Back in early 2006, a Senate budget debate raged into the night. Around 1 a.m., Hill staffers Heath Hall and Brett Thompson found themselves facing a serious challenge: They could not stomach another night of delivery pizza.
What was worse, they grumbled, they couldn’t think of a single spot offering decent barbecue in the entire Washington, D.C. area.
For Kansas City native Heath, and barbecue convert Brett—the son of a man who was literally allergic to charcoal and made up for it by grilling his way through some 300 recipes in “Weber’s Big Book of Grilling” as an adult—enough was enough.
“The Senate was debating pork barrel spending projects and earmarks, and we were debating dinner,” Hall says. “We were talking about how we wished we had some barbecue. So we’re thinking pork barrel spending, barbecue, and that’s where the name came from.”
Fast-forward nearly 10 years and Pork Barrel BBQ products are in over 8,000 stores in the US, Canada, Asia and Europe; there’s a Pork Barrel restaurant in Alexandria, Va.; and, including that staff, they employ around 50 people. The brand is synonymous with first place finishes in barbecue competitions nationwide.
Hall, who speaks slowly and thoughtfully, a slight drawl hinting at his Southern-Midwest roots, contemplates this boom with the laid-back approach of someone deciding what to order off a lunch menu: “When we started putting together our first product, we thought ‘Oh, this will be small and fun and for our friends maybe.’”
He laughs, at both their naiveté and the whirlwind success they never could have expected, adding, “It’s been crazy.”
