Today’s guest is John Stage the owner of Dinosaur BBQ with 8 locations across NY, NJ and Connecticut. Dinosaur BBQ has a line of rubs and sauces available nationwide and the cookbook John released in 2001 has sold over 175k copies. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que started as a mobile popup in 1983 at the Harley Rendezvous in NY, a motorycle meetup and then in 1988 went brick and mortar on Willow St. in Syracuse NY. Today on the show we’ll talk about how it all began with a 55 gallon drum sawed in half, what partnering with the Soros family did for the business both positive and negative, how having a consumer packaged goods line can impact a brick and mortar restaurant and how to survive for 30 years in the restaurant business.