How Plowboys Barbeque went from an ice breaker to a thriving business
Published on July 08, 2016 | Category: Press
By Leslie Collins
Todd Johns’ brother-in-law, Randy Hinck, had two words for him: barbecue contest.
For Randy, it was a way to bond with Johns and include him in the family, Johns said. But Johns knew nothing about smoking meats or whipping up barbecue sauces.
His background includes a 21-year career in IT in roles such as development manager and senior business analyst.
“What started out as kind of an ice breaker, get to know each other, dominated every time we got together. Even our wives were like, ‘Oh, gosh, will you two quit talking about barbecue?'” Johns said.
Through trial and error and with the help of a barbecue class in Tennessee, they mastered the art and entered hundreds of contests. And what started off as a way to bond morphed into a thriving business called Plowboys Barbeque.
The catalyst for opening the Plowboys Barbeque restaurant was a conversation with Todd Johnson, part owner of an Omaha barbecue supply store that carried Johns’ line of barbecue rubs and sauces.
“We got to talking about restaurants and barbecue, and one day Todd Sr. (a nickname for Todd Johnson) said, ‘Let’s do a barbecue restaurant.’ Both of us are very much entrepreneurs at heart, so you never let an idea go until you’ve really looked into it. There was never something that said, ‘You shouldn’t do this,'” Johns said. “There were a lot of people that told us this will never work — you’re an IT guy and Todd owned a large printing business for many years.
“So neither of us had any real food experience outside of my competitions and catering. But we’re both good students of whatever it is we’re doing, researching, learning. … It got to a point for me where I got tired of hearing all of that (negative feedback). Every time someone would tell me I couldn’t do it, it just emboldened me even more that I was going to do it.”
Johnson became his business partner and they opened their first location in Blue Springs in 2013. (It didn’t hurt that the barbecue team already had won hundreds of awards, including Grand Champion at the American Royal Invitational in 2009.) Plowboys opened its second location in 2014 in downtown Kansas City, and in May it announced it would be moving to the former Ingredient space at 12th and Main streets, which triples its space. Last year, the two restaurants had a combined revenue growth of 89 percent, he said. This year, they’re already experiencing double-digit growth.
“The first week we opened here, we saw a 15 percent increase in sales in Blue Springs,” he said.
People who worked Downtown, but lived closer to Blue Springs, said they “didn’t even know we existed,” he said.
“So one of the best marketing things we did for our main restaurant was open a second one.”
Even today, the Blue Springs location’s revenue growth continues to keep pace with the downtown location, he said.
Getting it right
Part of the restaurant’s success is due to simplifying processes and creating efficiencies. But the early days of the restaurant business were challenging.
With catering, there’s an exact headcount and time frame, letting you know how much food to fix. But with a restaurant, there’s a nine-hour window and he didn’t know how many customers would come in or what they would order.
“It took us a while to get it right,” he said.
He sought advice from other barbecue restaurant operators, and he identified ways to simplify operations.
“It’s about repeatable processes,” he said. “I always challenge myself: Do we really need to be doing that?”
His employees, for example, used to measure and mix the ingredients for the baked beans. But Johns talked to his manufacturer and has since created the “bean starter,” a five-gallon bucket of pre-mixed ingredients. It saves time and creates a consistent product, he said. He also purchased electric mixers for the cheesy potatoes, which his employees previously had been mixing by hand.
“What it allowed us to do is take more control of our product but also be more efficient and be able to absorb that (customer) growth without having to expand our facility or expand our labor hours,” he said.
For Johns, barbecue isn’t a job. When his tech employer laid him off in 2007, he spent five months just cooking barbecue and doing catering. And it never felt like work. Barbecue is his passion, he said. This ice breaker is now his calling.
To read the original article at the Kansas City Business Journal click here.