Brandan Sawyer loves him some good barbecue. He’s also a person who subscribes to the time honored maxim, “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Combine those virtues with a handyman’s DIY skills and a serious competitive streak, and then throw in a dogged determination to make a living doing what he loves while enjoying time with his family. What you get is not only a recipe for great food, but for entrepreneurial success. What you get is Brando’s BBQ.

In conversing with Brandan about barbecue, it doesn’t take me long to realize that every time I’ve ever talked about that culinary genre I’ve run the serious risk of embarrassing myself. So let’s get something straight right up front: tossing a pile of Kingsford briquettes into the Weber, dousing them with enough starter fluid to craft a molotov cocktail, and then slapping a hunk of protein slathered in Baby Ray’s on the grill may make you a backyard hero, but it won’t win you any serious BBQ contests or the street cred that goes with doing so.

Brandan Sawyer knows something about winning BBQ contests, and it’s that level of culinary achievement that he brings to the enterprise he recently started out of a gleaming black trailer parked in front of his Bay View home, just past Rozema Boat Works on Bay View – Edison Road.

But before we dig into the story behind the brisket, ribs, pulled pork, corn slaw, and mac & cheese (don’t even get me started on the bacon wrapped Oreos), a little biographical background is in order.

Brandan Sawyer was born in the Mojave Desert town of Ridgecrest, California — perhaps not the most auspicious birthplace for a future BBQ champion, despite the heat. His youth, however, was somewhat nomadic. “We moved around a lot, but I would say that I grew up in Elk Grove, California, although I spent six years in North Bend, Washington when I was in elementary school. After graduating from Elk Grove High School I joined the Air Force and served six years in Great Falls, Montana in nuclear security.”

It was in Great Falls that Brandan’s passion for BBQ was inspired, at the risk of serious frostbite. “We were just kids, my wife and I. It was January, but I really wanted to make some pulled pork, so I went to Home Depot and got a gas grill and made a foil boat and tossed in some soaked wood chips. It was negative 10 degrees outside and I’m out there refilling smoldering chips and replacing propane canisters for 12 hours. I thought I’d made excellent pulled pork, although looking back on it I think it was more chopped than pulled.”

During a career as a long haul truck driver, Brandan sought out local BBQ joints throughout his travels. “I would get on my phone at a rest stop and see where I should go. My favorite place is Saws, which is a hole-in-the-wall in Birmingham, Alabama. They have about a hundred stacks of bread loaves in the place because that’s what they serve as a side. This is where I fell in love with Alabama white sauce. It’s a mayonnaise/vinegar sauce that is thin and pure white, and it’s typically used with chicken — but I think it will pair nicely with brisket. There’s no parking at Saws, so I would find somewhere to safely leave my trailer and then take Uber. Another favorite place is Mile Marker 87 BBQ in Tennessee. It’s in a white box trailer about half the size of Brando’s. They have a fantastic sandwich.”

Long haul trucking was in Brandan’s family DNA, but it’s a hard life, and it kept him away from his family for far too long. “I was working for Tesla, and sometimes I’d be hauling $400,000 worth of automobiles and parking in neighborhoods that I had no business being in when I ran out of hours and had to pull over. It’s a tough go, but my family wouldn’t have what we have today if it hadn’t been for driving trucks.”

Casting about for a career path that didn’t involve the expense and hardships of long haul driving, Brandan hit on what was fast becoming a beloved pastime since that sub-zero day in Montana. “I got into BBQ because I wanted to be home — but I also wanted a hobby that I could utilize. People tell me that you shouldn’t make a job out of your hobby, but I figured that if you like it you might as well do it, and I wanted to make it fun.”

Making BBQ “fun” was what brought him and a couple of Elk Grove buddies into the world of competitive BBQ. It just so happened that his hometown was the site of an event sponsored by the Kansas City Barbeque Society (KCBS). “They hold a big event at Elk Grove Park, and it cost $200 to enter — plus you have to provide your own meat. There’s a ‘backyard division’ that only requires cooking chicken and ribs, which are pretty forgiving. But we thought we were pros, and we entered that division instead. You have to cook four meats: chicken, ribs, brisket, and pulled pork. There were four of us who competed, and we made our own rubs and sauces and we each cooked a different meat. We even made a banner — we thought we were pretty hot. When award time came we put on what we thought was a perfect cook for us. The judges thought otherwise.”

Out of a field of 30, Brandan’s team came in 24th in their first competition. “It’s worse than it sounds, because there were teams that finished at the bottom that didn’t even turn in a meat category. The top competitors were running gravity fed smoke chambers with fans and computerized controls for pushing and stopping air, and we were out there with our Traeger ‘pellet poopers’. We were humbled, but we had a blast and probably drank too much beer.”

During their first year on the competitive BBQ circuit, Brandan and his friends entered six competitions, finishing “mid-pack and frustrated.” But while a less dogged person might have given up, Brandan and his aspiring pit masters were determined to up their game. Which is how they discovered Myron Mixon.

For those unfamiliar with Myron Mixon, he is pretty much the Muhammed Ali of BBQ, holding the distinction of being a five time Barbecue World Champion and author of a number of culinary tomes, including “Smokin’ With Myron Mixon.“

“I was still hauling cars when my buddy Mark found out about the Myron Mixon Cooking School — a four-day clinic in Vienna, Georgia. We took a red eye to Atlanta and attended the class as the only Californians in a group of twenty — but we were also the only ones in that group who were cooking competitively. Everyone else just had enough money to spend on really good backyard BBQ. We learned how to cook whole hogs and cut chicken correctly. We took a red eye home and one week later we won our first competition.”

In a story that might have been scripted in Hollywood, the competition that Brandan and his team won was none other than the KCBS in Elk Grove — the event that had humbled them at their first outing. “It wasn’t a perfect scoring brisket, but it was good enough to take first place — and that’s tough to do with brisket. We’re a little embarrassed now about how unglued we came when we found out we won. There were five of us cooking and we swarmed the stage to get our award. It was our home turf, and we were on cloud nine. From then on we fit in with the pros.”

Brandan’s friend Mark eventually outfitted a 40 foot gooseneck trailer with a full kitchen and a giant smoker and hit the competitive circuit, but Brandan had other plans. By this time he had relocated his family from California to Bay View, where his folks were living, and took a job with Rozema Boat Works. At the boat works he learned to weld, among other fabricating skills, and on weekends the boat shop gave him access to its facilities, equipment, and scrap metals. which he used to build his own professional smoker.

When work at the boat shop slowed during the pandemic, Brandan decided to play the hand fate had dealt him and become an entrepreneur. “At this point I’d already built the smoker, and my original plan was to get a single axle trailer to drag it around. Instead, I used the boat shop to build a trailer that would serve as a food truck, and since there aren’t many BBQ options in the valley to begin with, and because this is a good location, I figured I could keep the trailer in front of my home and be a dad while I made a little money.”

On July 4th, 2021, Brando’s BBQ hosted a “soft opening” for family and friends (yours truly was privileged to be among that fortunate company), and the following Saturday it promptly sold out of everything within hours of its official launch. That Sunday was even busier.

So, how does one go from the thrill of the grill as a BBQ circuit competitor to commercial success? As it turns out, the transition is easier in terms of scale than you might think if your idea of volume is defined by backyard cookouts for family and friends. “When you compete, you might be cooking up three briskets and twenty chicken thighs at an event. You may cook eight racks of ribs just to come up with six bones to submit to the judges. I also got a lot of practice cooking for people who wanted me to do it for events like weddings. I would do six briskets and try something different with each one. Events were like my guinea pigs. I applied what I learned from experimenting with temperatures and times in my competitions, and folks were getting fantastic BBQ.”

Currently, Brando’s BBQ operates only on weekends (“I want to make sure we can scale up without compromising the experience,” Brandan explains). The current menu consists of pork tacos, pulled pork brisket, ribs (“They sell out fast — I usually go through six racks by lunch), potato salad, mac & cheese, and coleslaw (“We do a corn slaw with feta cheese and cilantro that is very refreshing.”). And then there are the bacon wrapped Oreos — a fever dream union of sweet, savory, and smoky that are as delicious as they are unlikely. Brandan is also planning on introducing a brisket with the Alabama white sauce he first experienced in Birmingham. “As we get closer to winter, I want to do a BBQ Sunday with layers in a parfait cup — mashed potatoes on the bottom, BBQ gravy, corn slaw, potato salad, meat — all these layers in a cup that you can walk around with.”

Understanding Brando’s competitive roots is key to appreciating its differentiator as a BBQ joint. “What I’m serving up is what I call ‘competition-style’ BBQ — the kind that only judges typically experience. Style wise, it doesn’t go down a straight line. It’s not Texas BBQ — not simply salt, pepper, and garlic. I use a rub that has a lot of different spices. I include vinegar in my sauces, which I guess kind of brings me into Carolina. My sauce has a ketchup base, and I can’t tell you how many gallons of trial and error went into making it. The end result of everything I do, from the design of my smoker to the type of wood I burn and the rubs and sauces I use, is designed to win competitions — and that means hitting all the right marks in your palate. It also includes appearance, since a big chunk of your score in competing is based on how the food looks. The visual tells you that it’s going to taste good — you eat it with your eyes first.”

Folks attending this year’s Skagit County Fair will have an opportunity to experience a slice of the Brando’s BBQ menu, which will be the first time Brandan has rolled his mobile restaurant beyond his Bay View home. His aspirations, however, go well beyond his venue’s current configuration. “I’m envisioning a brick & mortar set up like a brewery, with large windows that create a show around the activities of the pit master — keeping the fires going and briskets coming off. You can feed people samples as you go and make it interactive. I want people to be able to talk to me and see where their food is coming from so there’s no question as to how I’m doing it. In most restaurants you can’t see how your food was made. I want this to be a performance that ends with licking that last little bit of sauce off your fingers.”

Cue the applause and pass the bacon wrapped Oreos.