbit hole, Yeah. I mean, it's been 2 years.
Like I said, I like you know, I know so much about competition
cooking now and you know, again, you just spend 2 years every day
of your life, you know, in this world you can pick up a lot.
All right, so the BBQ World Cup, you call it American Idol Meats
barbecue and you have designed it from the beginning with like
broadcasting in mind. Yeah, 100%.
So again, before I met Shannon, you know, I had already had, you
know, that thought of that vision.
So, you know, getting introduced to her with that background,
it's like, you know, it's like serendipitous.
You know, you're sitting there, you're like, OK, I've done this.
So anyway, I'm like, American Idol is massive, right?
You got American Idol, UK, American Idol, you know,
Australia, like it's everywhere. And to me, more people BBQ,
right? And I just, you know, it's very
similar to also, you know, I'm not sure you know how many
people follow the World Series of Poker, right?
But I remember when I was a kid, like once you found that you can
win $1,000,000 just playing poker.
Me and my buddies on a Saturday night in high school, we go put
20 bucks in, you know, whoever wins the pot at the end of the
night wins the money and you start playing poker.
So to me it was like this gives everybody in the chance around
the world an opportunity. You know, if you just get really
good at barbecue. And I know a lot easier said
than done. I've messed up a lot of BBQ, so
it is definitely not easy to do. But yeah, the thought was
anybody around the world has a pathway to compete in a a local
competition and then you will have a chance, you know, to go
to Vegas. And compete for $1,000,000.
That's it. All right, so the basic idea is
that events around the world will culminate in Las Vegas for
the ultimate prize. It's $1 million winner takes
all. That's a fucking huge amount of
money. Yeah, it was funny when we were
talking with like our investors and our group, you know, as
we're building this out and it was like, you know, like, why
not 750? Why not 5500?
Well, especially when you tell them that like the largest prize
in BBQ, you know, I've, I mean. 250 or something.
Yeah, maybe, but I think that that's divided up over all the
categories and things like that. I'm not sure if that's like the
winner take all, but still they're like, why not?
500 is still double what the biggest is out there.
And I'm like, yeah, but it's like life changing money, you
know what I mean? Like I, I witnessed people
traveling 8 hours to this competition and paying thousands
and thousands of dollars for competition food and paying
$350.00 to enter the competition and spending 2-3 days of their
life and being in this like community of people that all
knew each other. And it was just like Phil, like
talking to him. He's like, I compete 52 weeks of
the year. I'm like, where what do you do?
And that's when I just started asking all these questions and
like, you travel that much? And he's like, yeah, I probably
spend, you know, lots of money, you know, and don't make very
much. And I'm like, that's crazy, you
know? And they just, I saw that and I
was like, man, like $1,000,000 like, you know, that's like.
It's the magic number, yeah. It's the magic number that it's
going to attract people, right? A. 100% you know 500,000 sounds
great but it's not 1,000,000 better.
All right, so you've set the date, it's April 2027 and you're
in the final stages of locking down the venue, but you have
locked in and committed to doing this in Las Vegas.
Yeah, 100% Vegas. It just made sense.
You know, we had conversations in Nashville, Atlanta, TX, you
know, a lot of different places. It just kept coming back to, you
know, there's 45 million people get there.
International flights are easy, you know, it's 4 miles of
everything in one place, right and and on top of that, if we're
building what we're, you know what we're, what we think we can
achieve right? You know, we're shooting for,
you know, 10,000 people a day across this four day event, but
you know, having 45 million people that go to a city like
this, right? You know, it just adds another
element, right? There's lots to do, right?
So it can become a holiday. So anyway, yeah, Vegas has
started to. It's a logical choice.
Yeah, you can get in some trouble there.
When we looked at one day taking meat stock to America, Vegas
would have been my number one choice, right?
It's the right place. You picked the right place.
Yeah, everybody's excited that's that's qualified today, so.
All right, so on that you have over 50 qualifying events
already in the bag. Two more this past weekend line,
including one in Australia, and you're aiming proportionally for
there to be a higher percentage of international teams than any
other sort of BBQ World championship.
It was very important, right And that's also why choosing BBQ
World Cup, right? I mean, I just as I was doing
all this research, I mean, there you go right there, reserve
world champion and you know, another event and these are two
different events, right World champion, you know, everybody's
individual event was called, you know, world championship.
So mine was, you know, theoretically came up because of
the World Cup and that being from a soccer football
perspective was like more worldwide and more international
exposure. Yeah, I agree.
So countries so far include Mexico, Australia, Lithuania,
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, New Zealand, the UK,
the UAE. They're already confirmed.
Yeah, we have signed agreements with, you know, all, all those
promoters, you know, and again, it doesn't, you know, we're
looking for more. So anybody that's listening,
we're looking to add more competitions in 2027.
Ideally we're trying to find a pathway for everybody's
competition around the world, you know, to be able to have a
chance to, to, to, to qualify. Right here.
So real international representation from different
sanctioning bodies, you're partnered with events that use
different sanctioning bodies all around the world.
It's a very all inclusive world championship than just basically
one bodies championship. Indirectly you're dealing with
the Champions of all these organizations winning teams for
events. So you're trying to like all
around the world, there's different bodies, but
incorporate them all into this one event.
Yeah. And what you realize in in the
competition world and you know, you've, you've spent, you know,
a lot of time in it and you know, everybody has an opinion
about each organization, right. And you know, it was important
for us to say, hey, like we're, you know, this isn't the space
that we're trying to play in. We're trying to build where
everybody right starts to, you know, IBCA starts to get more
people competing in their events.
You know, Pit Masters Brazil gets more people competing in
the events. So we're trying to stay above it
all and help amplify, you know, all of the sanctioning bodies
and groups around. Yeah, and I agree.
I don't think you can call yourself a world championship
unless you're inviting teams from other countries and
embracing their own bodies as well, not just your own.
Yep, 100%. All right, so this is a render.
This is a render that mean you did today of what you're aiming
for. A festival atmosphere, a BBQ
Expo, a trade show, a live fire experience, custom built village
with a pitmaster arena, open cooking, all the teams have set
marquees. It's the same for everybody.
And then you've got obviously restaurants and food vendors to
serve the public. Yeah, absolutely.
And this is, you know, this is a rendering at Resorts World,
right? This is one side of it.
So we're looking at they have a, you know, up in that, that top
right corner up there. They actually have another 1011
acres that we're looking to, to, to take over as well.
But yeah, 100%, you know, it's, it's the convergence of brands
and, you know, retailers and, you know, I know Ace Hardware
show does a really good job, you know, there.
But we're trying to, you know, if you got a sauce and a rub
you're trying to get in front of, you know, somebody from, you
know, Lowe's or Home Depot, great.
We're trying to have, you know, we're going to have the buyers
there, you know, to help support that.
On top of that, you got the the best hundred teams from around
the world competing. But yeah, this is a, you know, a
great example of, you know, what we're what we're looking to
bring to Vegas. All right, so there'll be an
affordable entry fee, big kids area kids queue, master classes,
a big open stage, different brands attending, and you're
currently working the music out as well.
Yeah, and fortunately my wife works for Live Nation.
So, you know, we got a lot of good relationships with with
folks in the music space. But yeah, it's just, you know,
it's a it's a big festival, right?
And you know, a lot of the inspiration, you know, that when
I started to research this, I would say you guys really, you
know, were the one that's like, hey, this is, you know, exactly
kind of what we're trying to do, you know, and, and culminate all
these, all these competition teams into one area.
But you know, how do you add brands and fans and create?
Because that's what drives, you know, the, the sponsorship
revenue is consumers being at these events.
Yeah, 100%. OK, So it's a bit of a different
format than what people are used to.
You're starting off with 100 teams on the Friday.
You're then going to bump that down to 50 on the Saturday and
only the top 25 advance on the Sunday.
Yeah. So, you know, you know, bracket
style, you know, the thought is, is that, you know, you're
cooking for $1,000,000. This should be, you know, this
should be a challenging cook. But you know, it's got, you got
to be consistent, right? So 3 days of consistency feels
like that's going to make it, you know, very challenging for,
you know, for, for the pit masters.
So but yeah, that was important to figure out.
And, you know, we had a committee of pit masters that,
you know, helped really educate and help us understand, you
know, how that world works. You know, how do we get to a
point to make it fair? You know, how do you do it in in
a way? So a lot of this was surveyed
and and data that we got from the committee, which has been
super helpful. OK, cool.
So, but just to be clear, if you're competing, you're one of
the 100 teams and you don't make the next day, they'll be, you'll
still be handing in on the Saturday and Sunday for a like a
last chance draw to get back into that finals.
Yeah, we're working through that right now.
And I know we were spitballing some ideas upstairs and, you
know, and and yeah, we it's Vegas, baby, you know, roll the
dice. You gotta have, you know, it's
gambling. Yeah.
So if you do get knocked out, you've you've still got a hand
in the following days. You've still got to do your
thing and the chances are smaller.
The easier way to get in is obviously to qualify every
single day, right, because you maximize your chances.
But if you do get knocked out in the first or the second round,
then you do have that little chance to get back into the main
game. A. 100%.
All right, I love it. And no tables of death.
What the hell is that about? So again, you know, shout out to
the, the Pitmaster committee that, you know, that we
assembled and, you know, it was one of those things that it, it
kept coming up. That's basically, and again, I'm
still learning a lot and then how all the competition stuff
works. But the premise was, is if we
had a hundred teams, you're going to do 425 pitmaster table
competitions, meaning that, you know, usually, you know, the way
that it works. And again, you know, I'm just
picking up on on these things that they talk about, but
there's usually one table that comes in with very low scores.
And you could have been a pitmaster that got that table.
And all of the pitmasters that were on that table have low
scores. And then they can, you know,
KCBS and they can actually go back and look at Table 26 gave
the lowest scores out of everybody, right?
So it's like you could have cooked good BBQ, but regardless
of that, they didn't give anybody that went through that
table a good score. So apparently that was how they
assembled, having kind of 425, you know.
So 25 teams will turn in four, you know, over here, 25 over
here, 25 over there, you know, and it was important to do that
because I guess that helps eliminate the table of death.
Yeah. All right.
Now, you're still figuring out the exact format, right?
It's still a debate. It's a hot debate at the moment.
So you're still going to do all the traditional categories, the
ones that everybody knows and loves.
The brisket, the pork butt, the pork ribs, the chicken.
You might even play with white and dark.
You were talking about with the chicken, which I think is a
great idea, but you are trying to mix it up a little bit.
Yeah, you know, it's it's, you know, and, and we've talked a
lot about this and again, you know, bouncing these things off
of a committee and and really, you know, a lot of this stuff
has been grassroots, right? Traveling around to, you know,
events here and meat stock and talking to teams and
understanding their pain points, things that they don't like.
It kind of keeps coming back to, you know, these things that's
like, ah, you know, the box. You know, you get a lot of mixed
reviews on, you know, the box and maybe doing something a
little bit different. But you know, I know, again, we
were talking upstairs on this. It's like, you know, Aaron
Franklin, the tray, like, you know, when you go to a place
like that, like it's a beautiful tray, you know, so maybe there's
a situation. But yes, keeping the
traditional, you know, we're not trying to create the, you know,
Food Network show where it's like, all right, now you got to,
you know, tie your arm behind your back and you got to cook
barbecue. And, you know, we're trying to
stay away. From He's a crocodile and.
Yeah. So we're trying to keep it
traditional, but yes, the plan would be to probably mix in, you
know, some additional meats, you know, and, and again, we'll work
through that and give everybody, you know, a lot of direction
before so they can prepare and get ready.
Well, if you do go down this path of having all four hand
insurance on one tray and they get handed into a table of
judges and everyone's got kind of got different set times.
Oh man, I'm, I'm sold on this. I think it's great.
But obviously you're working through this process at the
moment and this is just a idea representative of what it might
be, but you are going to try and put a spin on things.
Yeah, for sure. Again, not, not to, you know,
not to the point where it's taking away from, you know, the
way that they've, you know, traditionally done things, you
know, in the competition world, right.
We want to honor that, but, you know, have a little twist on it
where it doesn't take them into something where it's like, you
know, you got to turn it in a certain way that's, you know,
completely unrealistic and it becomes, you know, labour
intensive. But yeah, 100%.
OK, So what you're looking at is a KCBS competition series.
Now, it's not locked in just yet, 100%.
You're still talking to Rod. He's obviously been great, which
is fantastic to hear. But the judges will be using a
unique sort of app based live scoring system with the ability
to give comments right on the app.
That's that's what we're in the process of building, Yeah.
And Rod Rod's been awesome, you know, and we signed an agreement
with with KCBS to take their contest and their season points
winner. And so, you know, that's a
different agreement, but we have signed with them.
So, you know, it was important for us to have, you know, the
£800 gorilla in competition cooking, you know, yeah, 100%.
You know, it's like we're trying to lift everybody in barbecue.
And if, you know, so again, shout out to KCBS.
They've done an incredible job. But yeah, you know, the plan is
to build live scoring, which, you know, treat it like sports.
All right, your judges will be hand selected based on
experience, previous data, a combination of experienced
judges, influencers and pit masters.
You're looking to have a kind of like a well-rounded, experienced
group of people who are involved in BBQ with credibility.
Very similar to our committee, you know, we talked to a lot of
judges and, you know, I, I, we got a good plan in place.
But yeah, it's to, to, again, the World Cup world, right?
Having people that have, you know, a lot of just different
experience, different variety, we think is going to be an
important piece for this. All right, back to the live
scoring. This is a bit of a visual
representation. So this is crazy, right?
As the judges put their scores in, teams are gonna find out
what they got. Yeah, wow.
If you think about, again, sports, and that's been my
background, I'm like, how is this, you know, I mean.
How is it not a thing? Why do we all have to wait
around for three hours for results?
It's like, you know, at least I'm I golf.
So if you ever play in a golf scramble, like it's over,
they're tallying the scores. Everybody's just like, I just
want to go home, you know. So anyway, I know competitions,
you know, sides like that, but man, like imagine you know, the
last Trey being turned in and or there's four trays being turned
in and somebody within that four tray.
And it's moving. Yeah, and it's like, well, Jay's
the last one. If Jay hits a perfect score, he
wins the $1,000,000, right? And now all of a sudden you're
the last trade and you're waiting for that score to pop up
there and boom, perfect score, right?
Like, I get, I mean, I just get chills thinking about that
moment of you winning 1,000,000. I just need to learn how to cook
first. All right?
So you. And me both.
All right, so to wrap up, it's going to be a four day event.
Teams compete on the Friday and the Saturday and the Sunday for
the chance to make the final and win $1 million win it takes all.
Now, just to be clear, $1,000,000 isn't all they're
going to give away, $1,000,000 is what they're going to give
the winner, and then you've got more cash and prizes on top of
that. Yeah, 100%.
You know, we felt it was important, you know, again,
honour traditional BBQ, right, one through 10 on, you know,
kind of all the categories. But yeah, the plan is, you know,
hopefully everybody walks play with the, you know, with the
money in Vegas and just go throw it on black.
All right? He can make 2 million.
Could be a 4 million if you have another cracker, right?
All right, BBQ United. So let's talk about this.
This is happening side by side with what you're doing with the
World Cup. BBQ United It's a digital hub
for BBQ. Tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, so as I was researching this, you know, I was like,
where do you go for BBQ information?
The digital world's so fragmented, right?
You got, you know, pit masters that have some classes over here
and you got, you can sell some rubs over here, but there wasn't
like a digital BBQ world. And for as big as BBQ was,
right, from a community perspective, it was just
shocking to me. Yeah.
So we've been developing this for 6-7 months now, but yeah,
it's to Unite BBQ. So BBQ, let's go through it, I
agree is very disjointed at the moment and you're trying to tie
it all together. You got different sanctioning
bodies, competition versus home versus restaurants.
It's like they're all very different, right?
This picture is a bit of an illustration of that.
You got Reddit, you got YouTube, you got Facebook groups, you got
bloody online forums. It there's no central location.
Correct. You know, and, and I think you
know, and this is you know exactly what we're building,
right? It's create a profile.
You can register your team, you can promote your business, food
truck catering company, if you have a competition, right.
This is why we're trying to build this is we don't know
where all the competitions are, right.
Even as we started to dive into the international world, it was
like talk to my buddy, he runs talk to my friend over here and
that's what, you know, led us down that path.
Judging side of thing is exploded.
I think we've had 300 judges register their profile, You
know, and just like we've soft launched this, but products,
right? If you have products like
eventually we're going to have something on there where this
becomes you can sell. If you want to reach out to a
pitmaster in your area to learn how to do BBQ, like you can
help. Again, it's how do we help the
whole ecosystem of BBQ, right? But yeah, this is yeah, we're
fired up for this one. OK, it's cool and it's a central
location for people to go to to find out everything.
I mean there is no central database for BBQ at the moment.
It's all segmented through different sensiting bodies.
Yeah, 100%. And even then it's like it's not
consumer LED, right. Every yeah, it's like you go
type in like a brisket recipe. Where do you find, you know,
you, you read somebody's, it's like the top five is typically
what gets clicked on, but nobody else has a chance, right?
So it's like, how do we lift everybody that's got a brisket
recipe on here that anybody can search, right?
And then you throw AI into it where it's like, hey, I'm
looking for a brisket recipe with, you know, a Korean
flavour. Boom.
Here's Jay's from Australia. It's pretty cool, but it is a
work in progress. You're building all this from
the ground up. Yeah, it's a big vision.
Yeah, yeah, it's listen, it's just been the way that I, you
know, that I'm built Like when I see something in an opportunity
that, you know, is not there, like, I don't know, it's like
it's to your point, like sometimes I'm like, man, it's,
it's too much. I should focus on one thing and
I'm like, I can't, you know what I mean?
It's like, you know, because if, if we build 70% of what we're
building, it's still going to be very successful in BBQ if we
build 50% of it, right? Because not everything's going
to hit like we know that, you know, and this, but hopefully
this is where we lift the community and people can see
this. And it's like, man, I'm we're
trying to get help BBQ businesses because, you know,
Daniel Vaughn's talked about how hard it is, you know, for, for
BBQ businesses and there's a lot of them shutting down.
On every level, whether you're a competition BBQ team or a
restaurant or a pit master or even a home cook, right.
Price of meat is extremely expensive right now.
The cost of doing business is outrageous and it's getting
hard. Yeah, and and it's fragmented A.
100% like that's the Expo and the trade show component.
We want to bring in people, you know, from Meta and TikTok and
Shopify so people can learn how to sell products better on their
platform. We want to bring in people at
retailers to do AQ and a with people that have products,
right? Like how do people get better at
business and help each other? But the main goal of this is to
build a centralized database so that you can have 50,100
thousand people on a database that are all BBQ crazy A. 100%.
All right, moving on. So back to the BBQ World Cup.
We've got a couple of announcements to make on this
show, which I'm kind of excited about.
Yeah, this is this breaking news.
All right, number one is this. Who's this cat?
He's not very well known. Yeah.
Post Malone, Not sure if many people have heard of him, but
anyway, you know, he's got a big ranch up in Utah.
They signed up as one of our, you know, one of our Expo
partners. So they'll have an Expo space,
right? They'll be involved, right?
But it's important to know we're looking at this of like, I use
the word open source, right? We're going to have an event.
This isn't going to be exclusive.
This doesn't mean teams are going to be cooking this product
only like it is very much, you know, how do we lift everybody
in barbecue? And that's an important piece.
But they were one of the the first brands that signed up for
an Expo space, you know, to showcase their brand.
Very cool, and you got another one to announce?
Yeah, USA's, you know, they do a lot of, you know, they're
basically military insurance. So if you're a military member,
you know, banking insurance, you know, that's the area that they
play ball in. And you know, we have a
partnership where they'll be their official military Berry
partner of the BBQ World Cup. We got another one with Hertz,
the car rental company. Right.
So that's three big names they've already committed and
you just at the tip of an iceberg.
Yeah, 100%. You know, we've gotten a ton of
a ton of interest. You know, we're working through
it all right now. But I mean, you know, they like
these things are a grind, you know?
I mean, it's all day, all night. All right, so obviously there is
a lot more to do. We hope you've enjoyed this
quick update of where the BBQ World Cup is at.
It's exciting, but you as a person like you, obviously
you're here on a podcast, you're putting your name to this,
You're 100% locked in, You're committed like this is going to
happen. Yeah, I mean, I flow 15 hours to
get here. Come check out your Incredibles
that. 4 hours in a car with me. Yeah, it's a drive all the way
up here. We raced to put this together
and my flights in 30 minutes, you know, back-to-back to
Sydney. And I stopped working in sports
for 20 years. And, you know, it wasn't just
because, you know, I didn't believe in this.
So, yeah, my wife would die. You know, if this doesn't do
well, you know it's be a tough conversation with the missus.
All right, so just to clarify, he's not joking.
His flights in 30 minutes. It takes 10 minutes to get to
the airport, so we're gonna have to go.
Thanks for coming to the studio. Let's get the fuck out of here
quick. Thanks for having me brother,
see ya.