Time for Barbecue Nation with jt so fire up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your smoker cooking.

Now from the Turn It, Don't Burn.

It studios in Portland.

Here's jt.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the nation.

That would be Barbecue Nation.

The only barbecue nation in the.

In the broadcast world.

I will say that I know there's other copies out there, but we are the original.

And I'm here with my co host and hall of famer, Leanne Whippen.

Coming to you from the Turn It, Don't Burn it studios in Oregon and in Florida today, we've got somebody that I've been talking to for, I don't know, gosh, three years or something.

John Furman from Bub and Mothers rubs.

John's back in the Carolinas, and then he's from Maine.

I think he swaps back and forth, but we'll find all that out here.

And so, John, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you guys very much.

So.

It'S a pleasure to have you on the show.

I'm looking forward to our conversation coming up.

Yeah, it really is.

I've been a fan for a long time, so this is.

My feet are tapping.

That's what that noise was.

I noticed I've gotten more quote unquote fans since Leanne joined the show a few years ago than originally.

But.

So you're.

When I first met you, you were still in Maine.

Now, are you down in the Carolinas now permanently, or are you traveling back and forth?

I, I go back and visit, but I'm.

My home is now here, or my, I should say a house is here.

I, I don't think I'm ever really gonna leave Maine.

It's.

It's quite a place, you know, and, and the people down here, they're.

They're wonderful.

They're.

Oh, you're.

You're from Maine.

Well, welcome.

Summers are going to kill you.

Do you miss the lobsters?

You know, a little bit.

I more miss.

And everybody does.

Everybody thinks a man and they think a lobster and they're great.

But scallops in the, in the dead of winter in Maine are amazing.

I mean, these.

I, I just remember cooking them in the skillet and know that they were on the ocean floor that morning and some guy jumped.

Better than that.

No, no, it doesn't, it doesn't.

And I, you know, for me, and I think, you know, you guys can appreciate it.

You can do more with scallops cooking wise than you can with lobster.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's funny.

You're talking about scallops, because I feel like it's kind of.

Some people just forget about them, you know, when they're thinking about seafood or fish to make, you know, they start rambling off.

Fish or shrimp, you know, but you just.

Scallops.

Yeah, it's.

And I love scallops.

They're great.

Have I ever made you my tequila scallops?

Now, I would remember that.

Okay.

Or not.

Well, when we do the next series of shows.

Okay.

The TV stuff.

Well, I'll make some tequila scallops.

I.

I don't even know how in the hell I came up with it.

Just one day I went, oh, I got a bottle of tequila.

And I.

And I did it.

I did it for tv.

And.

And I.

They turned out pretty good, so.

And you could actually do that with probably any liquor or liqueur, whatever your choice was.

But they're kind of fun.

Anyway, John, I want to ask you about Bub and Mothers, because you sent me, and I think you sent Leanne at the same time some samples again, three or more years ago.

And you were just kind of really.

Excuse me.

Getting the ball rolling.

Yeah.

So I want to hear the story and I want to hear how you've progressed on that.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

Remember, it's only an hour long show, so.

Yeah, I.

I know.

All I remember about the samples was Leanne sent me a note and said, I really like the honey and heat.

I was like, I think we should just quit with this.

But anyway, so I.

My career took me all over the country.

I was a professional trainer.

I went into organizations and set up their sales teams and trained them and all that stuff.

And after a while, no matter who's paying for the flight, you get tired of flying.

I know you guys travel and, you know, even though it's to great events and for great things, it's like one more airport, one more hotel room.

And I just didn't want to do it anymore, so I walked away.

And I had moved back to Maine to where I was born, Winter Harbor, 450 people.

And I remember that first winter.

And it's not the cold or snow that bothered me.

I've been around that all my life.

But I never realized nobody came outside.

I mean, literally nobody.

And there's only so many books you can read.

Right.

You know, or tequila you can drink or make scallops with.

It just.

You run out.

So I was like, I got to do something else.

And I didn't know what it was.

One of the things that I had always taught for salespeople is you have to be willing to be different.

And I, I had this name for a company, Bob and Mullins.

I had no idea what I was going to do with it.

It just came to me because all the old lobstermen are deaf because the boats are so loud and they just call each other Bug.

I don't know if they forgot the other guy's name, but that's what everybody was, bub.

And in Maine, the, My, my parents generation would call their wives mother.

They just, you know, mother come to stop her.

Mother come, we're gonna go wrestle, whatever it was.

And I was like, boy, that's a great name.

I wonder what I could make with it.

So I kind of just filed that away.

And during my career, I spent five years in, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

And, you know, you guys are more experts than I, but there are as many barbecue joints as there are seven elevens and gas stations.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's like, okay, I'll have toast for breakfast and barbecue the rest of the day.

It's.

That's how you live.

But, you know, you, you pick out your favorites.

And I got to know a couple of them, and one of them I became pretty friendly with, and they kind of started showing me how they made their rubs for their stuff.

And I'm sitting in Winter harbor years later going, you know what?

I think?

I think I could do this.

I think I can make a rub.

So I did what all you rub experts did.

I ran to Walmart and I got the big spice bottles of all different kinds of things.

You know, just kind of mad scientist in until I had something that, that I kind of tasted good.

So I sent it to a friend of mine who is a Johnson and Wales trained chef.

And, you know, and I had.

I actually have one of the originals here.

Look at.

I don't know if this is what I sent you guys, but this is the original label way back in the day.

It's totally illegal.

There's no weight on it.

There's no ingredient.

Christian label.

But anyway, so this is what I sent.

I've been.

And he was like, you know, it's, it's, it's actually pretty good.

But if you're gonna use Maine as a hook, there's nothing main about what you did.

And he was right.

I mean, I use your standard brown sugars, paprikas, and all that stuff.

And I was like, well, you know, I don't know how to make it main.

You know, you, you sit there now, now I'm all disappointed Right.

And then I started thinking, well, what can I find up here in Maine to make a rub?

And about an hour up the road from me on the coast is a place called Ray's Mustard.

Ray's is the oldest mustard company in the world.

No, I should say, in America.

And they still stone grind their mustard, you know, and you can actually go on a tour and watch them grind up those mustard seeds.

So I went in there, and this little old lady was behind the counter, and I said, can I buy some ground mustard?

And she goes, I don't know all the flavors we have over here.

I said, no, no, I don't.

I don't want it finished.

I just want ground mustard.

Like the mustard seed?

Yeah, yeah.

So she goes in the back, and out comes Karen Ray.

Like the fifth generation six, whatever it is.

And, you know, she said, grab mustard.

I said, okay, look, don't laugh at me.

Here's what I'm thinking.

I think I can make a dry rub.

I want it to be from Maine.

And I'd like to be able to say that I've got raised mustard in here.

And it's seven years later and a handshake, and we're still doing business with the rays.

You know, they'd grind it up, put them in sacks and send it down to me.

And we use it in two of our flavors anyway, so I put that in, but there was no.

No change in the taste because I just put their mustard in as opposed to the other one that I was using.

So I started cooking with it, and I.

I've learned that I.

I really kind of hate brown sugar, first of all, you know, when I first started, I.

I didn't really know too much about smoking.

You know, that.

That art and science.

So I was grilling and everything else, and brown sugar just caramelizes instantly.

So you end up with a nice crust, but none of the flavors get inside.

So anyway, I said, all right, I gotta find a substitute for that.

And it turns out maple syrup crystals are a different kind of sweet.

They caramelize slower.

And all of a sudden, my taste started changing.

Then we found in our dinner dust, we used.

And, honey, we use blueberry powder, and very few people can taste it.

Every now and then somebody goes, oh, I can taste the blueberry.

Which may be psychological, but what the blueberry does is it wakes up the other spices, so you end up.

You know, it's kind of like a helper.

And.

And the dinner dust was our first flavor.

We were in business a whole year with one flavor and this totally illegal bottle there.

But we got eight stores to say that they would carry us.

That's a good start.

Yeah.

And.

And then I realized they were all summer stores, so come October, they all closed.

But we sold enough that people started emailing me, going, I'm almost out of your rub.

And they would reorder a bottle here and there.

But then they said, do you have anything with a little bit more of a kick in it?

You know, and being a salesperson and a sales trainer, of course, we're working on that right now.

Which literally meant as soon as I got off the email, I had to go to work on it.

And, you know, my.

My first try at Spicy was I took the dinner dust and I dumped some out, and I put some cayenne pepper and shook it up.

Kind of called it good until I tasted it.

It was horrible.

It just.

It to.

To not come up.

It sucked.

You know, it was like it was work.

So I went back to doing what worked before, and I started pulling things out, putting things in, and we ended up pulling the maple out and put Honey in.

And Honey and Chipotle, for some reason, just worked.

Oh, yeah, it works really well.

Yeah.

And.

And Honey and Heat is.

Is actually, and has been almost since it came out, our bestseller.

I mean, I.

I have a woman, I think she's in Indiana or Illinois, but she just keeps reordering it, and she only uses it on popcorn.

I mean, it's like.

So how many stores are you in now?

Just over 260.

And we just started shipping the military commissaries.

So is that just from pounding the pavement and just working it?

Yeah, pretty much.

But.

Yeah, my.

And again, you know, I'd like to tell you about my heroic and super sales skills, but I found out in the beginning I didn't have too much trouble selling stores on carrying a few bottles because I didn't understand the grocery business.

You know, they're like, yeah, give the kid a couple of bucks and let them go.

But the stores that I had to sell, you know, they get lost on the shelves.

Right, right.

So I tried a different approach, and I would walk in and say, you know, Leanne, listen, I know you're busy.

I'm just going to leave you a couple samples.

If you promise just to take them home and cook them over the next week or so, I.

I won't bother you again.

I'll call you up.

And if you hate them, you'll never hear from me again.

Okay, Pitch over.

Here you go.

Now, obviously, I'm not going to tell you every store said yes, but of all the stores that did say yes, they're all still with every single one of.

I've got stores all the way back to 2018.

They never left because they tasted.

There you go, John.

We got it.

We got to take a break, but we'll be right back with John Furman from Bub and Mothers and Leanne and myself on the Nation right after this.

Foreign.

It's Jeff here.

I want to tell you about something really cool.

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Stay cool handles.

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It's got all the great stuff.

Just go to HeritageSteel us and find out more.

You'll love it.

I guarantee it.

Welcome back to Barbecue Nation.

I'm J.T.

along with Ms.

Leanne Whippen, Golf Clap and John Furman from Bub and Mother's Rubs.

Here you can find us on Facebook and on Twitter.

Not only Leanne and our, our respective personal accounts, but also for the Nation is on there.

Also Instagram, whatever.

There's a lot of them out there.

And so we, the way it works is we do the shows, they go out on radio, they go to the podcast, they get posted on social media, and that's it.

Then we're on to the next one.

So today we've got John Furman from Bub and Mothers Rubs.

John's talking about seasonings you should use at dinner.

Is that, Did I say it right?

I.

Yeah.

Except it's supper.

Supper.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, yeah, we'll be cooking outside of the door yard.

I'm, I'm looking at the picture of the person on your bottle of rub.

Is that you?

That is not me.

Who is it?

It's, it's my baby brother.

My late baby brother.

Oh, this is the one we're going to talk about in a little bit, but yes.

Yeah.

Oh, it's family.

Yes.

It would look familiar that I had two brothers.

My, my middle brother looks nothing like my younger brother and I did.

A lot of people thought we were twins.

Yeah, you look like.

That's why I thought it might be you.

So, John, what's the two biggest things you've learned so far?

I mean, I, I, I'll preface that question with this.

The spice business is both.

The rub business, wherever you want to call it, Leanne and I can both attest to this.

It's a, a, it's a tough monkey to crack.

You got to stay on Top of it, especially when you're starting out because as you said in the first segment, stores would call you up and, and some of them would be great orders and some of them are just onesie twosies because they're a small store or they're a tourist store or whatever.

And like you said, you can get lost in the spice aisle at a, you know, Walmart, Kroger's, whatever you're doing, because there's a million of them now.

But to stay in those stores is actually a, a testament to tenacity and obviously the quality of your rubs.

But what are the two things that, that you think you've learned that are the most important?

You know, obviously you have to work your butt off to keep, keep the quality there.

You know, you, you can't sit there and say, I'm getting bigger, I'm going to take some shortcuts.

Right.

You know, there's still no preservatives.

The stuff we use is natural, you know, and we spend a lot of time listening to the customers, you know, and that's how we literally, our first four years we only had the two flavors, the dinner dust and the honey and heat or no, five years.

And then the last two years we've grown to nine flavors.

And we didn't just do it, you know, willy nilly.

We had enough customers going, do you have anything for this?

You know, and of course our answer was, well, these are all purpose.

You can use them on anything.

And that's true.

But the cons, the consumer wants what the consumer wants.

Right?

So, you know, now we have nine flavors.

I, I think the second thing is that world domination is not the most important thing.

You know, everybody wants to be a million dollar company.

And it's possible to be a million dollar company within a 300 mile radius.

You don't have to be in all 50 states.

Right?

Right.

You know, if you said, you know, and I'm not, but I mean, you get up for work every day aspiring to be the best and the biggest rug company in America.

And if we became a multimillion dollar company, nobody's going to say, well, did you do it locally or did you do it nationally?

It doesn't matter, you know, so we just do the best we can and when we see an opportunity, we take it.

And I think, you know, and you guys are in the business, so you'll see this as it happens.

We're about to launch a program that's going to set not only the Spice Rub segment, but marketing to big supermarkets on Its ear.

Okay.

I don't know.

Leanne, are you in stores down in Florida besides your own?

Yeah.

Okay.

Are you in like they, they call it a local program or you, you know, where they.

I'm just in local.

Yeah, but, but I mean, some of your supermarkets, like in Florida, I know Publix has a local program.

They have a special, they have an.

End cap with all the locals, right?

We're in Publix here in, in South Carolina.

And we're in that end cap next to the grits and the pickle okra.

None of which I've ever had from Maine.

But one day I woke up and it hit me and said, you know, and, and you were right, Jeff.

If you go down the spice aisle in any supermarket today, there are more barbecue rubs and barbecue mixes and blends than there are spices, right?

It's, it's, it's like looking at a 7 mile cooler that's nothing but craft beer.

Like, how do you pick one?

The local program puts you in a separate segment, right?

So one of the date, you know, and, and if you're in business, you do this, you wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning with like the clearest thought ever.

And mine was, boy, if I could figure out a way to be in a local section in every state in the nation, I'd never have to compete with all the other rubs.

You know, they're not bad rubs, but I mean, you know, our, our bottles now are like this.

They're real snappy.

But when you put a hundred bottles around them and they're snappy, I'd rather be someplace by myself, right.

You know, and, and being at my age and single and sitting at the end of a bar kind of like that, where if anybody approaches you, you know, they're coming to see you.

So that was the idea.

But to do that, I'd have to have 50 facilities, 50, at least 50 employees in each of those states to, to accomplish that.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do that.

But I, I, we just figured out we're, we're actually launching our first webinar on it on March 12th.

We're going to license our product in all the states.

There you go.

So, you know, again, if, if, if, you know, I said, jeff, you can have Oregon, right?

What do you mean?

Sorry, but what do you mean?

License?

Okay.

Licensing is very similar to franchising without the restrictions.

Okay.

So licensing basically gives you permission to handle this.

All right?

The only thing is it would say bum and Mother's Oregon, Bubb, and mother's Florida.

And then it would have an Oregon or Florida address.

We'd still handle all the bottling, labeling, and all that stuff.

We just change the address on the bottle.

You, as a licensee, get to go to all your supermarkets and go.

Do you have a local section?

Yeah.

Try this, right?

Make them try.

Take it home and cook it.

And if they say yes, you hook up the store.

Now, the way we've got it set up, you'd be ordering direct from our co packer, shipped to you.

Okay.

At a.

At a really net net price, so, like, below wholesale, so that you would make money between your cost and wholesale, or if you wanted to do some retailing with it, you know, I mean, I know Leanne, you've got a place, and I don't know if you do, Jeff, but you can make even more margin.

But the idea is you can control your market, Right.

The power of doing that as a collective.

Now, not immediately, but probably the beginning of next year, we could start running national campaigns driving people to all the sites.

My philosophy has always been, it's easy to get it on the shelves.

I got to work my butt off to get people to take it off your shelf.

Are you still targeting local markets in, say, each state?

We do, and I'll tell you why, Leanne.

80% of the places where you can buy any kind of grocery, whether it's meat, seafood, vegetables, or whatever, 80% of them are not part of a chain.

Okay.

They're independent.

Right.

And the benefit of doing that means that you can control 80% of the facilities in your area.

Okay.

And if you lose one, it's not a big deal.

If you signed up like we in.

In South Carolina, we are in every food line.

That's 163 stores.

Okay.

If they go away, we lose a big chunk.

So if I'm not out there hustling to.

To butcher shops, gourmet shops, you know, independent grocers, food lion can eat my lunch.

I just know that on these local end caps, they are local, obviously, by the labels, their verbiage design.

I can't imagine you coming across as a true local by just slapping the name of the city and the state on it.

You know what I'm saying?

I do.

And yet it's being done.

Oh, we're gonna take it up.

No, no, you're fine.

We're gonna take another break, and we'll pick this up on the other side, because I am fascinated by this.

You're listening to the Nation with Jeff and Leanne.

And we're talking with John Furman from Bubba Mothers.

Hey, everybody, it's JT And I have eaten.

If you've ever looked at me, you know that.

But I have eaten seafood all over the world and I can tell you there's no place better than here in Oregon and our Dungeness crab.

If you want to learn more about Oregon Dungeness crab, just go to oregondungeness.org find out how to cook it, how to catch it, where to buy it, and the sustainability of what they're doing there in the Oregon Crab Commission.

Check it out.

Foreign.

Welcome back to the nation.

I'm JT along with hall of famer Leanne Whippen.

We're talking with John Furman today from Bub and Mothers Mother Rubs.

If you want to email us, just go to info@bbqnation jt.com and we'll get your message.

You were talking about and Leanne had a question.

I'm going to let her ask it to you because it's really kind of intriguing.

I, I think you really got something there, John.

But I want Leanne to ask you.

When it comes to the local end caps, and let's just use Publix, for example, don't they have restrictions on the paperwork that you submit proving that it is made in the state of Florida, yada yada.

So it's.

Is that true?

They never asked me.

I mean, they asked me all the business questions.

I had to give my ein number and my copy of my incorporation, copy.

Of my insurances, but nothing pertaining to local or the fact that something is done in the state.

Do you know that?

No.

And let me just say this right now, on the local end cap in South Carolina, at both Publix and Food Line, I am the only product, the only product that's mixed labels and bottled right here.

Everybody else is using a CO pack and most of the CO packers are not here in South Carolina.

Well, that makes sense.

Yeah.

So my point is, I get it.

Some of the people listen, some of the stores are going to say no.

Some of them are going to be exactly what you're saying.

And they're going to be purists.

You know, when I first moved down here, it was like, you know, what stores are you doing business with?

And I only had stores up in Maine.

And they were like, well, come back when you're doing somebody else on my street, you know, and, and even if, if I moved my whole operation and I'll just say Florida because it's Closer than Oregon.

Everything down the floor than Oregon.

John.

Yeah.

And started moving, you know, and making everything down there.

Stores down there could still say no.

Okay.

Sorry to interrupt, but you must have a story that goes along with your rub.

There has to be a story.

So how does your story relate to being distributed in every state as a local product?

I'd start at the end of the story and go back to the beginning.

We're that good.

Just try us.

If you don't like us, we won't be in your store.

Now I'll go back to the beginning.

What's the first thing you think of when you think of bank?

Before you answer, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not great barbecue, but that's what we started in 2018, and we've been making rubs ever since.

And we've won at the International Flavor Awards four times.

I have three teams that have been reserve grand champions in three different states in three different years using our rubs.

All I ask is that you try them, and if you think they're good enough for your customers, we can talk about putting them in your store.

If not, I'm never going to bother you again.

I'm the greatest salesman in the world.

I don't need to sell you.

Okay.

You need to want it.

And then the reason I say that is more geared toward the smaller stores because.

And this is what we found, the smaller stores, if they try it and like it, my rubs get put by their meat.

Right.

And my rubs, when.

When somebody comes in and spends a little bit extra to have a piece of meat cut a certain way, they're there going, you need to put this on it.

Are you grilling it?

Are you smoking it?

Yep.

You need to use this.

And our proof is the speed in which they reorder.

Right.

What I've learned, I didn't know this going in, is that it's actually easier to get into stores than most people think.

But the money doesn't start happening until they start reordering.

Because once you know that they're reordering from you, we're.

We're building our customer base from.

For them.

And now they can't afford it.

Right.

I mean, I still have stores up in Maine that are ordering from.

Because I've graduated from the local section, if you will.

Now I'm a product that makes them money consistently, month after month after month.

And I deserve space.

Right.

And that's it.

And that's no different than any product that you're going to put in Any store, getting in is easy.

Staying in is the hard part.

Right.

But the strategy behind this licensing thing is more than just being placed away from the other stuff.

You are the first person that I have ever heard getting into a store is easy.

Now, define store for me.

Well, John's also a professional salesman and a trainer.

Most people that do this thing, stuff, they.

They may have in their mind, and a lot of them are great because you and I have sampled hundreds, if not dozens of them.

Leanne.

All right, I'm gonna.

But the business aspect of it is completely foreign to them, remember?

Yeah, go ahead.

You.

You are, are, in my opinion, the queen of barbecue.

Okay.

Okay.

So you've got that going.

You've got a restaurant going.

You've got.

You get your dad's rubs going.

You know what I do every day?

Every day I'm selling this.

That's all I do.

I'm.

I've got postcards that I'm setting up to mail out.

I do webcasts.

I do trade shows, only about rubs.

It's all I do.

But let me.

I'll tell you a funny story to.

To knock me down a few notches.

I'm in New Hampshire.

There's a store called Tuck Away.

It's one of the neatest places, you know, and I'm sure that there are more of them around the country.

But I lived in New Hampshire at the time, and they started out as a little meat market, and I used to go there for their barbecue packages.

You know, what do you got?

They'd fill up a bag and of all kinds of stuff, and you'd go home.

Then somebody bought them out and said, you know, it would be really good.

They left the meat market, they added on a beer and wine section, and then they built out the whole other side as a restaurant where if you came in with a big party, you had a giant screen TV and watched your meal be cooked, it was awesome.

So I got to know the manager, and then I started this business.

So I drive all the way down from Maine to visit New Hampshire, and I come in, and I had sent her samples.

I said, take them home and cook them.

I'm coming down to visit my son in New Hampshire.

I'll stop by on my way to his house.

I got to pick up meat anyway.

My son said, pick up, tuck away, and we'll have dinner.

So I get there, all right.

She comes out to greet me in the beer and wine section.

And this is where that seven miles of craft beer from all over New England is Right behind me, got to be a hundred different kinds of beer.

And she goes, I have to tell you, your rubs are delicious.

I said, well, thank you.

She goes, here's the problem.

I said, what's that?

And she goes, my chef makes a rub and we sell it over there.

I said, great.

Is it any good?

She goes, although the customers seem to like it.

I said, yeah.

And he.

She goes, I just.

I don't want to upset him.

And I said, well, I said, I understand.

I.

I am not a pushy salesman, but I'll make a suggestion.

I said, you should empty out this big cooler here and just get Coors Light.

And she looked at me.

I said, why have a hundred beers if one of them is going to be upset by the other 99, you know?

But the, the reality is.

And she still has a bought from me, and that was four years ago.

But the reality is, is most stores are going to say no.

I get that.

What keeps me going is most of the people that try to be in my business quit after a few stores say no.

I don't care about the stores that say no.

None of them are sending me any money.

I only care about the stores that say yes.

Because I look at them as those stores are going to sell my rub with my website on the bottom.

I have a question.

You have nine rubs now, and these stores that you started with one rub, then two rubs, when they go to buy, they aren't going to buy all nine.

It's too much shelf space.

So why do nine instead of doing four?

So that's a great question.

So, for example, Publix does six.

Okay.

Food Line does the other three.

So I have nine on the market.

Some of the Piggly Wigglies that I'm in do all nine.

Most of my local stores, my butcher shops, do.

I shouldn't say the stores that carry meat and seafood do all night, the smaller ones.

So you are moving product because that's a problem.

When you extend yourself so much, then it turns into expiration jeopardy.

You know what I mean?

And the freshness and everything else, because obviously you have your top sellers.

And I feel like at a point in time, you have to evaluate those nine, look at the sales, and then knock two off.

Yeah.

Yep.

And we're not there yet because the, the reason is, is that for five years we only had two.

And in the last two years, gradually we added the other seven.

So the, the.

The numbers aren't in yet enough to make those decisions.

But you're exactly right.

I have no.

What Are your.

What do you think at this point?

Are your top three or sellers?

Oh, I can tell you Onion Heat's number one.

Chicks dig it is number two.

Dina Dust is number three.

And then it's a cross up number four.

Then they kind of go, Beef Rub.

My son of a brisket does pretty well.

I like that name.

That's cute.

You know, we drink a lot of beer.

But you know what, Leanne, to your point, you're.

You're 100% right.

One of the mistakes I made early on was I used to have tiered pricing.

So if you ordered two cases, it was this.

If you ordered five or more, it was this.

And so on and so forth.

And I had a story, and I should have known better.

He ordered to get to the next pricing step so that he would pay a little less.

Yeah.

And I let him.

And I shouldn't have, because he didn't have the traffic.

I don't care if I was the only rub in the store.

He did not have the traffic to sell what I just sold.

All right?

What I should have done and what I ended up doing because he.

What happened was I came back because it was very close to where I was living in Maine, and I had come back to, literally to shop there.

I mean, I try to shop at stores that.

That carry us as opposed to those that don't.

And I said, hey, just coming in to buy some stuff.

Want to see how it's going?

And he goes, man, it's really a slow mover.

And I said, oh, why is that?

Because I don't know.

So, of course I said, well, let's see how it goes.

And I went about my shopping and I looked, and he had him not only on a bottom shelf, but, like, nobody bothered to draw him out to the edge.

So you're on the bottom shelf in the shadows, right?

So I moved them out to the.

To the edge.

And what he had done was, I.

I don't know the exact number, so I'm going to make it up.

But let's just say you had four cases of a flavor.

He put all four.

Like, he jammed four cases, 48 bottles of one flavor on the shelves.

Well, yeah, that's.

That's going to go slow, Right.

Food lion puts three bottles of each flavor in each store.

Okay.

And now they have a distributor going round and round to keep them full.

But it's that old thing.

Oh, there's only three bottles left on the shelf.

I better grab one.

But there's always only going to be three.

So have you, have you ever done any demos in stores with your product?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

How does that go?

Awful.

Years ago, I had.

I had written some books.

Nothing to do with cooking.

I don't.

I'll never write a cookbook because I.

I'm not a very good cook.

But I did a book signing, and everybody said, book signings are a waste of time.

Except one of the guys that came to my book signing ordered like a thousand copies of books for all his employees, a rich guy.

And people said, well, what are the odds of that happening?

I don't.

I don't know, but it happened to me.

So one of the supermarkets said, and again, this is when I was up in Maine, so it was a little easier.

I only had two flavors and.

And not as much business.

And he said, hey, would you mind kicking this thing off?

You know, he bought a bunch of cases.

I'd like to do a demo in the store.

And I said, sure, that'd be great.

He goes, we do our Demos Thursday at 6:00.

Would that be okay?

Said, yeah, that's perfectly fine.

So I said, you.

Do you need me to bring anything?

And he goes, nope, we're going to have everything here you need.

I said, okay.

So I get there at like 5:45.

I mean, how much prep does it take?

I had two flavors, two little bottles, right?

They didn't even have a table set up, right?

So the guy comes out, he goes, hey, man, I'm glad you're here.

This is Joe.

Joe was like, 12, Joe's going to help you for your demo, okay?

So he left.

Joe stood there, like, had no idea what to do.

So I was like, all right, Joe, get me a table.

I'm running around the store like I'm on one of those supermarket game shows, and I grab a box, a thing of sour cream, a thing of crackers, and I had to buy all this.

I had to go to checkout, Checkout, get all this stuff before they let me open it.

I had to pay retail for two of my own bottles of Rub, right?

Bang them up, take them over to the thing.

And I took all the rubs off the counter and stacked them in a pyramid on the table.

I took two bowls, half of the sour cream in each one.

I mixed the honey and heat up in one.

I mixed the dinner dust up in the other.

And I had what they call Wheat Thins.

I bought a box of Wheat Thins and I put balls of Wheat Thins next to everything.

The only thing I did that was smart was I Set myself up next to the meat department.

So anybody that picked up meat, I said, hey, you want to try this?

And they would come over and I said, do you like spicy or mud?

You know.

Oh, I like spicy.

Well, here, try this.

And they had the honey and heat in the sour cream, and they said, wow, it's really good.

I said.

And I'd look in their basket and I'd see what they bought.

I said, you ought to taste it on chicken.

It's amazing.

And they would buy a bottle, and I sold out.

I sold every bottle they had.

So you'd say, well, that's great.

And the next day, the guy called up, he goes, well, you might as well set me up with another order.

Brought him back another order.

You'd think he'd learn.

Put them all down on the bottom shelf, back in the corner, lifted.

Everyone out there called me two weeks later and goes, I don't understand.

They're just not moving.

We got to take a break.

We're way over on time, but this is good stuff.

We'll be back here on the Nation in just a couple minutes.

Stay with us.

Hey, everybody, it's jt.

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And you can thank me for that later.

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You won't regret it.

Hey, everybody, J.T.

here.

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Hammerstahl combines German steel with beautiful and functioning designs.

They're part of the Heritage Steel group, which also does their pots and pans.

So go to heritagesteel us.

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If you're really into cooking, I think you're really going to like them.

Hey, welcome back to the Nation.

I'm JT along with the Wonder Bread woman.

That's a story we'll hear another day, but I'm sure it's good.

And we've got John Furman from Bub and Mother Rub here.

Interesting.

You were.

You were talking about that we.

This is a.

Probably one of the shorter segments before we end the show here and we will do after hours, but I want to hear about your.

Your veterans, the.

What you're doing with veterans.

John, wow.

You know, since the first time you and I talked, we've done more with veterans than I thought.

We, just before I left Maine, we did one last big run up in Maine.

And you know, again, we're not a, we're not a big company, but we were.

There's a company company, there's an organization in Maine called the Maine Veterans Project.

And amazing guy Sean Gooden started it by himself and his goal was to help raise awareness for veteran suicide.

22 veterans a day are killing themselves.

So I got involved like right away, like the, the second I had my first store.

And I was like, Sean, what can we do?

What can we do?

And I mean, I did events that, you know, they, he, he, he's much younger than I, so he had a tattoo event where he was raising money.

The tattoo parlor in a big gymnasium that set themselves up.

They were doing tattoos and I'm standing there selling barbecue rub.

Anyway, long story short, we had a final run and we were able to cut down the check for $2500, which they were able to use for heating oil in Maine because Maine is mostly an oil furnace kind of situation for veterans that couldn't afford heat.

I came down here and you know, I, I love staying local and, and we found a place literally minutes from my house called the Big Red Barn.

And it's a, it's a really special veteran facility where if a veteran enrolls, I guess is the best way to say it, he's got to stay or she has got to stay there for seven days, cannot leave.

And it's, it's just to evaluate what they need.

Right.

And they have everything from equine therapy.

They, they have, it's probably 50 acres.

They have horses, they, they teach farm to table gardening, cooking.

That's what their chef is for.

That's where we donated the smoker and we raised money along with Pat Ford from Bone Sucking Sauce.

Great organization.

And anytime I can do anything to help them.

You know, now that we're getting a little bit bigger, we're starting to look at national as well as we're never going to leave the local veteran, you know, but you know, one of my dreams is to be able to be big enough where I'm on TV with those giant checks, handing it to somebody, you know, like tunnel the towers or something.

That's a very nice goal.

Yes, it is.

You know, so that's, that's an integral part, you know, and, and again, I said we started that from the, from the very beginning because even when I was a kid, my dad used to say, used to say this thing all the Time.

I hated him for it.

If you can't manage a dime, you'll never manage a dollar.

And, you know, just the fact that I remember that and I, and when I started the company, it, it almost came into my head immediately.

And I thought, okay, I got to manage my books.

But I realized that's how you get involved in charities.

You know, most, most charities survive on major donations, but thrive from a dollar to five to ten to twenty dollars.

And I thought, okay, if I could build my foundation there to where when I'm not making any money, I'm still putting a little aside.

It does two things mentally.

It tells you you're never broke.

If you can donate money, you're never broke.

So that was part of it.

But the other part was you get used to that percentage.

You know, one for me, one for them, one for me, one.

And, and, you know, as you grow, it gets bigger, you know, and now we look at, we look at other things, you know, what, what can we do other ways?

And that's, that's kind of where my, my brother Leanne pointed him out.

He looks so much like me real quick.

My, my brother when we were growing up.

All of my.

He's my youngest brother, so there's a five year difference.

And all my friends when we were teenagers called him the grump because he never said anything.

He just wouldn't grunt.

And then he started playing football, so his grunt got deeper.

And I was in the Navy.

I came home and he would just grunt.

And all my friends were like, what is with him?

Anyway, he went to college, played football in college, grunted all the way through.

And when he graduated, he became a teacher.

Even my father went, what?

He's.

What, how is he going to teach?

He doesn't talk, you know, and he taught for 30, gosh, 35 years.

And the last 10 years, he created a program.

He was in Maryland, in a real agricultural section of Maryland.

And a lot of kids were leaving school, weren't bad kids, weren't even getting bad grades.

They had to go help out at the farm for economic reasons, because these are small local farms and there's a lot of financial.

So anyway, he set up a program where he would go out to all these employers and go, look, I can get you amazing kids that will do great, great work for you.

I just need you to be flexible on the schedule so that maybe they can work for you in the morning and come to class in the afternoon.

And, you know, he told me about it and I was like, well, that's.

That's a, that's a pretty good deal.

Good for you.

And I remember at his funeral, like, I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of these young people coming in, cops, firefighters, EMTs, plumbers, carpenters, all saying the same thing.

He kept me in school.

So, you know, that was a couple years ago.

And, and you know, it kind of not, I'm not gnawed at me, but, you know, I thought, what can I do to, to keep that going?

I mean, the department is still going into school, but I mean, really launch this.

So that's, that's when we came up with Uncle Grumpies.

Right?

That's what my kids called him when they were growing up because he really played it up.

You know, they, he would like not give him a hug.

He would scowl and then laugh, you know, and especially my daughter, she was like, come on, Uncle Grumpy, you need a hug.

And he, you know, no, I don't get away.

And it was just this long running joke.

So a friend of mine said, hey, I used to buy this rub.

And I don't remember what it was, but the guy died and I got the recipe.

But I, you know, I'm an electrician.

So he gave me the recipe, we put it together and Uncle Grumpy's grub rub.

And it just says get some on everything, right?

And so what we did was, if you notice this is a lot.

You can't.

There you go.

Yeah, if you hold this.

Yeah, it's a lot.

This is the big, big bottles.

And so what we're doing is we kind of are doing it on Kickstarter to keep it out of our.

It's not going in stores.

We're only going to make 2500 of these bottles.

All right?

And we're just going to sell them.

We're.

We got them numbered, you know, this is number three out of 2500.

And the money is going to go to create a scholarship in his name so that kids that don't want to go to college or do want to go to college, but just need a little lift, it'll be his job.

Yeah, that's great.

Nice job.

Okay, John, how can people find out more, especially people like out here in the west and the mid States, about all your rubs and your websites or social media.

What have you got there?

Call me collect.

No.

They even do that anymore.

I don't know.

You know?

Yeah, I don't.

I used to do it all the time when I was in the Navy because I never had any change.

But anyway, you can you know, bubbandmothers.com www.bobandmothers.com is is probably the easiest way because they can see the rubs.

If they have questions, there's a contact sheet that they can get in touch with me.

The Kickstarter one's a little bit harder.

You have to go on Kickstarter and look for bub and mothers.

You know, it's a search.

But, you know, the neat thing with Kickstarter is we have several different levels.

You know, they can just donate a couple of dollars.

They can buy a bottle.

They can buy a bottle with a T shirt or buy a bottle with all our other flight.

There's a million things that they can do.

It's.

It's.

It's worth their while to see that.

It's worth our while if they do.

Because, you know, our goal is we want to.

We want to start this thing off with a $25,000 kickoff donation.

And that's.

That's what the 2500 bottles signifies.

You know, $10 from every bottle is going to go.

Excellent.

We got to get out of here.

We're over again, as usual.

But this is going to make a hell of a good podcast, I can tell you that.

John, Bub and mother's rubs.

John's going to stick around for after hours, so we'll continue talking about this.

But thank you, my friend, for being there and wonder bread lady.

Thank you.

You're gonna have to tell that story now.

You know, there's not much to it.

But I'll tell it at a later date.

At a later date.

All right, we're gonna get out of here.

Thanks for listening.

Remember our motto here.

Go out, have fun, cook some good food, and we don't forget to turn it, don't burn it.

We'll see you next week.

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