Hidden Gems: Meet Wesley & Victoria Otts of Otts BBQ

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wesley & Victoria Otts.

Hi Wesley & Victoria, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We both had regular jobs. Wes started coming up with a recipe for the sauce. He would cook for family and friends and I told him one day we had to quit doing that every weekend bc we couldn’t keep doing that. And told him to start selling his food or sauce if he wanted to keep doing that bc we had 6 kids at the time. So he perfected some sauce recipes and we started making them in bulk.

Setting up at ball fields and advertising on Facebook. He took me seriously lol! We started talking about the idea of starting a business, but I thought, this is just a dream, it would never happen. But it did. We had planned to just do it on the weekends when we didn’t have other work. But Wes decided to leave his construction job and we jumped in head first the next weekend. And here we are almost 3 years later still going. Added a food truck in January 2023.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road, at all! We’ve had many ups and down, really high highs and extremely low lows! So now it was to the point of contemplating closing and going back to regular jobs.

The rising cost of food and trying to stay competitive with our prices and staffing issues, at times. But, we stuck out the hard times to get to the good times.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Otts BBQ?
We have a to-go takeout location in Burns, TN, and have a food trailer that we can take on the go.

We have pulled pork, pulled chicken, mouth-watering brisket, ribs, sides, and banana pudding. We pride ourselves on having fresh products daily. We can do catering also.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you.
We don’t believe in luck. More fate. Things have lined up the way they did.

We started in September 2020, when Covid was shutting everything down but to-go orders. It played in our favor, bc that’s all we did at the time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://streetfoodfinder.com/m/#!loadCalendar,OttsBBQ,
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057212059415&mibextid=ZbWKwL