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Interview with Jim Quessenberry by Lolis Elie and Frank Stewart:
Lolis Elie [00:00:00]: How did you get into the actual barbecue business? Did you start off doing some competitions or…
Jim Quessenberry [00:00:06]: Yeah. Well, see, I was in food service in Memphis. I was with the Britling cafeterias over there. B-R-I-T-L-I-N-G, and they’re an old company. They have cafeterias in Memphis. They have a cafeteria in Nashville called B and W cafeteria.
Jim Quessenberry [00:00:31]: They have cafeterias in Kentucky, Louisville, Lexington, all up in there called Blue Boar — like a boar hog. And the actual company is a very, very old company that came out of Birmingham years and years ago. But it’s an old family-owned company. I worked for them for four or five years — four years, I guess. You know, I’ve always been interested in food, I mean, even as a hobby. Well, I got into it as a business there. And I’ve always been into barbecue. My folks, that’s what they did to entertain when we were kids. Both of them together kind of made an indelible impression on me. So when these contests started coming along, it was a natural pursuit. Something I knew I was pretty fair at, so I just started doing them.
Lolis Elie [00:01:34]: What year was that?
Jim Quessenberry [00:01:36]: Woo — ‘78 maybe.
Lolis Elie [00:01:39]: You do Memphis in May in ‘78? First one?
Jim Quessenberry [00:01:42]: Yeah, been to every one of them. Under one name or other. We’ve been under a lot of different team names. It’s always, always been me. A lot of my folks that I have now have never been to two or three contests. A lot of folks I had with me back then don’t go to them anymore because they’ve all decided they’re too old. Me, I don’t ever get too old.
Lolis Elie [00:02:04]: Hmm. Did you ever win any of them?
Jim Quessenberry [00:02:07]: Yeah, we won second one year — we won second in the second year they had it, we won second in whole hog. We won third in, I believe, ‘84. And I won a side competition they had over there one year — John Morrell was one of the sponsors. They had a contest called The Jet Net Ham Contest, which is nothing but a boneless ham in a jet net. And I won that. That was really an accomplishment ‘cause it had about 200 entries. We’ve been pretty consistent about scoring fairly high. During one little period there, like about a five or six year period, we didn’t come in any worse than tenth place, which in a competition that big, that’s pretty good. Of course, we’ve come in… we’ve literally brought up the rear before. You know.
We “never get too old.” That’s why Sauce Beautiful has been the preferred choice for thousands for over 30 years.
