Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to ROBERT NEELY. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

ROBERT, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you’re open to it, can you talk to us about the best (or worst) investment you’ve made. What’s the backstory and the relevant context behind why you made the investment

It took me about 2 years to convince my CFO (wife) that we needed to upgrade our smoker. I had my eye on a custom built smoker from Sling N Steel Smokers. After shopping around for months, she finally gave me the ok… We had it delivered about 2 weeks before a Forth of July event. That event was a true test for us. Financially, that event paid for half of the new smoker.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

We are a family owned and operated business. We started our business after I was let go from a business that I was at for 7 years. It was rough and dark time for us. But it turned out to be the best thing for us. I have a love for cooking and customer service. We pride ourselves in doing BBQ different. We specialize in street style BBQ. When at an event, we want you to be able to walk around with our food and enjoy the event. Plus, you now become a walking marketing poster for our business. People will ask where that food came from and you will point them our direction…

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

The business all started from doing a small batch of beef Jerky on my smoker and letting friends try it. I would bring some to work with me and give away samples. Friends started offering to pay for some. I went from purchasing about 2lbs of meat at a time to purchasing 80lb cases within a few months… When I lost my job, Texas Ale Project in Dallas gave me an opportunity to sell our jerky during tap room hours… This then led to us doing hot food on Saturday’s at the brewery. Now we focus on local events and festivals.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

During the covid shut downs. We had to stop doing the hot food at the brewery. When they were able to reopen for drive-thru beer, we sold 1lb frozen prepackaged BBQ Togo… By doing this we were able to keep our business in the green.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @stashssmokehouse
• Facebook: Stash’s Smokehouse