Meat Masters: Inside the Rise of Wilson Barbecue

BLAIR: I was born in Whanganui. I lived there for 18 years until it was time to go to university – I’d obviously seen some TV shows and thought I wanted to be a lawyer. After the first year, I realised I was definitely wrong, so I carried on doing the business part and dropped the law. While I was doing that, I started working at McDonald’s. The brutal shifts from six in the morning until two in the afternoon, trying to make them fit around my classes. 

But I slowly started to love it. I kept moving up, taking on more and more. I found myself running a whole restaurant for them, then another, then another – suddenly, it was five. 

CASEY: Long story short, his three-year degree ended up taking ten years to complete [laughs]. 

BLAIR: I was busy!

CASEY: I also worked at McDonalds – between the two of us, I think we worked there for a combined total of 18 years [laughs]. I started when I was 14 in Masterton. After school I moved to Wellington for uni and transferred to one of their stores there – that’s where the two of us met. Yup, we found love at McDonalds! 

BLAIR: Throughout my time at McDonald's, I built up a huge amount of practical experience, then I went off to run Mitre10 Mega. That was where things really started – and I started collecting barbecues. 

Up until that point, like most people, I just had the classic New Zealand gas grill barbecue – you know, I’d chuck the chops and sausages on, cook it ‘til it’s burnt, cover it in tomato sauce. 

Then the Weber rep came into the store one day and cooked a roll of pork loin – it had the most amazing crackling and smoky flavour. That was it. After that, we ended up with about seven barbecues.

CASEY: We had always wanted our own business, just a little weekend side hustle. So one day, we just decided to go for it – we registered a business and bought a food truck.
We quickly realised that the little home barbecues we had weren’t going to be enough, so the next step was to buy a two-tonne smoker. It all took off from there. 

It was January 2018 that we actually opened for the first time. We were both working full-time jobs at that point, of course, so we’d be doing a full 40 or so hours, five days a week, and then we’d spend all of our nights preparing for the weekend. 

By August I had left my day job, and just a few months after that, we found out I was pregnant. It’s safe to say everything was pretty full-on!

BLAIR: [Laughs] That’s right. When we entered in 2018, we didn’t have any expectations whatsoever – we just thought, why not? We partnered with the guys at Tuatara Third Eye and did a beef short rib with maple candy bacon and boozy cheese sauce. I remember saying to Casey, “Imagine if we won it”, and she laughed and was like, “You’re an idiot.” Then we did. We won.

CASEY: Blair is the big-picture dreamer. He’s the most optimistic person you'll ever meet. Truthfully, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into or how big WOAP would be – but it worked out better than we could have imagined. 

BLAIR: I remember we had just hired this one guy, Reade, to help us through the festival period. It was his first day, and we were telling him how it would be really chill. Usually, when friends come to help us, it’s just about having an extra pair of hands on deck – no big deal. 

Then it went absolutely crazy. Sometimes Reade would be heading home and people would see his Wilson Barbecue t-shirt and start asking, “Is there still any left? How much food do you guys have available tomorrow?”

We were smoking 24/7 to be able to keep up with demand. It got to the point where Casey, myself as well as our friends and family would all be driving back and forth between the truck and the barbecue – because we never had enough meat for the whole day. 

CASEY: Poor guy [laughs]. We kept saying to him, “It will calm down, I’m sure! This never happens!” We’ve come a long way since then! For WOAP this year we’re back with our ‘Lasagn-ahhh’ Brisket Lasagne Toppa at our Willis Lane venue, and on August 31st, we’re attempting to break the world record for the most burgers sold in a day over at our Johnsonville venue. The current record is 6,212!

BLAIR: We take the best quality meat we can find and then smoke it for up to 12 hours. We always use mānuka to give it a New Zealand touch – then it’s all done in the traditional American style, in an offset smoker, no electrics or open cabinets. Just yesterday, our Pitmaster Kyle spent 13 hours smoking briskets. It’s all done the long way.

CASEY: Each piece of brisket is treated as its own thing, too. It’s not like we stick something in the oven, walk away for a set number of hours and then it’s done. They’re all cooked in their own time. Sometimes it will take four, sometimes six, sometimes more. 

BLAIR: In the beginning, there were nights when one of us arrived at two or six o’clock in the morning, just babysitting one brisket until it was done. 

CASEY:  – literally sitting there watching, waiting for it to cook so you could go to bed!

BLAIR: We would set the alarm for every 20 minutes so you could sneak in a 15-minute nap, chuck some wood on the barbecue, check the meat, etc. Sometimes you’d finish at five or six in the morning, have a shower and go right back to work. I know it sounds terrible, but we loved it [laughs]. Now we’ve got an awesome team all working together and helping us out, so the days of it just being me and Casey are done!

BLAIR: It’s all about the meat. That’s our hashtag [laughs], and that’s the heart of it.

CASEY: Yeah, we just because obsessed with it, with smoked meat. 

BLAIR: Ever since we tasted that pork out of the Weber. It was just so good – best meat I’d ever eaten. We just started learning from there and slowly got better and better.

CASEY: Before we even started the business, Blair’s weekends used to include him getting up at 4am to put a brisket on. He loved it so much. We wanted to spend all our spare time doing it. Our kids used to go to daycare, and the teachers would laugh and say, ‘They smell like brisket’.

BLAIR: We want barbecue to be a go-to choice of cuisine. You know, on a Friday night, when someone asks: ‘Should we have pizza? Fish and chips?’ – barbecue should be on that list. I’d love to see more options popping up, too. Not just our business. I’d love to live in a world where you’ve got a bunch of awesome barbecue places at your fingertips, trying new things, sharing the art of it. 

CASEY: Oooh. Anything from Corso Pastaria – especially their arancini balls. The rice paper rolls from Nam Nam Vietnamese are great, and I love the pork and chive dumplings from FooDu. We’re pretty spoilt for choice down there. 

BLAIR: The‍ Nashville Hot Chicken Burger from Crack Chicken, for sure. I love Duck Island, like everyone else – their toasted marshmallow ice cream is unbelievably good. Then you’ve got Hot Like A Mexican down the end, which does awesome tacos.