We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cameron Capri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cameron below.

Cameron, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?

We opened up our restaurant 3 weeks before Covid shut most businesses down. The good news is, we didn’t have a chance to get used to the business model, the bad news is we wasted a lot of time creating a model we never go to use. Quick back story, I opened this new shiny restaurant in the small town I grew up in, but hadn’t worked in since I was in high school. So for me this was a homecoming of sorts. The plan was a small intimate BBQ joint to help bring family, friends, and community together. See, to me food is a multicultural language that helps bring people together. And for me, nothing does it better than a BBQ. Our original vision was an open kitchen where customers can see the process take shape and watch their meals be assembled. A long community table where strangers could sit down and strike up a conversation over a meal they now have in common. For 3 weeks, it was perfect! Now we have a semi open kitchen with protective sneeze guards in place and our community table is now 4 tables. We cchanged some things for the safety of our customers and staff, but we have managed to keep the original plan a priority. On a daily basis, we bring family, friends, and community together.
As for other aspects of the restaurant affected by Covid, we have delt with the same issues most small businesses have. There have been product shortages, staff shortages, shipping issues, inflation, and so on. For us, every week is a different path filled with different trials and tribulations. All we can do is use what we have been trained to do while running kitchens and restaurants throughout our career and that is be ready to pivot and make quick decisions in a moments notice. We do the best we can. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. We just have to keep our focus and remember the original reason for doing what we do. Family, friends, community.

Cameron, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Cameron Capri and I am the Chef/Owner of Q Southern BBQ & Catering in Dunedin, FL. I am a 23 year restaurant veteran. I was fortunate enough to have been brought up in the industry by role models and figures that taught me business, cooking, technique, and why it is the little details that separate the great from the good. I still look up to them today. I started “Q” in 2019 and we opened our doors in 2020. We are a small hometown BBQ joint that focuses on small batch, competition style BBQ. Featuring some of my favorite regional BBQ under one roof. We specialize in Texas style Beef Brisket, Lexington style Pulled Pork, and of course our dry rubbed St. Louis Ribs. And you can’t have BBQ without some great sauce on the side. We have 6 housemade regional favorite sauces to compliment our meats, including our original style we call Tampa Q. It is an Espresso infused sauce created to pay homage to the Cuban Coffee trade here in Tampa and more specifically, Ybor City.
The restaurant portion of “Q” operates 6 days a week with the kitchen and catering running 7 days. We take the guess work and sometimes long hours out of the equation for customers. Leaving them more time to visit with their guest or put on their corporate meeting.
We strive to compliment our quality products with Southern Charm. Customer service and a BBQ experience that brings people together. Staying true to this has won us “Best BBQ in the Bay” in 2021 and 2022 by Tampa Bay Magazine. Something we are very grateful for.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I actually touched on this in a previous question, but the amount of times I have had to pivot or create a new path through uncharted territory has been endless in the last 2 1/2 years. Sometimes it feels like every week is a new plan. Some of the biggest pivots I have had to make was, again, in the business model and restructuring it to be more accommodating to Covid. Having to change up packaging and other products during shortages. The biggest issue was thinking outside the box. Having to figure out how to generate more revenue to keep the doors open while trying to recover from a worldwide pandemic that turned your industry upside down. In this instance I started a ghost kitchen for a few months. A Cuban style menu that could only be ordered online and delivered by a 3rd party. At that time it was perfect. Most of the products were already in the restaurant, I have training in a Cuban cuisine, and it did not get in the way of me doing BBQ at the same time. It was a no brainer. It served its purpose until I was able to open my dining room again.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The small town of Dunedin used to be a sleepy coastal community that no one knew about or could pronounce. It’s dun ē din, not dune é din by the way. Folks from here would tell others they were from Tampa or maybe Clearwater, they would have a better chance of knowing those places. But I was raised here. Did all my schooling here. I still have friends I was in kindergarten with. Even though I always worked in Tampa and left for Chicago for a handful of years, it is still my hometown. Like any other small town, you know most everyone. Numerous people I knew from school own or run businesses here. Though we are not the same sleepy coastal town anymore and everyone seems to now know dun ē din, we stick together. During Covid it was our community that kept us open. It was helping each other out. People or businesses you never thought could or would, leveraged each other. It was the greatest thing I have seen in my career. I witnessed it and it made me remember what one of my mentors had done. He had teamed up with another local business. A coffee shop. At the time I shook my head at him, but it worked! And here I am with a chance to do the same thing. I decided I was going to team up with other restaurants…. I already knew some Chefs and restaurant owners in the area and I had been fortunate enough to have earned some mutual respect from a few others over some BBQ. So I did it! I teamed up with The Restorative, a tiny fine dining restaurant. We did a 4 course dinner with wine pairing at my restaurant. It was amazing and a huge hit. It took a classicly trained chef and a self taught pitmaster out of their comfort zones and we had a blast. Since then we have collaborated again. I also did a collaboration with a local coffee shop, 3 breweries, and 2 pizza places. It has been a hell of a lot of fun and a learning experience. Our community sees Chefs putting aside our egos and coming together for the sake of each other and the community itself. Dunedin is special like that. The willingness to work together helped me gain brand awareness and helped “Q” get our name out there. A special thank you to those Chefs and owners who took a chance and worked with me, even when it sounded crazy.

Contact Info:

• Website: QSouthernBBQ.com
• Instagram: QSouthernBBQ
• Facebook: QSouthernBBQ
• Linkedin: LinkedIn.com/in/cameron-capri-78180779
• Other: Instagram @captain_cook_capri

Image Credits
Jess Veguez Mauricio Santos