It hits you as soon as your car door swings open in the parking lot. The dense, pungent smell from the parking lot drew me to the door like a cartoon character floating towards a freshly baked apple pie in the neighbor’s window sill. Based on the strength of the smoky, barbecue smell, you would never guess that T. Bacon’s BBQ was located within the same building as a gas station and a casino, as the usual scent of gasoline and secondhand smoke from gamblers was absent.
Contrasting, yet equally surprising, is the fact that some of the best barbecue in town can be found tucked away in the corner of a building that is known by many as simply an Oneida One Stop and Casino. But that perception is quickly changing, as T. Bacon’s BBQ is quickly becoming a well-known and hot commodity amongst BBQ fans in the Green Bay area.
Yet, despite its early success following its opening on April 19 of this year, the story of T. Bacon’s BBQ, founded by Tom Bacon and owned by his fiancé, Jennifer Van Stechelman, is not one of overnight success. Bacon is a lifetime restaurant worker who has done virtually every job in the industry. He decided in 2010 to take his experience further, as he went through the Culinary Arts program at Fox Valley Technical College, a highly regarded program in Wisconsin. It’s there that he cultivated his love for barbecue.
“They opened a new elective class called 'Grilling, Smoking and Barbecuing,' and I was already messing around in the backyard, smoking and stuff like that,” said Bacon, “They taught you competition barbecue and regular barbecue, the formulas for sauces and brines.”
After progressing through the class, Bacon, along with other students, was able to participate in an official Kansas City Barbecue Society competition. The KCBS is the largest competitive barbecue organization in the world, with more than 15,000 members. Despite his team consisting of only students in their first competition, Bacon’s recipe for his rub and Sweet Glaze sauce placed 9th out of 50 teams.
“I kept making the sauce, and eventually started to sell a lot of barbecue, and everyone says ‘you gotta market that sauce, you gotta put that sauce on the market.’”
So Bacon did just that. His sauce and rub venture grew to a variety of four different sauces and three different dry rubs. After beginning to market the original sauces created by Bacon, he and Van Stechelman began working on catering. During their catering duration, they still had restaurant ambitions.
“Our plan was to open a restaurant a couple years back, but this is like our seventh location we looked at. Either something would happen with the funding or it’s over budget or something. We sort of gave up, and then this one fell in our laps. Oneida is treating us really good, and we couldn’t really resist.”
T. Bacon’s BBQ has seen some early success in its infancy, but Bacon plans to continue to keep things fresh, particularly with the menu. He has an ever-growing list of potential menu items and specials stashed away for possible future use. The list is made up of daily concoctions by either him or his staff. Bacon’s daily lunch when he’s in the restaurant is a creation by one of his staff members. If it works, it gets added to the list.
The Triple Pig Sandwich was my first love, and it’s an original member of the concoction-turned-special list. It is a pulled pork, ham, and bacon sandwich on a high quality bun (key element, as it kept my mountain of a sandwich intact) with a surprise mini-helping of pickles hidden between the three layers of meat and the bottom bun. Though the roots of T. Bacon’s BBQ resides in his sauces, I found the meat to be plenty fine without any. That’s no accident.
“That’s how we do everything here at T. Bacon’s BBQ. We serve everything naked, with nothing on it, and then we have the sauces on the table. Some people don’t even touch the sauces. Our barbecue has a lot of love put into it.”
The progression of T. Bacon’s BBQ may not be done yet. From competition recipe, all the way to full service restaurant, there’s more to come for Bacon and Van Stechelman.
“We have some plans and goals, maybe in the next five years, to open another one somewhere. Oneida already wants us to do another location.” Based on the upward trend since its inception, some further growth for T. Bacon’s BBQ would be a safe bet.
