Ep. #1 - How My Brother Watched My Side Hustle Become My Legacy
4/27/20261 hr 3 min
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A brand like Meat Church doesn’t come from a logo or a marketing plan. It comes from reps, risk, and the kind of family stories that shaped how we work and why we cook. For the very first Meat Church Podcast, I sit down with my brother Josh Pittman to trace the real origin story, from our blue-collar roots in the South to the moment barbecue stopped being “something I do” and became the thing I built my life around.
We talk about where our work ethic comes from, why our grandmothers’ from-scratch cooking still influences everything we make, and what it looked like behind the scenes when I left a stable corporate career with four kids and real responsibilities. Josh shares his honest perspective on watching the business grow, how our personalities clash and complement each other, and why focus and consistency matter when you’re trying to turn a side hustle into a real company.
Then we get into the fun details: early BBQ competitions, the tweet that sparked the name “Meat Church,” the Barbecue Pitmasters tryout that went viral, and the scramble to bottle our first rubs so they could show up on TV. We wrap with a mailbag Q&A packed with practical barbecue talk, including what to cook when you’re short on time, how our charcoal is made, and what’s coming next with pellets and sauce.
If you enjoy barbecue stories, Texas barbecue, entrepreneurship, and real behind-the-scenes lessons, subscribe to the Meat Church Podcast, share this with a friend, and leave us a review with the guest you want us to bring on next.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMatt Pittman· Host0:00
Hey, I'm Matt with Meat Church. Welcome to episode one of the Meat Church podcast. Today, we're talking about the origins of Meat Church, and I'm joined by my brother, Josh Pittman. [upbeat rock music] Well, I'm super excited for today. Finally, we are starting the Meat Church podcast. It's been such a long time coming. You guys have been asking for this. We have filmed some stuff in this space. It's been teased, where people are like, "When's the podcast? Where's the podcast? What's going on?" Well, where are we? We are at the Meat Church world headquarters, and when we created this space, I decided that we would build a world-class podcast studio. So my friend, Rob Chickering, decided, you know, we worked together to come down and design this beautiful space. It's multi-camera for multiple guests. It's going to be a guest-driven podcast, so most of the time, I should be leveraging my vast network of friends and relationships to bring you all kinds of super interesting stuff. A lot of celebrities, so I've got a lot of athletes, a lot of musicians teed up. I'll kinda keep those to myself for now. Um, I've got a lot of well-known folks in barbecue, so we're gonna be talking cooking