Beef Jerky Status Update

First a little background here. I am a single father of two teenaged girls that are both in sports and band/orchestra/choir etc. I also work a full time job, usually 6 days a week. In the last couple of years I have opened a store front that is open nights and weekends offering home brewing and BBQ supplies and equipment - all while continuing to manufacture beef jerky on a nearly daily basis. Within the store, I have also been constructing a commercial style kitchen for manufacturing the jerky and BBQ catering prep.

This spring I bought a house and left behind the brick smoker that had been used to make the beef jerky all these years. Knowing that the girls and I would be moving, I began construction on a new cabinet style smoker that could be used in the new kitchen. The smoker was not finished in time for the move as I had planned so it was obvious that the beef jerky was going to be out of production for a few weeks. The smoker became a much larger project than I ever anticipated, as most project do. I have worked every Sunday through out the summer months to complete the project and get back into production.

Once the major construction of the smoker was completed I ran a few test fires through it and finally loaded it up with a whole case of meat. While the smoker worked great and would have made some fine BBQ, it was not not producing the quality beef jerky that you and I have come to expect. Rather than shipping a sub-standard product, it all went in the trash and I went back to the drawing board. Now I had to figure out how to make it work as intended without wasting any more time. I jumped right into it and made a few changes to the smoker including the installation of fans, timers and temp controllers. I will finish up the modifications this Sunday and get another load going. If all is well, your orders will begin to ship this week.

I hope you understand that your orders are very important and that I have been very busy working to get back up and running as quickly as possible without sacrificng qualilty and standards. I thank you again for your patience during this process - it has been a long time but we are almost there!

There have been some friends that have helped with construction of the kitchen, the plumbing, the smoker - everything - along the way. All of the help is greatly appreciated and we would not be at this point without them! Thank you so much for all of your selfless time and labor! Lastly, a huge thanks goes out to my kids who have endured thing with great understanding, patience and even some help.

See the construction photos on Facebook here
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.428126000578252.98061.127718103...

PS, if you are in or around Lubbock, join us Friday and Saturday for the Cactus Challenge awards, with dinner provided by Sograte BBQ!

Thank you,
Cary Franklin