Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve and Jason Blount.
Steve and Jason, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
For the last 20 years, we have been cooking BBQ. Either in catering, charity events, or competition. It has been a dream of ours to open a brick-and-mortar store for many years. The opportunity presented itself this past summer and we jumped on it. We have leased a standalone restaurant in Newark, TX and are primed to bring our style of Texas-inspired BBQ to the Northwest Fort Worth area.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been relatively smooth so far. We have been extremely successful in competition, had the opportunity to serve others and do many charity events as well as cater for many different types of events and groups small and large. The smiles are all the same. As we have been renovating our restaurant space, the challenges have crept up on us. We have been doing all the work ourselves and the challenges have come in form of not knowing what we didn’t know and not seeing or understanding some of the things we needed to know and understand in order to be a good partner in a small town that is starting to experience rapid growth.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Steve Blount
Steve has been involved in restaurants and foodservice all his adult life. Even if this wasn’t his main source of income, he worked in his off hours doing what he loves doing. Cooking and making people happy. Steve moved from Texas to Western New York in 1992 where he was able to bring Texas BBQ to people who had no idea about it. He worked catering and vending events, did competitions and charity events. When he moved back to Texas in 2016, he had the opportunity to work at 407BBQ. at that time, 407BBQ was little more than a food trailer. He was able to help grow that business through two brick-and-mortar locations while in the process winning many great awards including Best BBQ in DFW in 2019 and 2021. 407BBQ has also been on the Texas Monthly Top 100 list twice. Steve specializes in using Texas BBQ techniques and ingredients and fusing them with other foods that you don’t normally associate with BBQ. He is strong in traditional Texas BBQ and likes to be playful with dishes you might not consider BBQ.
Jason Blount
Jason has worked for Interstate Batteries (Automotive Replacement Batteries) for the past 25 years. In that time, he grew to love the art of BBQ as a hobby. He did his first competition 20 years where he took First Place in brisket and it was off to the races after that. He had the opportunity to participate in many charity events with equally passionate BBQ cooks, including his brother Steve, to serve communities in need. He quickly saw that profession as where he wanted to end up. in 2020, Covid changed the landscape of the industry he was in, providing him with the opportunity to team his brother and launch LocalCraft BBQ.
How do you define success?
Our definition of success lies in our ability to answer these questions on a daily basis: -Did you finish your day better than you started?
-Were you able to help improve the life of anyone around you?
-Were you able to provide for your family?
-At the end of the day, do you consider yourself happy?
If we can answer yes to most or all of these questions on a daily basis, we consider ourselves successful.
We will define the success in our business as being able put out a high-quality product on a very consistent basis, helping our staff to learn and grow and providing them opportunities for that growth, and ultimately making sure everyone that comes through our doors has a great experience and leaves here happy!
Contact Info:
- Email: hey@localcraftbbq.com
- Website: www.localcraftbbq.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/localcraftbbq
- Facebook: facebook.com/localcraftbbq
- Twitter: twitter.com/localcraftbbq
Image Credits:
Steve Blount
Jason Blount
