More about my wife and I

Our story starts when we met in Denver, CO in 2013. Jennifer and I right away realized we had one true love in common. FOOD! I have always loved to cook. After talking Jennifer into waiting outside in freezing weather on a Black Friday, I finally got a smoker that I had my eye on. And my cooking skills really started to show.

After getting married in 2016, we have been focusing a lot on food. Jennifer was jumping in and together we started coming up with some really great recipes. We happened to see a commercial smoker for sale that was almost too good to be true. After buying it and running our first items through the smoker, we realized we had something really good happening. Cooking for our family and friends (especially BBQ), we realized that we had great food and some really great recipes.

We met Ron who owned Oyster Bay restaurant in downtown Deadwood, SD and he loved our food too! Being that Oyster Bay is a seafood restaurant, we came up with The Spicy Tavern to be a pop-up tavern inside of Oyster Bay. The Spicy Tavern would specialize in BBQ. Just like that The Spicy Tavern was born. People not only loved our food, but all our rubs, sauces and mixes. We started not only selling BBQ but also our own line of products.

Soon after finding out that we were having a son, we were told of his rare heart condition, ToF, that necessitated moving to Phoenix, AZ for him to have specialized care. His condition taught us just how quickly life can change in a heart beat. We are excited to grow in the Phoenix area and build our business from the ground up again. Having gone through what we have, we are excited to share our story.