We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chris and Sandra Elrod a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris and Sandra, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Chris and I (Sandra) are high school sweethearts, graduates of The University of Texas at Austin (Hook ’em Horns) and are the proud parents of Austin (20) and Allison (17). Chris worked in college athletics for about 15 years before returning to teaching. He currently teaches Economics at Wayzata High School in Minnesota. I taught elementary school, mostly special education, for more than 20 years, before taking over the operations of our small business. Austin has Autism and significant special needs, and following this school year, will have one more transition year in public school before transitioning into the private sector. Allison is a Junior at Minnetonka High School.

With Chris’ first career in college athletics, we moved around a bit. We have lived in several spots in Texas, spent a year in Alabama, was introduced to the great state of Minnesota, then moved back to Texas for career and family. Shortly after Chris moved back into teaching, we decided to move our family back to Minnesota. Quite honestly, we were so impressed with our time in Minnesota and how thoroughly the state supported our son, that in July of 2016, we packed up, left all of our extended family, and once again, headed up north.

My husband, Chris, loves to smoke meats and is so good at it! And when we lived in Texas, he would sometimes even enter weekend competitions and had solid success showing off his talents. It even became a tradition for us to give away some of his creations as family Christmas gifts. We started getting creative with it. He would brine pork bellies for about 10 days, then he would smoke them with hickory pellets for about 12 hours. Next we would slice them up, shrink wrap some slices in individual packets for gifts, and then got fancy, and even printed out labels. We had fun with it, but it was a lot of work for two teachers with two kids during this busy time of year.

Then in 2016, when we moved back to Minnesota, this tradition became even harder to do. Just before the holidays in 2019, we had been visiting a wonderful small town about an hour from where we lived. It had this great kitchen store that had all these unbelievable spices. But one particularly intriguing thing we saw was hickory smoked salt. Chris had heard of this (I am not the chef in our family, so I had not), so we bought some. The idea of a hickory smoked salt just sounded absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, it was terrible! Honestly, it smelled like an ashtray and didn’t add much flavor at all. So for our Christmas gifts in 2019, we set out to create a better version of a hickory smoked salt.

Our family LOVED it! That is all they talked about. “Y’all should go into business!” “You really need to sell that” We heard it all. We were so happy with how well it went over; but we were both teachers, already established in our careers, so we didn’t give it much thought. But on our 15 hour drive back to Minnesota, we had plenty of time to talk.

There are a lot of things to worry about as parents of a significantly special needs child. But in particular, as Austin gets older, Chris and I think a lot about what his day-to-day life will look like after his time in public schools is over. For special needs parents, not knowing what that future holds is a terrifying reality. So as we made our drive back home, I threw this out there for discussion. What if we did start a small business selling smoked salt? We could keep the processes purposefully simple. And then, when Austin does finish his public schooling, he would have an occupation to transition into. Chris and I could work on the weekends to get it established and get our processes down while he is finishing school, and then we could go from there. If we were really successful, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could open this up to other special needs adults as well? But then the questions started flowing. Where could we source the supplies? How do we go about selling? What flavors should we have? How do we create a website? What all do we need to do to get this kind of thing up and running?

Little did we know that Covid 19 was about to happen and give us plenty of time at home to answer all of these questions. So on January 23, 2020, Up North Longhorn Smokers was born!

Chris and Sandra, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I speak of much of this in the previous question as well. Sorry for the redundancy…

We are Chris and Sandra Elrod. We are two teachers with two amazing kids. Chris and I did not set out to be entrepreneurs. We did not expect to have a small business. But we took Chris’ passion for wood-fired meats (and Sandra’s passion for enjoying them :), which led to our perfecting a hickory smoked salt. Then before we knew it, Up North Longhorn Smokers was born.

Our company started almost by accident, at the urging of others, when we came up with our signature hickory smoked salt recipe and gave to give away as a Christmas gifts. And now we are creating amazing smoked salt and spice blends in hopes of not only making food more flavorful and delicious but also creating a occupational opportunity for our special needs son (and hopefully others) as he begins his journey as a special needs adult. We have made it into a brand and a company that we are proud of. We have been featured on a best-selling author’s newsletter, been featured in a fundraiser meal for a Semper Fi & America’s Fund dinner, and been interviewed for a state-wide podcast. You can find us online and in more than 150 stores and 9 states. All of our 15 varieties have a hickory smoked base that has been wood-fired for more than 12 hours, including our best selling Perfect Smoked Blend – a mix of sea salt, peppercorns, onion and garlic.

I am most proud of the way that we have taken something that I didn’t even realize was my dream, and made it into something with so much potential that it can fulfil dreams still yet realized. We are still a long ways away from employing others, but the idea that one day we could possibly help alleviate some of the fear that other special needs parents’ of young adults might have as their child moves into unknown territory, makes me unbelievably thankful.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

This is more a story from our personal journey with Autism than our professional/small business journey. This is just an every day resiliency story.

I think when you are a parent of a special needs young adult, your whole identity is one of resilience. My son, Austin’s Autism requires that he lives his life, and in turn, we live ours, through a stringent set of rules. Throughout Austin’s entire life, we have had to plan for the unexpected by anticipating any potential trigger, etc.

An example of this would just be talking through a few of the “rules” in going to a restaurant (some but not all of these were from when he was a bit younger.)

Triggers: 1) He expected crayons at the restaurant if he had ever gotten them in the past; 2) It would make him angry where he would pinch or bite one of us if the wait staff would say his food was “hot” when setting it down; 3) He has a gumball obsession -if there is a machine, has to have one, but would sob uncontrollably if he got a blue gumball

Solutions: 1) Call the restaurant ahead of time to make sure they had crayons OR keep a crayon stash in my purse from the different restaurants; 2) Talk to the wait staff before food is brought out to ask that they do not say “hot” when setting it down (and hope it’s not someone else bringing it out); 3) Always have multiple quarters and do a distract/throw away if its a blue one and say, “Oh it didn’t work, let’s try again.” I could write a book on the gumball rules. It is amazing how his mind works!

Some of these triggers are currently still triggers, while he has moved past others. But you have to always be ready for new or changing ones.

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

We came up for the idea and the reason to start this business at the very end of 2019. We were both teachers, and the plan was to keep our existing jobs, work on the weekends, and go door-to-door to visit different stores taking samples and information to get our products and name out there. Little did we know that a global pandemic was about to create the biggest pivot in most of our lives.

Certainly, the global shutdown was brutal, and I am not suggesting that it was a positive time to start a new business. However, we were actually able to find some positives. We were able to use the unexpected time to benefit us in a lot of ways. We were able get online and get so many of the answers the questions that we did not know going into this as first time business owners. My husband and I were able to perfect recipes and work out marketing strategies that we would otherwise have not gotten to work on together. I was able to email stores and tell them our story and our purpose. And as we grew, we were even able to fine cheaper than usual business space for rent as so much space was available with people working from home.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.upnorthlonghorn.com
• Instagram: @upnorthlonghorn
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upnorthlonghorn/
• Linkedin: Up North Longhorn Smokers
• Twitter: @upnorthlonghorn