We recently connected with Randy Bigler and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Randy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
The biggest challenge in our industry, the barbecue rub industry, is definitely the competition. Over the last 5 to 10 years rubs in seasoning blends have taken off. There’s lots of big box retailers that have a whole aisle dedicated to barbecue, rubs and seasonings now. Covid really helps that take off as more people were staying home and cooking. Also, social media has changed the industry greatly as well. You have to build a name for yourself on a social media platform to make it in this industry. In the past you used to build your name by winning competitions and having great flavor profiles. Not saying that the stuff on the shelves in the big box store doesn’t have a great flavor profiles. But if you look at companies like Dano’s and even meet church and Kosmos Q. TikTok and YouTube took those guys to the next level.. I’m gonna
Randy , 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?
We are Roostertail barbeque. A small batch, barbecue seasoning company based out of Canton Ohio. We currently produce our product and package it by hand at the Stark fresh kitchens in downtown Canton. We got into the industry. Almost by chance. We were just a couple of guys that got together on Sundays to watch football and cook some good food on the grill. We started experimenting with our own spice blends and found one that was absolutely delicious. After talking it over with some friends and family and getting some feedback, we decided to start selling to the masses. Right now we’re all just doing this as a part time/side hobby doing everything we can to grow it into a full-time job. We all have full-time jobs in the healthcare industry. Which makes growing the business a little tough. But we try and find time weekly to get together to either make product discuss our next product or figure out how we can break into new markets.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
We really got started in 2021 at a competition at Coalway in charm Ohio. We placed pretty highly and got some great feedback from the audience. We were handing out samples too. So we decided it was time to start packaging aWe really got started in 2021 at a competition at Coalway in charm Ohio. We placed pretty highly and got some great feedback from the audience. We were handing out samples to. So we decided it was time to start packaging and producing. We looked at copackers at first it’s a bottle and package for us and quickly realized we didn’t have the capital investment to do so. So we did some research found out about the Ohio cottage lol but quickly realized we couldn’t produce at home due to some of those regulations. Some networking in the Internet lead us to the start for us kitchens. We all had some food service experience and I’ve worked in the kitchen before, so I knew some of the guidelines. But we learned a lot through getting our serve safe certification, and meeting with the local Ohio Department of agriculture rep.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
There’s three of us. We all started working together in the nutritional services department at Aultman Hospital in the early 2000s. Our friendship has grown from there. We all still work in healthcare and we’re all still best friends to this day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.roostertailseasoning.com
- Instagram: roostertail_bbq
- Facebook: Roostertail BBQ
- TikTok: @roostertailbbq