We recently connected with Gretchen Mueller & Scott Warner and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Gretchen Mueller thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Our Snacks and treats are different and unique from everyone else due to the fact we incorporate our signature dry Rub into Most items giving them some “SASS – or a KICK” . Nothing HOT/HOT – we are not trying
to “melt your lips” but gives it enough of a kick to know you are eating something different.
some items have been smoked with the rub… others have been candied with the rub.
so some items are “sweet & Heat” – others are “Smoke & Heat”
The flavors change depending on how they have been prepared and the amount of rub that is incorporated in them.
We like to “raise the bar ” on old favorites and create new favorites, by showing BBQ rub is NOT just for BBQ any more!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our business & Products revolve around Scott’s SIGNATURE RUB – “RUB IT ALL OVER ME” Scott – ‘THE FAT MAN” has many years in the culinary business both as a trained Cordon Bleu Pastry Chef & Accomplished Executive Chef both in the Army & civilian life. Scott developed the rub while he was serving in the Army overseas and he and family members were using it as a rub for any type of meat. and as delicious as that was, when he met Gretchen “THE REDHEAD” She wanted to experiment with it . Gretchen also has many years in Food service both in front of the house and back of the house but baking is one of her true passions and tried the rub in multiple items – tested it on friends and family, came back with great reviews and we decided we wanted to share this with others to show how to break from the preconceived mold and do multiple things with a dry rub that most people use just on meats…
We love doing shows and meeting so many people and sharing cooking ideas and hearing theirs etc .
We love hearing back from people who have used our rub and tried it on things that they would not normally do, and or what meat they prepared with our rub – we have even had people bring us some items they have made with the rub for us to try! – Truly fun… Everything is made in small batches by hand to ensure the best possible freshness & flavor.

Our tag or catch phrase is “ANYTHING THIS GOOD SHOULD BE ILLEGAL” With our LOGO being a WANTED poster – customers become “Posse Members” when they purchase from us as the have “caught us”, thus earning them a Posse badge making them part of our posse – it is fun watching it grow! and running into posse members all over the place.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

we were very fortunate to have family & friends that believed in what we were doing and our mission and offered both mental and financial support. Both of our sets of parents offered a sum of money to help get us started and that together with what we already had/saved we were able to start without having to take out a loan from a financial institution.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

so when we finally decided to go forward with our plan… our first event was a Beer event in Phoenix, February 2020… and we were thrilled. – While we didn’t do as well as we had hoped, we did ok for our 1st time &we learned some valuable lessons. We “marched forth and did 2 more pretty large shows and did better each time… Then COVID HAPPENED,,,,, and preceded to shut down pretty much everything… Who knew it was probably the worst time to start a business???
We were fortunate enough that some parts of the PHX area had farmers markets that we could participate in, we tried that
for awhile , while it was not very profitable for us – it did help to keep our name out there, and when stores started to open back up we got into a few small stores throughout the state which definitely helped until the larger events started happening again.

Contact Info:

• Website: FATMANANDTHEREDHEAD.COM – “IS ON PAUSE/DUE TO MAKING CHANGES TO MAKE IT MORE USER FRIENDLY”
• Instagram: FATMAN AND THE REDHEAD
• Facebook: FATMAN AND THE REDHEAD
• Other: WE ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO MESSAGE US EITHER ON INSTAGRAM OR F.B OR JUST EMAIL, EXT OR CALL DIRECFTLY FOR ANY QUESTIONS AND OR ORDERS WHILE WE FIX THE WEBSITE. 602-592-8428 – EMAIL IS “gc@fatmanandtheredhead.com”