Christie Vanover is not only a champion pitmaster. She has also built and managed brand identities for companies for around 30 years. In this week’s BBQ Tips Podcast, she shares her three golden rules for building a successful barbecue brand.
Today, we are going to talk about a different side of your barbecue game. I’m not talking about how well you do in competitions, how well you cook your meat. Today I want to talk to you about your team, about your brand.
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For those of you who don’t know, I actually have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in public relations and strategic communications. And for more than 20 years, I’ve been managing brands and social media and marketing for the government and for private industry.
So when I decided to start Girls Can Grill, the whole branding side of things came naturally for me because that’s what I’ve been doing for my whole career.
But I realized that a lot of people don’t have that same skillset, and that’s what I’m going to talk to you guys about today.
Step 1: Choosing a name
So there are some really important factors when you’re deciding your brand. I know with a lot of people, barbecue is a hobby and you’re like, hey, I love to barbecue. I’m going to pick a really cool, fun name and let’s just go out and compete on the circuit and have fun with it.
And that’s great. And if you think that you’re going to be an amateur barbecuer, and that’s what your goal is to just do this every now and then on weekends, then you may not need to listen to this podcast.
But if you think that there’s a slight chance that you might have your own rub, your own sauce, you maybe want to be on TV someday. If you want to take your barbecue game to the next level, you definitely need to listen to this podcast.
Here’s why creating your brand and picking the right team name is so important.
One of the first things you’re probably going to do is to create a social media profile, whether that’s on Facebook or Instagram. Those are usually the first two places that people start.
Well, if you pick a team name and you’re like, this is a cool name, but then you realize that somebody else has it on social media, then you’re a little bit of a step behind because you don’t want to be confused with that other brand that’s out there, that other team that’s out there.
Sometimes people will use dots or underscores or lots of underscores to kind of differentiate themselves, but that’s really hard for somebody else to find you if they have to figure out how many underscores or dots to include in your name.
It’s so much easier if you have a simple name. Like girls can grill. It’s also really important that you can get the exact same handle on every social media platform.
You don’t want to be @girlscangrill on Facebook and then @girls_can_grill on Instagram. It just leads to a lot of confusion for the people who want to find you want to follow, you want to see what you’re up to.
Social and website availability tools
There’s one really important step that I recommend you take before you lock in your team name or your brand. And that’s to go to 1 or 2 websites, either namecheckr.com or brandsnag.com.
When you go to these sites, you can type in whatever brand name you want, whatever team name you want, and do a search.
That search will come back and let you know if those social media handles are available for that phrase and on what platforms they may be available.
So maybe it’s available for Facebook, but not Twitter. Or maybe your name is so long that it won’t actually fit into Twitter, because that’s limited to how many characters you can have.
You can kind of look and see. in addition to that, I recommend going to a URL hosting service like GoDaddy.com, and also typing in the name to see if that’s available.
If you want to have a truly successful brand in the future, you need to own the dot com and you need to own all of the socials.
So before you lock in that name, no matter how cool it is, make sure you can get girlscangrill.com, @GirlsCanGrill or whatever your team name is on every single platform that you possibly can. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, threads, Reddit, you name it.
There are so many social platforms out there, but at least get the big ones. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Those are the big ones where you have potential to really reach a wide audience, as well as to eventually profit and make some money on bonuses or monetization.
Check the trademark
There’s one more step I want you to take before you go ahead and lock down all those socials and buy that URL. I want you to also go to the trademark office. That’s through the US government.
Put in your brand name or your team name and see if somebody has already trademarked it. If they have, you probably want to choose something else.
The reason for that is, is that if you ever go down the line of wanting to create spices or rubs, you’re going to need to trademark, the brand name that goes on the bottles. Well, if you’ve built this really cool brand behind this team name that you picked, but somebody else has it trademarked that’s not going to work for you.
I’ll give you an example. My buddy Richard Fergola, he’s been Fergolicious Barbecue forever. Everybody knows him as Fergolicious Barbecue. He has Fergolicious Barbecue, all the socials, the websites, the trailers, the brand, the logo, everything. But the trademark office, at least originally.
I don’t know how things are going for him now, but they denied his request to be Fergolicious Barbecue because of Fergie from Black Eyed Peas. Completely different spaces. Usually you would think, okay, Fergolicious Barbecue is not the same as Fergolicious from Black Eyed Peas, but the trademark office at that time decided that it was a conflict and they wouldn’t give him the trademark.
So all that work he’s done building a brand, he’s had to work a little bit on rebranding things. You definitely should talk to a lot of people, learn from what they’ve experienced and think about that when you’re building your team name.
Again, go to the trademark office. If it hasn’t been registered, then you should be pretty safe. And then go ahead and go to GoDaddy or wherever you want to buy your URL. Lock in that dot com.
Create a business Gmail account
I also recommend maybe setting up a Gmail account with your URL, so whatever team name barbecue at gmail.com, and then you can use that Gmail account to register for all of your social media channels.
You can also use your personal email to register for all your social media channels, but sometimes I just find it easier to have a separate kind of business account team account.
That way, if you want to give your email to somebody, you’re not giving them your personal email. You can give them your team email just to make things a little bit cleaner and more professional.
So you’ve locked in your URL. You now have mybarbecueteam.com. You have @mybarbecueteam on all of your socials; you are good to go.
It doesn’t mean you have to publish a website right away. It doesn’t mean that you have to start posting on social media right away, but you’ve at least locked it in. I also recommend buying one more URL and that’s your name for me christievanover.com. Whatever your name is, you know, obviously if it’s John Smith, that’s going to be a little bit hard to find that dot com.
But if your name is unique, I recommend buying that dotcom as well. The reason for that is someday you may be famous. You may be Tuffy Stone, you may be Chris Lilley. If somebody else gets your name dot com, then you’re never going to get it back or you’re going to have to pay somebody, you know, thousands of dollars because they’re squatting on it.
So it only costs like, you know, like 20 bucks a year to keep your domain.
I just recommend securing that if you’ve got the funds. So get mybarbecueteam.com and yourname.com locking all those social media channels and you’re good to go.
Now I know you’re probably asking yourself: “Okay, I have mybarbecueteam.com. I don’t know how to build a website. What am I supposed to do with a website?”
Honestly, it doesn’t matter at this point. You just need to own the domain so that once you do become a little bit more popular, somebody else doesn’t buy it and squat on it, and then you have to buy it from them.
So buy it now while it’s cheap. Before you build this ginormous brand that I know you’re going to create.
The simple thing you can do on your.com is just create some links that go to your social media channels, if that’s where you think you’re going to have some content. If people go to mybarbecueteam.com, just have a just a plain page there that says, you know, here’s my Facebook link, here’s my Instagram link. Whatever social media channels you want, you don’t have to build it beyond that.
When you’re ready to take it to the next level, you can take some WordPress classes, you can hire somebody, or sometimes places like GoDaddy will help build it out for you too.
Step 2: Creating an identity
You’ve locked in your social media channels. You’ve got your name, you’ve got your URL. You do need to be sure to check with KCBS to make sure nobody else has that, and then register your team name if you plan to be a KCBS competitor.
But now it comes down to building your brand. Like anybody can come up with a name and register all that stuff and make it happen. But the way to make yourself stand out is to become a brand, to become a force that when people see you coming, they’re like, oh, that’s My Barbecue Team. Okay, I know who that is.
There are three components that really come down to branding. That’s going to be your logo, your colors and your fonts.
Creating a logo
So when it comes to your logo, you may not be a graphic designer. And that’s okay. There are a lot of platforms out there that can help you.
You can hire somebody through Fiverr. You can just pay them, you know, a small amount of money, give them some concepts, give them some colors, and they’ll design a logo for you.
There are people out there that do those like cartoony type logos of pigs and cows and stuff. You know, you’re welcome to go that direction if that’s the style you want.
Or there’s a platform called Canva.com. You can go on there and you can actually type in barbecue logo, and it’ll give you a bunch of samples of barbecue logos that you can edit. You can change the colors, you can change the fonts, you can add graphics to it if you want to add tongs or fire or something.
And it’s a pretty plug-and-play, drag-and-drop type of platform. It’s not that difficult to use as long as your computer savvy. But if you’re not computer savvy and you want to hire somebody again, check out Fiverr online locations or even consider going to your local university or high school and seeing if there’s somebody there who’s working on graphic design who could maybe help you out.
Choosing brand colors
When you do design your logo, you’re probably going to want it in color and in black and white. So this is where you need to figure out your colors. You know, barbecue red, black gold. Those are pretty common colors in barbecue. Nothing wrong with those.
But if there’s a color that’s your favorite or something that you think would really pop or stand out that you want to be different, then go that direction.
Obviously my favorite color is orange. My secondary favorite color is bluish teal, so those are my colors. I’ve got some extra accent colors like black whites and grays, a softer orange, a softer teal, etc. but you want to really have some sort of consistency.
So figure out what your primary colors should be for you, that matches your style, kind of your vision, what you like and go for it.
It could be hot pink, it could be fluorescent green, it could be purple, whatever you want. But just pick it and stick to it because that’s going to be your brand identity.
Choosing your fonts
Then once you lock in that color, you can provide that to whoever’s designing your logo, and they can work that into your logo. You also need to think about your fonts.
So your font is going to be the typeface. There are two kind of main types of typefaces. Serif and sans serif.
Serif is the kind like Times New Roman font that has the little squiggles or lines at the top of the letters. So those are called serifs. So if you think of like the letter T, it’s not just a solid T, it’s got those little, little hooks or little edges on the bottom that kind of give it a little bit of flair. It’s more like what a typewriter would type like.
Sans serif is more like a Helvetica or Ariel font, where it’s just pretty blocky. So decide for yourself which type of style you like. Personally, in the barbecue space, I like sans serif fonts because I feel like they’re more bold and a little bit masculine, and that’s kind of seems to be what barbecue is like, so I like that type of font.
Then from there, you decide your font weight, whether you like it to be heavy, which is more like a thick, blocky kind, or whether you like to be narrow if you want to go with cursive or handwritten fonts. Again, it’s your choice.
You can go to Google Fonts to look at fonts. You can go to Adobe Fonts, or if you use Canva.com, you can go on there and they have a huge library of fonts that you can look at and choose.
Type your team name in looking at all the different fonts and just see which ones stand out to you. I recommend narrowing it down to like 3 to 5 fonts with your barbecue team name and showing it to your friends and family, and kind of getting their focus group perspective of what do they think? Which one do they like the best?
Combining it all together
Then once you have that font and you have that color again, incorporate that into your logo, because it’s really important with brand identity that everything matches.
So you want your logo to be the same font that you’re going to use for other graphics that you may have for your brand someday, whether it be spice bottles, sauce bottles, or things that just identify you as a barbecue team.
Once you’ve locked in your brand identity, I recommend creating a word document that just kind of identifies your brand. You want to include what your fonts are, and you want to include what your colors are. When it comes to colors, I recommend storing the hex codes. That is an identifier that has the pound sign and then six digits.
They are a mix of numbers and letters usually. You can also have the RGB and CMYK, which are different versions. Some are for screen, some are for printing. But primarily if you get that hex code, then anybody that’s doing any graphics for you, they can figure out your colors exactly.
So put all that on a one pager in a word document so that when you need the information, it’s easy for you to go back to.
Step 3: Show off your brand
All right. Your brand is on lock. You’ve got your team name secured. You’ve got your brand identity. Now it’s time to show the world who you are. You can start simply by just getting a banner for your cook site.
Banners
I use vistaprint.com for my banners. You can go there and you can use their templates and platforms to design your own. You can also use that Canva website to design a banner, or you can use Photoshop or Illustrator if you’re really advanced and you can use those software programs and then you can upload it.
If you use the Vistaprint site, all you have to do is upload that logo, use your font to type any information that you want. You can put your social media icons so people know what your social media platforms are, and then use your team colors and voila. They’ll print it, they’ll ship it to you, and you can hang it up at your cook site. So people start to see, oh, that’s that barbecue team.
Stickers
The next inexpensive thing you can do is buy some stickers. Everybody loves a sticker swap. Just make sure that you use a company that has good weather-resistant stickers. I’ve been using Sticker Mule for years. They run awesome sales all the time, like 50 stickers for $9. Like a really, really good deal. And their stickers last.
I stick them on my trailer. They don’t fade in the sun. They don’t come off in the rain; they just make really good stickers. So that’s who I use.
Grill logo plates
Another way that you can brand your cook site is if your grills come with logo plates, like this one right here. That was on my Oklahoma Joe Bronco Pro. Those are on usually the front of drum smokers or other smokers, and you can add stickers or magnets to those. I get my magnets through Vistaprint also, and then they’ll just stick right there on the logo plate.
So when people walk by your cook site, they know those are your drums and you’re really starting to build your brand identity.
Apparel
You should also consider apparel, whether it’s t shirts, whether it’s like this where I have these patches that I sew on to the shirts that I get from Amazon. You know, I’ve got hats, whatever. There are so many different apparel companies. I’m sure anywhere where you live, think about the places where, you know, like the baseball teams, the kids baseball teams and football teams go to get their embroidery done for their jerseys.
Check out one of those stores. Sometimes they’ll do smaller quantities like 1 or 2, but sometimes they may also require you to get like 12 shirts or something, which is okay because you want more than one shirt, because you’re at a cook site Friday and Saturday and driving home Sunday, and you may have more than one person on your team.
So getting a little bit larger quantities is okay. You just don’t want to have to find a website that makes you buy 100 because, you know, that’s a lot. Unless you’re going to start selling them.
If you do buy apparel, I recommend sticking to your brand guidelines. Buy clothes or hats that are in your brand colors. If your colors are orange and black, buy orange and black apparel. Don’t necessarily go out and get hot pink apparel unless you’ve really, really built your brand so much that it doesn’t matter anymore. But really, if you’re building that foundation, stick to those brand colors, because part of being a brand is the whole package.
Tents and Trailers
Once you really secured your brand and you’re really advancing on the barbecue circuit, and you want to take this even further and make it even more professional, you can start getting things like a branded tent, a branded trailer.
You know, you’re going to take those logos that you developed early on and those same fonts, same colors, and you’re going to just incorporate that into everything that’s associated to your brand and your barbecue team.
Step 4: Make it a business
And eventually at some point, if this becomes more than a hobby and your team grows and your brand really starts to grow, I recommend starting a business. I used Legal Zoom, it was really easy.
You can go on there and you can create a sole proprietorship or an LLC. It pretty much walks you through the process and it will do all the paperwork and help you with everything based on the laws in your state.
The advantages of becoming a business is that then all of these expenses related to your apparel, your competition, supplies, that brand new trailer you want, the competition meat, your website domain.
All of that becomes an expense that can be written off towards your business and then you’ll have revenue, hopefully, from all of those prize winnings that you get and potentially sponsors that you’ll eventually get. And so all of that will count as revenue on your taxes, as income, but then your expenses will count as expenses on your tax return, and then they can kind of offset each other.
I’m definitely not an accountant. I use TurboTax to help me with all of that stuff, just to make sure everything’s square. But it really does help when you can write off some of those expenses to offset the income that I get from being a barbecue professional.
So that’s it. I know that’s a lot right now. Like I said, you may be a brand new barbecue team and you’re thinking, man, I just love to cook meat in a parking lot. I never dream I’m going to have a big business, but you never know. Someday it just may bite you so much with that passion of barbecue that you’re going to take it to the next level.
I had no idea that Girls Can Grill would be what it is today. When I started it in 2015. I mean, I had hopes and with my branding and marketing background, I had drive and determination to get it there. I just never dreamed that I would get it there as soon as I have, and that I have built such a brand.
But so much of that is possible because I follow these golden rules that I’m sharing with you guys.
So just a quick recap before you pick your team name. Lock in all those socials. Lock in the website. Make sure it’s not trademarked. Register with KCBS and then go ahead and design your branding kit, your logo, your colors and your fonts.
And then from there, just build out that brand. Now, if you already have a brand, if you already have a team name that’s well-established, it doesn’t mean you can’t do all this as well. You have two options. Obviously, you can kind of rebrand yourself and maybe come up with a new brand if you need to, but if you’ve really already built yourself out, then still go through the same process.
Go to those two websites namecheckr and Brandsnag. And if you haven’t already got all the social channels associated with your team name, go ahead and lock those in. If you haven’t gotten the website, go ahead and lock that in and then build out your brand colors and go from there.
