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Trojan Grill Barbecue with Portia Mitchell and Nikki McFadden

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Portia and Nikki Mitchell.

Portia & Nikki, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We got started in 2014 when a friend, who’d seen our posts of food that we’d cooked on Facebook, saw this video of a giant taco being made on a griddle in Mexico. We only shared the video, and joked that we could make it, if only we had a flat top griddle. That post turned into a long conversation online, about how to make this come to life. One friend suggested we crowd fund a taco cart and that she would be the first to donate. So we did just that. We created an IndieGoGo page and crowd funded $1k in 45 days. That was the beginning. Fast forward to 2015, and we realized that the taco cart was not the element that we needed to make the food we were so passionate about….barbecue! Although it had a 2×2 open flame grill, it wasn’t enough to make the barbecue that we had in mind.

Portia, our pit master is a former student athlete at USC. She has always had a passion for grilling since she was young. Nikki, our executive chef, and, “the general” as we call her, began her culinary pursuits at the Art Institute some years ago, while working full time.

We met and became partners in 2012.

After receiving a request for a party of 50 guests from a friend, we realized we needed a proper pit, and equipment that would allow us to cook for larger crowds looking back to just 3 years ago, we both realize that we didn’t know anything about barbecue! All we knew was grilling. Barbecue is a whole other craft, and we were literally just getting our feet wet. We began searching for the best place to buy a pit that was easy to move around, and that was capable of holding lots of meat. Although there are many options for smoker fabricators outside of California, specifically in the southern states, we needed someone nearby who could produce this within a matter of weeks. The search led us to a man named Alex, out of the Inland Empire. We worked together to build a modest offset reverse flow smoker built onto an 8×4 trailer that we could haul with a truck. Our initial budget of $3500 was quickly realized as insufficient, and we ended up putting $6k into our dream.

Over the next 12 months, (May 2015 to May 2016), we picked up jobs, mostly from friends and family and began the building of Trojan Grill Barbecue. Coming up with the name was tricky enough. Since Portia had previously registered the name Trojan Grill with the business tax license years prior, we rolled with it. Time passed so quickly and we were soon overcome with requests from friends and friends of friends, to cater, and do parties from groups of 20 up to groups of 150. Along the way, we learned the in’s and out’s of the catering business, planning, packing for catering, accounting, and so many other valuable lessons that gave us the footing we needed to continue.

We got to where we are today with the support of our family and friends. We have a wonderful team of cooks, and chefs who believe in our vision. They come out, work hard, and help out in any way that we need. Without the team, we absolutely would not be where we are today.

Has it been a smooth road?
We definitely had some challenges along the way. Learning to pack for catering jobs/festivals and fairs, was one of the first, and more important challenges to deal with. When you don’t know what you need, you may have a tendency to take everything you think you need. That’s what happened to us at our first festival in May 2015. We literally took ALL of our equipment to the site packed in a U-Haul truck that could move a 1 bedroom apartment!

Just unpacking the truck added hours of work to our day, and it very quickly became apparent that maximizing the return while minimizing the work was an urgent task that we needed to conquer. Thanks to a singular visit to the Western Food Service and Hospitality Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center, we soon learned a few secrets of industry professionals who were catering just like us. In the matter of one hour, everything about how we move, pack, and plan changed.

Fast forward to the same festival in 2016, and we transported everything in a small van, and we were so far ahead, that we had time to set up a tent, sit down, and wait for the crowds to arrive!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Trojan Grill Barbecue story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a mobile catering service specializing in authentic, old school barbecue. We prep our barbecue days ahead of the requested delivery date, allowing time for brining and marinating prior to smoking. We really take time, and put our hearts and souls into the food we produce.

All of the recipes we make are tested and critiqued by the world’s most harsh critic, Portia’s mother Janice. She always gets a taste, and if she doesn’t, she has guaranteed that she’ll burn my pit to the ground! So it’s very important that she quality controls everything we serve! She, and the other phenomenal lady cooks in the family, have inspired us to share all of the recipes that we grew up eating with the great clients we serve.

We are most known for our brisket and it’s what we’re most proud of. Since California isn’t exactly known for barbecue, we are striving to provide people with a taste of what real barbecue is. We smoke low and slow at or around 225 degrees on an offset reverse flow smoker, which ensures that the fire and the meat never come in contact. The only thing cooking the meat is the heat, and the smoke. This smoke is produced by authentic, whole wood logs from awesome trees like Hickory, Cherry and Oak. The smoke is literally a seasoning all its own.

What sets us apart, is that we’re a pair of city girls smoking barbecue the old school way. There’s no gimmick, no heat lamps, no reheating, no shortcuts. Our barbecue is done the hard way. Hour after hour, test after test, log after log.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Not sure, it seems like there’s a trend toward online ordering and deliveries. We’d love to offer our food for sale online with nationwide shipping one day.

Pricing:

  • Pricing for Party Packages begins at $18.25/pp

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
The Trojan Grill, LLC

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