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Barbecue Vendors
take Varied By Tim Waldorf Ribfest's rib vendors may be reluctant to divulge all of the secrets to their barbecuing success, but, catch them before the crowds hit, and they'll gladly share the stories of how they got their starts. Take
15-year Ribfest vendor Butch Leupinetti of Butch's Smack Your Lips BBQ. "I started back on the farm, back with my daddy," he said. "We started cooking, and we went out and did some contests, and 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, here I am." And how long did it take him to settle on the recipe he's serving to the masses this year? "We're still trying to hone it down," he said with a laugh. "It's taken us 50 years to get it right!" Like Leupinetti, Dan Johnson of Johnson's Bar-B-Que of Virginia Beach, Va., was also inspired to enter the barbecue business by his father. "Growing up in Arkansas, my father had a barbecue restaurant. So I grew up smelling barbecue. That's it," Johnson said. "Then I moved to Virginia, and I couldn't find any barbecue there, and I thought that was un-American ... So I said, 'I'm going to open a restaurant.'" That restaurant turned into five restaurants and a cook-off team that will hit 30 events this year. "It took off. It went great," Johnson said. Then there's Pigfoot BBQ proprietor Jerry Gibson of West Salem, Ohio. He's been a Ribfest regular since 1988. But he kind of got started in the business on a whim. "I was a (meat) distributor, and one of my salespeople came in and said, 'You know what? They're doing a cook off,'" Gibson said. "And I said, 'Well, what's that?' and he told me, and I said, 'You know what? Go get a semi loaded with ribs.' And we hustled and made the show. "Now it has grown into this," he concluded. "I haven't been a distributor in years. I'm a cooker now." Then there's Gary Stephens of Sgt. Oink's Pit BBQ in Tiffin, Ohio. Stephens took a decidedly different approach to becoming a Ribfest vendor. "In Ohio, they bake 'em or boil 'em, and then they put sauce on them," he said. "Well, everybody who goes down south to Texas or Florida, they all say, 'Oh, you've gotta go to such and such restaurant,' and this and that and how they're are all slow smoked. Well, I already grilled a lot at family reunions and stuff, and I already had a good sauce - my Dixie Sweet Sauce. So I started to do some research." That research took him down south and it led him to by the smoker he's using today, which "was the biggest thing they put on a trailer back in 1993." "I pushed it under my back porch, and, for a year, I just sat back there and cooked in it," he said. "Then, after I got stuff that I liked, I started catering, and people asked me, 'What cook-offs are you doing?' And I said, 'Well what do you mean cook-offs?' And they said, "Well, aren't you doing cook-offs with that big old thing?' And I said, 'I don't know anything about cook-offs." Two years later, though, he was starting to win the things - starting to get recognized by the likes of Leupinetti, Johnson and Gibson, who he said encouraged him to come to Naperville. "We all like competition, and we want whoever comes here to be able to serve a lot of ribs of consistent quality fast, because that's what Naperville requires," Stephens said. "That's what it all comes down to." story courtesy of the Naperville
(IL) Sun: www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun
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