Super Smokers BBQ is a world-class barbecue competition team, a catering company, and a restaurant business. That theme hasn’t changed from the beginning, though almost everything else has.

The guys who started Super Smokers BBQ all love barbecue. Terry Black and Skip Steele met in college. In 1987, they entered their first Memphis In May-sanctioned barbecue contest, held in Little Rock. It was not an auspicious beginning – the team finished 13th out of 14 teams. Two years later, the team’s Championship Sauce won in that same competition, and it won again the following year, too, beating three world champions each time.

In 1995, Terry started a catering business with Ron Skinner. They took turns filling orders, cooking in their backyards. A year later, they opened the first Super Smokers BBQ restaurant, selling barbecue that was quite different from the typical Midwestern style. At Super Smokers BBQ, a dry rub made from a combination of spices, is applied to the meat, which is then rotisserie-smoked over an apple wood fire. In 1997, Skip joined Terry and Ron in the business when the second location was opened in O' Fallon, Illinois.

Over the years, the Super Smokers BBQ Competition Team has won plenty of barbecue contests, including the annual Memphis In May World Barbecue Championship. Nicknamed "The Super Bowl of Swine," this contest is the largest pork barbecue event of its kind. More than 240 teams from all over the world participate.

In nine of twelve years competing at Memphis In May, the team from Super Smokers BBQ has been in the Top Ten! In 2000, the team won First Place in Whole Hog. That same top-quality consistency that repeatedly has won competitions also characterizes the restaurants, which have won plenty of customers. Today, there are five Super Smokers BBQ restaurants, in addition to satellite outlets in two local Dierbergs grocery stores in the metropolitan St. Louis area. Learning to meet the high quality standards it takes to win at the World Barbecue Championships definitely has influenced how they conduct business. “Competing on the Memphis In May circuit has pushed us to develop our best dry rubs, barbecue sauces and marinades,” says Terry. “Today, the combination of our recipes with apple wood smoke and a rotisserie smoker produces melt-in-your-mouth barbecue.”Skip adds: “We treat every day in our operations as a barbecue contest, whether it’s a catered event or a table in one of our stores. Every customer is a judge, and we want perfect scores from every person who walks through our doors.”

Wondering what happened to the catering business?
It’s thriving. Super Smokers BBQ feeds World Championship Barbecue to fans of the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals, workers at every major corporation in town and thousands of families. They have even catered for the White House. Read all about it on the “Catering” page. Other happy customers include music stars Jimmy Buffet, Tom Petty, Matchbox 20, Randy Travis, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

That’s the story. It all started with three guys who love barbecue – and who consider themselves lucky enough to live in a country where they can barbecue every day for a living!

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