Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Morehead.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Paul. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Growing up in the eastern part of North Carolina, I started cooking at a very young age. My house was a single parent household and I was the middle child yet the oldest boy. My mother taught me a lot of what I knew as a teenager and my cooking skills did not improve until I was in college at Fayetteville State University. I had moved into the campus apartments and that’s when my cooking skills took off, so to speak. I would cook for my roommates and my friends from that point on. After joining the Army and being stationed in Korea is where I really picked a talent up for grilling. Every weekend some of guys in my company would get together and cook. That was a way of having some normalcy from being away from home.
At that time, I found out that cooking was a way to relieve stress. Upon returning from my overseas tours to include the middle east, I would have get-togethers at my house, and I would grill no matter what the weather was. Cooking was one of things that I could excel at and be carefree at the same time. When I moved to Atlanta, I couldn’t find the eastern North Carolina style of barbecue that I loved and that led me to recreate what I have been missing.
So, I started having cookouts with the family and friends that were also from back home. As the word spread, more and more people wanted to taste my Eastern Carolina style of barbecue and I was more than willing to share! It was then that my brother, Manthel Boone, began to talk about what a great idea having something of our own that showcased the style of BBQ that we and so many others loved. So he and I partnered and we started Tarheel Smokehouse BBQ in 2019. We later expanded the partnership to include my fraternity brother Fairell Merritt, who joined the team earlier this year. When we first started, I was cooking on a smoker in my own backyard, fulfilling small and large catering orders. As the business grew, we realized we needed a bigger grill to handle the increase in large orders we were receiving so we finally invested in a trailer grill and the journey really began! I would travel back to North Carolina each month to build up our clientele, doing grill pop-ups along with doing events here in Atlanta, and statewide competitions here in Georgia. At my first competition I placed in the top 5 in the state of Georgia for pulled pork. It was actually the first time I showcased my sauce, Uncle Junior’s Smoke Sauce, at the competition which gave me more confidence in my sauce. People would tell me I needed to bottle my sauce so they could purchase, but it was not until the competition that I realized it may be a hit! From there I began to collaborate with a bottling company out of Florida to manufacture my Uncle Junior’s Smoke Sauce, which eventually led to it being in select stores and now on Amazon.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road; it has been kind of an “on the job training” type of road. I do a lot of research, so I try not to make mistakes as we go along the way. Luckily, I have partners that I can bounce ideas and thoughts off of and get their input and thoughts so that we can work together to continue to move the business forward and build upon as well as sustain the growth we have seen so far. Being that there are three of us, we all respect each other’s role within the company. I cook and deal with the daily operations, Boone deals with finance and Fairell handles marketing and customer service. One of the main struggles we have encountered has been around exposure, especially given that we are a small business that is up and coming—even with a good product, the effort and consistency has to be at high levels day to day to get the attention you need on the product and that’s what we try to do. Getting our product into the right hands and with the pandemic in play, things obviously slowed down a lot in terms of face to face presentation and interactions, so our online presence has definitely been our focus during this time. I believe in our product and even more than that, I believe that when others, like our customers, believe in and enjoy it just as much, that all it takes is the right person with the right connections, coupled with continued hard work, to take things to the next level. Our goal is to make Uncle Junior’s Smoke Sauce a household name and staple at the dinner table or next to the grill at your next family get together or event. That’s why our main objective is to get our sauce into grocery stores as well as restaurants to increase access to our gourmet sauces so that more and more people can see what the rave is all about! In due time because I understand that we are rookies in this industry, yet every business has to start and grow from somewhere and the second leg of the journey is just beginning with the expansion of the availability of the sauce. We are just going to keep working hard, making improvements, and providing the best product and service we can to our customers.
We’d love to hear more about the business.
Tarheel Smokehouse BBQ, is black and service-disabled veteran owned business. We specialize in eastern North Carolina style of barbecue, where our smoked ribs (beef & pork) are some of the most talked about in the area. All of our meats are smoked on a wood burning pit and feature our leading gourmet sauce, Uncle Junior’s Smoke Sauce that can actually be used on any type meat or even vegetables! Most importantly though, we are so excited and proud of the fact that our CUSTOMERS enjoy our food, gourmet sauces, and just the Tarheel Smokehouse BBQ experience as a whole, whether it’s at an event or a local grill pop-up. We pride ourselves on being able to bring families back to the tables with our cooking and recreating the time where families would talk about their day and how good the food is around the dinner table and taking a moment to disconnect from the outside world for a bit.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite childhood memories is spending the holidays at my grandparents’ house. Everyone would come into town and would gather at one central location to enjoy great food and each other. As a young child, I would sit around and hear about the stories of family history rooted in love and endearment while enjoying every bite of homemade meals and desserts that I am sure, came from recipes passed down for years and years Those times will always be the best times as a child to me because I reflect back to them fondly and with appreciation, especially when I cook now. It’s true that you have to know, remember, and appreciate where you came from to push to where you need to go in life, every step of the way.
Pricing:
- Uncle Junior’s Smoke Sauce available on Amazon for $9.99
Contact Info:
- Address: 3645 Marketplace Blvd Ste 130304 East Point, GA 30344
- Website: www.tarheelsmokehousebbq.com
- Phone: 404-480-9367
- Email: info@tarheelsmokehousebbq.com
- Instagram: @tarheel_smokehouse_bbq
- Facebook: @tarheelsmokehousebarbQ
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