After 5: The BBQ Bug

To track down Mike Peters during the summer, just follow the barbecue.

If there’s a competition in the country – and there are at least 315 of them each year – he’ll likely be there.

After discovering competitive barbecue in 2002 during the Rock ‘n Ribs BBQ Festival, Peters and his wife, Chris, turned their hobby into paying jobs three years ago. The two left positions in Springfield – his as a banking center manager for Great Southern Bancorp Inc. and hers as a manager at Furniture Row -– and now spend about eight months a year on the barbecue tour circuit. They promote Kansas City Barbecue Society and its sponsors on behalf of Cookeville-Tenn.-based marketing agency MMA Creative. In the off-season, Peters goes back to Great Southern Bancorp and fills in where he’s needed.

The Peterses aren’t the only professionals who have worked out a way to take their passion for barbecue out on the road, either.

Brian Clark is a regional sales manager for Schutz Container Systems Inc. during the week and a member of the Missouri National Guard. About three years ago, he began competing with friends as team Clark Kent Super Smokers, trying to enter as many barbecue competitions as possible.

“The first two to three years, we would compete at local events, and that was a lot of learning how to survive,” he says. “You have to take all your stuff out there, and you’re having to use wood or charcoal and you’re battling the weather – it seems the weather is rarely nice – and you have to sleep out there and try and come up with a great product and be consistent with it.”

With practice came more consistency and more events. Last year, Clark Kent Super Smokers competed in seven events and in April earned the No. 3 spot for barbecue chicken at Springfield’s Rock ‘n Ribs. This season, Clark’s team will only compete in three events, he says, mostly because he expects to be deployed in June.

“Usually, there’s one hard-core guy on a team, and I’m it,” he says.

The popularity of competitive barbecue has spread since Carolyn Wells co-founded the Kansas City Barbecue Society in 1985 with 20 members. Wells expects membership to grow to 14,000 worldwide this year.

“We’ve certified more than 15,000 judges,” she says, to handle the K.C. society’s 315 annual events. “Those classes are still selling out, and I didn’t know there was anyone left to be interested.”

Last year, The Learning Channel began a reality TV series on competitive barbecue, called “BBQ Pitmasters,” and it has brought added attention to the events, Wells says.

“So many people have come up to us and asked about that show,” Peters says. “And yes, those are the type of people we run around with.”

Competitive barbecue types also tend to invest quite a bit of time and money into their passions, between entry fees – which can run up to $250 per event, Wells says – and the cost of ingredients, equipment and fuel. Peters says he started with a very inexpensive smoker, but now uses a $3,500 wood-pellet cooker and owns a half-dozen smokers and grills. Clark estimates he’s spent $50,000 throughout the years.

“Depending on how elaborate your equipment is and what kind of gas guzzler you have, it can cost between $200 to $500 in gas alone,” Wells says. “It’s not a cheap sport, even for a weekend.”

The main attraction, however, is the food, and there are five elements to award-winning barbecue: “The cooking unit, the fuel, the meat, the seasoning and, the most elusive of all, the expertise of the chef,” Wells says.[[In-content Ad]]