Holy Smokes News #2

Greetings from Holy Smokes BBQ!

We truly hope the last month has treated you well. A lot has happened in our world. Those of you who received our newsletter last month probably detected a hint of urgency to our need. Well, through a lot of prayer and a lot of hard work, we have seen an increase in our business. We are very excited about where we are headed. I wouldn’t say that we are all set at this point, but we seem to be making progress.

It seems that at least one person has nominated us for Best BBQ in Gwinnett in the “Best of Gwinnett” survey in Gwinnett magazine. Please take the time to place your vote for us as well. Through your continued help and support, we hope to build something that our friends, family, and community can enjoy for years to come. You can link to the survey from our website.

We have started a direct mail and internet promotion campaign. If you live in the Dacula Hamilton Mill area, you may have seen our coupon in the blue Valpak envelope you receive. For those of you who are outside of that mailing area, you can get coupons from both Valpak.com and Google.com by clicking the links on our webpage at http://www.holysmokes-bbq.com/. Be on the lookout for more coupons both in the mail and on our website. Be sure to check back often. The website is getting updates on a weekly basis. FYI… if you did get the Valpak coupon, please note that our restaurant hours were printed incorrectly. We are actually open from 11AM-8:30PM Monday through Thursday and 11AM-9PM on Friday and Saturday.

In other news, we successfully completed our largest catering event ever in July. We fed almost 1000 kids per day for 4 days in a row. We served meals ranging from our traditional barbecue to Mexican and Italian food and received rave reviews from likely the pickiest group of people we ever serve… teenagers! The first day was most amazing. We fed approximately 850 students in about 30 minutes. Those of you interested in catering, remember that we serve barbecue in our restaurant, but Kenny is a very talented chef and is capable of serving many other meals maintaining the same commitment to high quality food that we have in our restaurant. As a reminder, we can cater for any size event. You can download our catering menu from the website to get some ideas.

In the midst of the major catering we did last month, I received a call from Anna Ferguson at the Gwinnett Daily Post asking if she could write an article about our restaurant. She wrote a great article that ran last week. It was very exciting and has given us an opportunity to meet a lot more people at our restaurant. You can access the online version of the article from our website.

As you visit our website, you may also notice that we have made some major modifications. We now have an online version of our menus along with downloadable PDF versions. This past week we rolled out a feedback module called “Whadaya think?”, allowing you to send us a message right from our website. Mat has also linked to his blog where he hopes to share what he calls “intemperate” thoughts on faith, family, and career. Check there often to see the most up-to-date information on what is going on with Holy Smokes. Mat also welcomes your comments on what he is writing about. In the next few weeks look for new pages sharing our story and what our customers and clients are saying. Check it out at http://www.holysmokes-bbq.com/.

That is all of the news we have for now. Thanks again for your continued support. We look forward to serving you very soon.

Mat, Kenny, and Brian

Sticky Fingers

Well this is the first of many installments of my barbecue adventures. While travelling, we'll usually seek out the local favorite BBQ joint. While working in Savannah, we tried Sticky Fingers. I don't usually expect much but I was pleasantly suprised with the food. They actually know how to cook ribs correctly. Dinner was good. Unfortunately as my wife was cleaning up, she found a winged friend attached to one of the ribs. I guess it could have happened to anyone.

The Health Inspector

The health inspector is a friend to all. His job is to keep you from getting sick when you go to a restaurant. He protects all of us from those restaurateurs that are not keeping their place clean and not following safe food practices. Food poisoning is terrible and potentially deadly stuff. We're thankful for the health inspector.

For the rest of us that genuinely try to do it right just because we think we should do the right thing, health inspections are a pain! We have been open since October of 2006. We have had 4 health inspections including our initial inspection. We received a score of 100 on three of them.

Today the health inspector came in during lunch while we had 12 people in line. We run a pretty trim operation, just Kenny and another person. So Kenny had to walk around with the inspector while our one staffer had to run the restaurant. They got through it, but it was tough.

So you're looking for the punchline. We received a 95 on this inspection. We were counted off because we didn't have proper test strips to test the sanitizer in our dishwasher, and we failed to transfer one of our products out of the manufacturers container for storage (it was stored at the proper temperature, sealed, and dated, however).

So this raises interesting feelings... "Great! we didn't get counted off for anything posing an immediate health risk. " The other feeling is, "We lost points for WHAT!?!?" Oh well.

As I said, I build TV facilities for a living. As you can imagine, I travel a lot. I, therefore, eat at a lot of restaurants. When it comes right down to it, I'm thankful that they're out there doing their job.

In case you're interested, here is a link to the website that lists health scores for Gwinnett, Rockdale, and Newton counties:
http://gwinnett.ga.gegov.com/gwinnett/scores.cfm

Random thoughts on God, family, and running a small business

I'm not actually arrogant enough to think that anyone would like to read this on a regular basis, but those of you who stumble on this might find it interesting. My goal here is to share thoughts on the four major aspects of my life: God, my family, television, and BBQ. I left TV out of the title because it would have been inordinately long.

I am one of the owners of Holy Smokes BBQ, a restaurant in Buford, GA. One of my business partners, Kenny, runs the place full time and my other partner is a Media Minister at a local church. I design television facilities for a living, hence my interest in television. In terms of career, TV is really my first love and you'll hear a lot about it on this blog... that is if I beat the statistics and actually continue posting after the first 30 days.

Well, there is the introduction. Those of you who find this, I hope you enjoy it.