Our Origin Story

Welcome to our new blog! Here’s where I will occasionally post material about the company, our activities, recipes, and other stuff. Hope it’s not too boring!

There have been a lot of origin stories in the movies the past few years, so I thought I’d share a brief origin story of my own. I grew up around Houston, Texas, and was brainwashed into loving that certain style of BBQ that Texas is known for. (Sometime brainwashing can be a good thing!) I can do without the weather, and some of the politics (no, I won’t argue that point), but I miss good BBQ. The SO and I ended up in the greater Cleveland, Ohio, area, and have been enjoying everything northeast Ohio has to offer. (Snow! Seasons! A huge amount of water! Metroparks! A reasonable cost of living!)

A few years ago I started thinking about exit strategies, and plans shifted into higher gear when I got a new immediate supervisor who was a pandemic-denier. Or at the very least, a pandemic-arguer. (“We don’t need to mask! We don’t need to distance socially! We can’t do any of our work from home!”) But I’m still a (relative) spring chicken - what do I do next? I should add that both my father and my SO’s father retired and didn’t really have anything to do because their jobs defined their lives. I did NOT want to be in that boat.

Years of making my own BBQ sauce, in the Texas tradition, made me consider starting a small food business making Texas-Style BBQ sauces. And so Smokin’ Bettie’s was born! We worked with some local food entrepreneurs to get started, learned a LOT by doing (including what NOT to do), and got onto our first store shelves in January 2020, right before the pandemic started. I arranged to terminate with my employer, and now Smokin’ Bettie’s takes a decent fraction of my working day.

Because I don’t want to make my first blog post, I’ll stop here. But we’re getting into more and more stores (check the “Where to Buy” page) and have been New Day Cleveland three times already, and I’m now looking into advertising on radio. And I’m having a blast in my second career.

I’ll post again soon; I’m new at blogging (learning never ends!). Until then - eat more BBQ, y’all!