We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shawna Jana Carr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shawna Jana, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My dad is the descendent of sharecroppers. He knew he wanted more for his life, and although opportunity didn’t come easy for him, he persevered and became a North Carolina cattle farmer. Through years of hard work, he purchased the land, and throughout my childhood and now adulthood, made it into what it is today. I can recall my dad hosting pig pickings and pit style BBQ parties. He makes the best BBQ sauce I’ve ever tasted, and he always made the most flavorful spice combinations. This is where my love for food and flavor was born. Throughout my college career I became the “foodie friend”. I hosted BBQ’s and other gatherings centered around food, and my love culinary arts grew into a career. My college sweetheart and I cultivated our mutual love for food into a wildly successful private chef and catering business. Then, Covid hit, and everything changed. We found ourselves in a strange position. We were unable to do what we loved, and we knew we had to pivot. During lockdown we had plenty of time to reflect on what we enjoyed about our business and our pain-points. We found, we truly loved the joy on the faces of our customers after they took a bite of our food, but the long hours and wear and tear on our bodies took a toll on us. I was able to reflect on the time spent with my dad and the beautiful flavors he was able to create with his spices and sauces during my early days on the farm. As a result, Big L’s Blends, a spice company named after my father, was born.

Shawna Jana, 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?

Big L’s Blends is not your average spice company. We lovingly create spices that are free from artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and fillers. More importantly, our company prides itself on empowering our customers to nourish themselves and their loved ones without spending all day in the kitchen. Many of our recipes can be prepared in 30 minutes or less, giving you well deserved time to do whatever it is you want to do. A good meal doesn’t need to be laborious, and it doesn’t need to take all day to make. Our motto is “we’re in the kitchen for a good time, not a long time”, shoutout to Aubrey Graham.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

My favorite quote is from Albert Einstein, and for me, it completely describes my journey as an entrepreneur who wears/has worn all the hats. Albert says “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”. Its so important to understand all aspects of your business as an entrepreneur. In order for your business to work, you must remain passionately curious, even with the tasks that feel mundane. Entrepreneurs generally do “all the things” until we are able to hand them off to someone else. My advice is to remain curious and you’ll never work a day in your life.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

All our products are manufactured in-house by a very small team. Fun fact, everyone who works for Big L’s Blends are members of my family. Big L himself often comes in and lends a hand, but he regularly reminds us that it’s his name on the packaging. When we began Big L’s Blends, we had no clue what we were doing. Formulating a blend of spices for a weeknight dinner is much different than creating a large batch of spices to be consistently sold to customers. It took us a while to grasp the concept of batch-making, but once we did, we knew we needed machinery. Since we were novices, it took us quite a while to find the correct machinery, as we didn’t know what to even search for. Slowly but surely, we began to learn the lingo and source machinery and ingredients necessary to successfully run our business. Our biggest takeaway has been “you don’t know, what you don’t know”. We have had many aha moments regarding doing things the hard way during our manufacturing process, but a lesson learned is a lesson earned.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BigLsBlends.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/biglsblends
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@biglsblends

Image Credits
Kimberly Meyon Photography