Que 42 - Launching Our Own BBQ Brand
The journey from cooking in the backyard to store shelves & online sales.
I've cooked and participated in the competition BBQ scene for almost a decade. Over those years, I've learned so much from mentors and the overall experience. Living in Buffalo, I wanted to bring the passion and knowledge I had learned to a market not known for its own style of que. Starting with my original two sauce and rub recipes, we began working on bringing Que 42 to life ...
The Inspiration
The name is inspired by the parallel that Buffalo city sits upon: 42. The ingredients are all real, natural, no fillers. The honey comes from a farm less than an hour up the road. The recipes are authentic to their regional inspiration, and award-winning on the BBQ circuit.
First Steps & Background
Working with a professional designer, we quickly developed the logo and brand essence. It's gritty, to represent Buffalo city. Black and white, because we're transparent about everything that goes into our products. The horizontal line communicates that "42" is our place on the map. Each product is numbered to represent its inspirational place on the map. Every sauce bottle is batch numbered, and the first seven batches were hand-filled, sealed, labeled and numbered, much like a bottle of bourbon.
The biggest challenge in starting your own CPG brand is in how to take a recipe and make it shelf-stable. They don't teach you these things in school. We quickly learned what a "Scheduled Process" is through Cornell University. Testing and testing in the kitchen, I finally had my exact to the .01 ounce of each ingredient in each recipe. With approval from the health department and Cornell's food scientists, we could start producing.
It Started with Batch #001
After carefully sourcing ingredients from as many local suppliers as possible, and bottles, caps, seals, labels ... it was time to secure time at a commercial kitchen. We had made and hot-filled every bottle, crafting about 24 bottles per session. With about 50 bottles of each product, we secured our first shelf space at a local craftsmen store, launched our e-commerce website, and social media channels.
Our sampling events were a huge hit and gave us early proof of concept. That's when we found co-packers in the Western New York region to help us create a larger batch, allowing us to expand versus cooking sauces and mixing rubs all day.
When that first batch was ready, I rented a uHaul to pick up our 128 cases, and unloaded our stock into the house by hand ... just the two of us.
We've grown to be featured on multiple store shelves, and have the support of former and current Buffalo Bills players, fellow food influencers in our region, and national influencers. You can dig in and even order your own bottles at www.que42bbq.com.
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