Honing your skills in a certain craft is best done through first-hand experience. In the case of Jason Ganahl, he was able to start his own barbeque restaurant by spending time as a judge and competitor in the biggest professional barbeque contests. Jason sits down with Bob Roark, joined by his cohost Jaime Zawmon, to share how he founded G-Que BBQ and his strategies in maintaining its success, particularly in keeping good connections with customers even beyond good food. He also shares how his business dealt with the changes caused by the pandemic and how he plans to address any future adjustments that may come.

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Jason Ganahl, Founder Of G-Que BBQ With Cohost Jaime Zawmon, President Of Titan CEO

We are joined by Jaime Zawmon, my cohost, President and Founder of Titan CEO. We also have Jason Ganahl, the Founder of GQue BBQ and the Maestro of Meat.

Good day, Jaime and Bob.

Tell us about GQue BBQ. Tell us about your business and who you serve.

In GQue, we got several different taglines. One of them is “Colorado's Only Championship Barbecue Restaurant.” I started out as somebody who wanted to eat good barbecue and then I became a judge for a professional barbecue contest. I started competing in a professional barbecue contest and opened up a barbecue restaurant. We are the only barbecue restaurant in Colorado that won a professional barbecue contest.

How does one get to be a judge? I'm thinking that's clever.

It's great but you pack on the pounds being a judge. You eat pounds of food at a barbecue contest, which is great, I loved it. I was a judge many years ago. We have a lot of judges that are 65 or 70 years old. I can't imagine how they feel for 2 or 3 days after they judge a barbecue contest. Even now, if I eat a big barbecue meal, which is nowhere near the amount of meat that you would eat while you were judging a contest, I still feel it the next day. I'll get the barbecue burst the day after at lunch or whatever. I'd burp up smoke and a little bit of the meat. I can’t imagine what it is like for some of these judges. These judges will do it every single week too for 35, 40 weeks out of the year.

I think about the travel and the schedule. For you, how did you take and apply what you learned from judging to start to influence what you were offering in your restaurant?

I tell people all the time, judging lent itself to a lot of the success I had when I was competing. When you're competing, you're trying to impress just the judges and being a judge for 2.5 to 3 years, I got to learn the entries of how they were presented. I got to see how they tasted but more importantly, I got to think like a judge. There are different strategies involved when you turn food in July at a contest when it's 100 degrees outside. If you're in a humid area, not in Colorado because we don't have a lot of humidity, but you're going to have a different type of flavor profile. If it's fall, in October or September, judges prefer different types of food given the different environments, climates and places of the country you're in.

[bctt tweet="When creating a restaurant menu, include food that will not offend any particular person." username=""]

It's also important to think like a judge when you're turning in your barbecue at these contests. I think judges helped me in that regard, more than any other regard. I don't know if it helped out a whole lot. I guess it did when I created the menu for the restaurant, but more so, what helped me with the background in that when I created the menu for the restaurant was getting the feedback from the judges. I judged for about three years and then I competed for about five but then getting all the feedback from the judges for those five years, that gave me a good idea of what people liked. I don't want to dominate the conversation of what judges or people like but if you look at all the different senses, you’ve got salty, savory and sweet, the good target for a lot to chefs and not so much food competitors but it's important for food competitors too.

You don't want to be too offensive in any one particular thing. If you're developing a strategy for winning a barbecue contest, you want to be considered very good across the board. Maybe that judge that prefers something that's overly sweet isn't going to think you're great but it's not going to be offensive to that person. They're going to still say, “That's good.” If you went down that sweet path and turned in something super sweet, the judge that likes sweet is going to be like, “This is the best ribs I ever had.” However, the contrarian to that is the judge that prefers something savory is going to be like, “That's too sweet. Get it out of here. One bite is plenty for me.” You’re hitting the fairway. You're being good to everybody getting something with a lot of balance with something unique to it but it's not going to be offensive to anybody. That is a good strategy for anybody out there creating a restaurant menu is to create food that's not going to offend any particular person.

That is an interesting thought process spoken like a true Maestro of Meat. I have to ask you then, with the creativity of the name and the title, where did that come from?

I don't know where Maestro of Meat came from. In the barbecue world, there are all kinds of silly monikers and names. I always thought Sultan was a cool name, and I had not seen anybody use Sultan of Swine. It's important not to copy somebody else. I remember coming up with Sultan of Swine first and seeing nobody used Sultan as a moniker. Somebody said, “Maestro of Meat,” one day. I'm like, “That's cool.” I had not thought of anybody using that. I took that on also too. It's important for me not to do what somebody else is doing and do something unique.

I have to ask, Jason, and for those of you that are reading, Jason is recognized as one of our 2020 Titan 100, which recognizes Colorado's Top 100 CEOs and C-Level Executives. Jason was profiled in the book, which I have a copy of. I asked every single one of the Titans that come on to this show, in their opinion, what it takes characteristics to define a Titan in their own right? What do you believe?

That's a subjective question. I don't know what the definition of a Titan would be but to me, when I think of a Titan, I think of an imposing character, somebody that can yield an influence, somebody that can yield a force. Somebody that can be bestowed their expertise upon a lot of different people. I think of that when I think of a Titan. However, to become a Titan is something different. I already know some of the people that also were in your group of 100. Everything that those people have that I know is passion, they might not necessarily be the smartest. They might not necessarily know the most but they're all passionate about what they do. In order for somebody to become a Titan, and I've got four kids and even one of my kids to be a Titan on the baseball field, they better be excited and passionate about being out there or they're never going to be somebody that can yield their influence over their other teammates on the baseball field.

The description if you google a Titan, it comes from Greek mythology in which Titans were a race of god. By definition, it is a person of exceptional importance and reputation. They are people who are distinguished and reputable. I would agree wholeheartedly they exude incredible passion.

I'm thinking Maestro of Meats, Sultan of Swine and Titan of Taste. I was thinking about you did something before barbecue. There's the thought, “I love this enough, I want to pursue this in a restaurant.” You then went from the restaurant to more than one location. If you would walk us down the path from pre-restaurant to what you're doing now. How did you get from there to here?

I had a recruiting business. I worked for formerly Medtronic. It was Covidien, it was Tyco Healthcare. They've had a bunch of different spin-offs and mergers and acquisitions. The company I worked for was Nellcor Puritan Bennett, which was acquired by then Mallinckrodt, which was then acquired by Tyco. I started out as a sales rep for them and I had a variety of sales and marketing management positions with them and got moved around all over the country, which was great. I was going to get moved again to take on a different role and I had met my wife. This was years ago. I was probably about 30 or 29. I thought at some point, I wanted to get married and have kids.

I can't keep bouncing around the place, I guess I could but that's not what I wanted to do, so I didn't take that next promotion. I decided to go off. I developed a lot of great relationships in the medical device community. I started a recruiting firm for pharmaceutical and medical device people. I recruited sales and marketing people for that industry. I did that during the week. On the weekends, I had nothing to do. I didn't have kids. I moved out here to Boulder. At that time, it was Covidien and our office was in Gunbarrel and I lived in Boulder. I'm not a barbecue snob. As long as it's not