Episode 2, Talking South Carolina Bub’n Muthas Gourmet Dry Rubs Interview

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett “Hey guys, I’ve got with me today on talking South Carolina John Furman. That’s why that right?”

John Fuhrman You did all.

Angela Barrett “Right. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being here and letting me know about your a great product that you have. cuz you’re everywhere. I looked at where all you sell your stuff and you’re everywhere.”

John Fuhrman “I mean, we’re trying.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, yeah, you’re doing a great job. So, the product is bub, and mother’s right. You can say it. Let’s say it, bub and mothers, but not bub, am I? See, I’m not from Maine, so I can’t say. All right. You say it’s. Yeah.”

John Fuhrman “Well, we’re going to give lessons on how to be a mainer.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah. That’s right, that’s right. so tell everybody exactly what bub and mothers, is.”

John Fuhrman “So I’ll be mothers. We call it a gourmet dry rub line that, but it’s hard to craft that small batch. Hey. Which, you know, if you go to a a liquor store, that you if you like bourbon, you want a small batch, or what makes it more made are a couple of things. One, everything in it is natural.”

John Fuhrman “We don’t have, silicone dioxide. Some of the other things that that, other rubs. But then we as a lot less sort of, oh, I’m not telling you that because where we put this on fatty meat.”

Angela Barrett “So it’s. Yeah, I’ve seen the, the pictures.”

John Fuhrman “Yeah. But the, the idea of using less salt salt is, is heavy and it’s inexpensive. So, you know, other rubs can put more salt in their bottle in a way more, you know, but on ours you’re going to get the paprika, the garlic, whatever other flavors we put in there. So you’ve got more of the spices that we like and.”

John Fuhrman “All right I’ve, we’ve got a side here. It says salt this for taste. Not so. And and some of them eat not all. Some of them have as much as a third of their bottle. It’s just so.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, well, yeah. You do have to look at some of those ingredients on the back. if you, you’d have to worry about those kinds of things. Salt, anything else for that matter. But so how many different rums do you have right now?”

John Fuhrman Apparently there are nine slate.

Angela Barrett “That cool? Well, I look.”

John Fuhrman Like cover every time.

Angela Barrett “And, I have a request. I want you to come up with a it’s, a Chipotle range. There was a restaurant he ran. Ranch? Yeah. Chipotle ranch. And there was a restaurant here that we had it. It was, I guess, their recipe. We love their weddings. They closed and took the recipe with them. So there there is my request.”

John Fuhrman “That’s it’s maybe, believe it or not, that’s how a lot of our flavors come to be. not just one person requesting, but, you know, people that have that that idea for flavor. our whole first year in business, we only had one slate.”

Angela Barrett Which was what.

John Fuhrman “Downey standard US, which is, again, a take on main. it’s got maple sirup crystals and instead of brown sugar, fresh roasted espresso, blueberry powder. And, even with that flavor, we won. And actually this week we tell people we might have a museum and so this little, little bottle. Right, right. I mean, I made the labels on my computer.”

John Fuhrman “These things are totally not up to label code or whatever, right. you know, what does it say on here? You know, for meat rubbed, right. It’s the main thing. And, what happened was we did a bunch of fairs and things and people bought it. And Maine is a big tourist meat. In fact, I used to sit on my porch and watch all the South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas license plates drive by because it’s much cooler in the summer, right.”

Angela Barrett And you got good lobster then.

John Fuhrman “We’ve been known to have that. Yes. In fact, I literally was three blocks from the lobster boats coming in. So yeah, we we had that awesome. But a lot of the, the tourist vacationers, would come by there rubs and, and literally that sustain the company in the wintertime when, you know, a lot of our stores in Maine are like, well, it’s not barbecue season, so we’re not going to have that.”

John Fuhrman “And and then they started saying, cheese. Do you have anything what’s a little bit more spice to have something with a little bit. And our second flavor came which was funny and eat, we used triple light and honey. and those two flavors carried us literally for four and a half year. Yeah. And we grew. We were in stores throughout New England, and then, space we needed we needed bigger space.”

John Fuhrman “And up in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, just as an example, the ground is so filled with granite there’s no gas line. So your primary heat is boil.”

Angela Barrett Right.

John Fuhrman “And to get an idea of what oil heat cost, it’s about the same price as diesel life. And, you know, when prices really spiked a few years back, it would have cost me $1,200 a month to heat the space I was in. And it just, you know, as a small business that’s just not sustainable. Sure. So my daughter had been down here in, in, Iceland for a number of years.”

John Fuhrman “Why don’t you take a look down here? And I said, you know, that’s a really big move. Maybe it’s taking up just moving individual, but to move the whole company. So we came down Thanksgiving of 2022. So the broker looked at some properties and like you know what does this could work. So we moved in January of 23 actually New Year’s weekend coming into 2023.”

John Fuhrman And we’ve been here since.

Angela Barrett “Yes. And in Lexington, no doubt in Lexington.”

John Fuhrman Yeah. And we.

Angela Barrett My name.

John Fuhrman “Is it. Well, you could go right over to Publix and get all the crap you want.”

Angela Barrett Right? Yeah.

John Fuhrman “It’s but that allowed us not only the space but to really start having room to play with flavors and literally in a year and a half, we added the other seven flavors. and the stores have been very receptive. You know, we started at Soda City, did all the pop up markets we could.”

Angela Barrett Yeah.

John Fuhrman “And that was kind of our hook. We would, you know, we would do an event over a weekend and then maybe sell a hundred bottles and then say to local supermarkets, hey, we just sold 100 bottles to your customers. You think you might want to try something? And, you know, here we are. end of July, we do our first delivery to, 163,000 lines.”

John Fuhrman So we’ll be in every single line in the state.

Angela Barrett “Oh, well. That’s good. yeah. Yeah, I always one of the sections I checked out at the grocery stores when I’m there, or the, you know, where it has all the local, which is always pretty cool. And most grocery stores have that section somewhere. yes.”

John Fuhrman They do.

Angela Barrett “big row store, small grocery store. But yeah, pretty interesting. How did y’all get started? Where how had this come to be?”

John Fuhrman “well, all right, I literally I been in sales, all right? My entire career. The last 15 years. I was training people on set so I would go company to company. Right? A lot of it, the auto industry, some of it in the software industry. And, you know, traveling on somebody else’s dime is wonderful until it is. Right?”

John Fuhrman “Right. You’re like, I don’t want to go any. So I was born in with a me. I grew up outside of that area right. But 11 years ago, I returned and I was like, okay, this is it. Last stop, this. And when I walked away from the corporate world, I was like, okay, what am I going to do?”

John Fuhrman “Because there’s only 450 people in town. the restaurants and a lot of the shops after Columbus Day, clothes. So, I mean, you talk about quiet, it’s quiet and I like to read, but, you know, I like ice cream, too, and I can’t have. It’s three meals a day. So that’s, And. Yeah, one of the things that I learned, I used to do a little bit of writing, and they always said, write what you do.”

John Fuhrman “Now I’m like, well, I probably applies to every you would, you know, it would, you know, go, well what the that do I know I don’t really want to be involved in training. And then I was like, well, wait a minute. I lived in North Carolina, part of a career move for five years. And just like South Carolina, there’s more barbecue joints at 7-Eleven.”

Angela Barrett The oh.

John Fuhrman “You know, like everybody else, you pick and you find your favorite boy, whatever. That’s right. Be sure. And when you even there, you know, when you’re near the coast, it’s touristy. So in the, school months, things kind of quiet down. But I’m still going back to the restaurant to get to know. Yeah, I meet the chef, he brings me back, and he says, well, here’s how we planned our stuff, right?”

John Fuhrman “And I just started fooling with. So I was like, you know, what could be, a really good marketing idea? I know, let’s start a barbecue company in a lobster village on the Maine coast. People even say we’re idiots, or it’s really good stuff. Right? And fortunately for us, it’s been the latter, you know, like, I, I, my biggest thrill is, is when people send the message, go, we just put this on X and oh my God, right now it’s no good.”

John Fuhrman And and that’s what keeps us going.

Angela Barrett “So now, tell me I’ve seen some of the pictures, obviously any sort of pork saying something about a hamburger. But there’s also our little rumor about cocktails. Tell me about that.”

John Fuhrman “Yeah. Was it my idea? There’s. There’s a restaurant up in Maine, near where I live called the Pickled Drink.”

Angela Barrett Called the Wild.

John Fuhrman Recall. Is that pickled wrinkle?

Angela Barrett Okay.

John Fuhrman “Pickled wrinkle is actually a shellfish that’s prepared a certain way. Okay, I wouldn’t eat it, but people like anyway, because they were the only restaurant open 12 months a year in the area. You become a regular. And I became very friendly with the owners and they and the cups and stuff. So when we got started, you know, when we had the two flavors, the dinner dust and the honey, right?”

John Fuhrman “I just kind of said, you know, try it. And interestingly, they never cooked this, so they took.”

John Fuhrman “The, oh, here we go, Donnie. And he.”

Angela Barrett

John Fuhrman “And tequila grandma and a margarita mix. Sprinkle it, the honey meat on the ice, shake it, rim the glass with the honey heat. And that’s a barbecue margarita.”

Angela Barrett “Wow. Yeah. Now I have a lot down on the coast where they’ve put in, like, it’s, an old bay or something, like an old bay and, you know, done it with, Bloody Mary. But, that’s pretty interesting. Yeah.”

John Fuhrman “Well, they that’s, then you mentioned Bloody Mary because I give them a two. And so are Downeast dinner. Does they actually still have Bloody Mary nights where they do Bloody Mary. Now the difference if you’re going to use a rub then obviously the dinner dust works because it’s not overly spicy. It’s pretty mild, but you get the sweet of the maple, a little bit of coffee.”

John Fuhrman “You have the you can’t use a Margaret, Bloody Mary mix. And the reason, well, whether it’s a rub or somebody else’s Bloody Mary mixes are salt. So if you take a, rub that salt, infuse, it’s like crack in the ocean. It’s really not very good. So you, you you can use pure tomato. You if you are into coastal and seafood, you can use clamato.”

John Fuhrman “Yeah. And if you’re a mainer, you can get pure lobster bisque and make your Bloody Marys out. So. Yeah. Yeah. and I ain’t saying it between you and I that with some of these new flavors, I think there’s going to be some new pop.”

Angela Barrett Yeah. Now what is? Chicks dig it.

John Fuhrman “Hopefully what they say to me, but,”

Angela Barrett “But, so.”

John Fuhrman “Chicks dig it. It would be again, coming back to what I said earlier about customers telling us as we grew in popularity, people were like, what can I put on chicken? Right. Well, you can put the Down East or the no, no, no. Do you have anything specific for chicken and dating or do you have anything specific for pork or beef or whatever.”

John Fuhrman “And they cut hammered on it. I like, you know, I’d rather they didn’t change their mind. Let’s see what we come up. And, I was kind of like, man, you know, chicken waffles is kind of a cool southern thing. So let me let me see what I can do with that. So we took, you know, our base, which is paprika, garlic, onion, salt, pepper.”

John Fuhrman “And, and then we add whatever flavorings we want to it. So the waffle saying we added the maple sirup, and, and then for the smoke, right. We added just a bit of chili. So you get a smoky flavor in, in, in your chicken. And again, part of that was Maine inspired because in the January so most of February we don’t not only do we not really, we really don’t go outside.”

John Fuhrman So it’s very.

Angela Barrett Cold.

John Fuhrman “Yeah. It’s been really cool. so it’s like, well okay, I’m going to come up with something that’s going to provide obviously the flavor, a little bit of the smokiness and not have to go outside. Right. Oh the the smoky paprika the chili. It’s it’s like a double dose of smoke without having to go to artificial stuff like liquid smoke.”

John Fuhrman “so you do what they did again and again. You know, we’ve got a couple of recipes for the chicks. Dig it, on the site. But really, on a nasty day when you don’t really want to go outside, I’m a I’m a site. Yeah. Chicken thighs. I just lay them on a baking sheet, but my chicks dig in on it, put it in the oven at 250 for two hours, and it’s perfect, you know.”

John Fuhrman And it had to hope in the oven just at the end of two hours. Take it out meat. So you get the great flavor. You get that barbecue stuff and you didn’t have to go outside in bad weather.

Angela Barrett “And so, I know we had or I’d seen somewhere about. You being a big advocate again of people who tank grill outside. Let’s talk about people in apartment or, condos, things of that nature. So those two rubs we know would be good for indoor baking recipes. I mean, probably all of them, depending on how it’s done.”

Angela Barrett “But, that is specifically because of the smokiness, right?”

John Fuhrman “Yeah. Yeah. But basically anything that you can do on a grill or a smoker, you can do low and slow in your oven if you have the time and the inclination. I mean, obviously now that I live down here, we do as much outside as we can because.”

Angela Barrett Right.

John Fuhrman “I love it when you guys, you know, hunker down in your down coats and everything and it’s like 45 degrees. So that’s funny.”

Angela Barrett “Well, but if it’s below 70. So yeah.”

John Fuhrman Listen. And my daughter adjusted well she’s been down here and in the house. She’s got sweats on.

Angela Barrett Me too.

John Fuhrman Right.

Angela Barrett Yeah.

John Fuhrman “my blood has not thinned out yet. Probably won’t. But, I don’t I don’t really mind the heat, especially if I’m outside cooking, but, like, know you have rain, you know. Sure. Have, you if it’s 100 degrees outside, maybe you don’t want to go outside and cook, but you you do want ribs. You want, you know, I can I can make a pulled pork in my oven that will taste basically the same as whenever you’re doing your smoke.”

John Fuhrman “I want I have a smoke right. Okay. Right. But smoke rings, which are wonderful. Look at a really for competition. More that for cooking. I mean you it at the barbecue restaurant. You’re really not looking for the smoker. You’re looking to.”

Angela Barrett “Eat, right?”

John Fuhrman “And and that, one of the celebrity, barbecue experts that I got to work with a little bit, I was asking him all kinds of question because I can flavor the meat, but I couldn’t tell the difference between a money muscle and a money clip, you know? Right. And I must have annoyed it because he he finally to stop.”

John Fuhrman “He said, look, there’s only two kinds of barbecue on God’s green earth competition where you got to follow all of that any. And if you like what you’re eating, don’t take my advice. Just keep doing what you’re doing. And I was like, you know what? That’s a really good answer. Takes all the pressure off. How do I do this?”

John Fuhrman “How do I do that? You already know what you like before you meet me. All I’m going to do is change a little bit of the flavor. But other than that, the consistency and all that, you already know how to do it, right, you know? So, I just tell people that good. A lot of people come up and go, oh, I’d really like to try rubs, but I don’t have to smell so good.”

Angela Barrett Right?

John Fuhrman “Yeah. You could. I mean, some of the runs, the honey and eat, for example, I on it, I make my omelets work. Right. If I’m going to make, Chicken tenders. Right, I just I just put it in the flour.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, well, we do a lot of, you know, blackened, but sometimes we’ve used other rubs that have that little bit of heat or a lot of heat because we like heat. and used it on fish or, you know, baked chicken or whatever, you know, in the oven. Right? Sure.”

John Fuhrman “Like, yeah. My brother and he is a big salmon guy. And, no matter how he cooks or whether they broil, set grills, it, watches it, he puts on, he need them. Yeah, I can tell you if you want, if you want it to just be thick. But salmon, you know, you drizzle olive oil but your summer right.”

John Fuhrman “Yeah. Do that with bourbon. Just a few drops, you know, eat a lot. Yeah. If you dropped the bourbon on it then put the rum. What will happen is the bourbon is going to cook off but it’s going to give that salmon a lot of smokiness. Yes. And then the honey you need is going to give you the flavor.”

John Fuhrman “So and white fish I mean any white fish at all you know but what we’ve done is we’ve got one of our new, flavors. And this is my bud boil and crab coat. So this is like a, an old bay that’s gone off the ground. It’s so old.”

Angela Barrett They’ll crack.

John Fuhrman “Open. Crack. But, like, I got my. My sister in law is Maryland. Born and raised and makes the best lump crab cakes and and I had her make some up. Let me put the, mud bug boil on. And people just went crazy. They just went. Yeah. And, you know, eat. Over the last few years, it’s taught me that barbecue is pretty steady, you know, I mean, if if, you can cook ribs or, or, you know, pork or whatever.”

John Fuhrman “Okay. Right. But if you can make great side dishes, you’re going to have good barbecue, right? You know, and to me, since I’ve started to believe that that’s what I look for in a barbecue restaurant, because I figure if they’ve been open for two weeks, they know how to make ribs. I know they know how to make any type of pork.”

John Fuhrman “So what’s going to separate them from the next guy? And it’s always for me, the side.”

Angela Barrett Sides. Yeah. Did macaroni and cheese. You’re down here good.

John Fuhrman “Mac and cheese. Yeah. Yeah I love it. I mean I make I, I an amazing mac and cheese. But what puts it over the top is the trimmings. And what I mean is let’s just say we’re having red, competition. You like to square them up, you’re cutting off pieces of meat, and usually that’s discarded. I put it in a pile and put it on smoker while I’m making the ribs.”

John Fuhrman “And then I chop that up after it’s all cut cheese and I mix it in. The Mac cheats. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. Leftovers. So if I’m cooking a big brisket, whatever’s leftover, we chop it up the next day and we put it in mac and cheese. Oh, you know, you it’s it’s not a secret recipe. You already have to stop.”

Angela Barrett Right?

John Fuhrman Right. And what it does is it turns mac and cheese on the side. Dixon told me.

Angela Barrett “Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, how many of your rubs in which ones have won or competitions and how many are those?”

John Fuhrman “So, the the, the big free winner is the honey and heat has won a few times in the International Flavor Awards. The dinner does, won at the International Flavor at our, cooks. for Kevin is a big winner because, you know, it seems down here, you know, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, everybody’s cooking, right? You know, they’re not doing brisket competition, but up in, we sponsor three teams.”

John Fuhrman “We have one here in South Carolina, one in Missouri, and another one up in Iowa. Now the islands are doing beats, so they use our son of a brisket, right. Seasoned beef. but they also, are using one of our rubs. Said that actually surprised me. I never even thought we would have the chance to make it.”

John Fuhrman “when I came here, you know, I, I visited some barbecue places, of course. And, you know, I, I’ve been in other places, and they were like, we have mustard sauce, and I, I, I’m better.”

Angela Barrett Yeah. I’m not a mustard sauce girl.

John Fuhrman “So I, I had, I had mustard sauce when I came back finally I said, you know what, I’m gonna let it go. I got to try it and I tried it. I was like, wow, okay, that really makes a difference. So I started going to the stores. You know, you want to check out what, are you going to compete again?”

John Fuhrman And there was not a single mustard based drive right. So that’s how we came up with Carolina go.

Angela Barrett “Yeah, I saw that.”

John Fuhrman “What you need for us, it’s it’s the exact same ingredient as a South Carolina mustard sauce in powder. Okay. Which is why it took six months. We had to find somebody that manufactured powdered apple cider vinegar, powdered Worcestershire sauce. Those are. Those are staples, right? You know, the only thing we did different is our sweet is fine.”

Angela Barrett Right?

John Fuhrman “Other than that, it is a this is a very traditional. And that’s why on the label we say we’re the unofficial mustard root for South Carolina.”

Angela Barrett Right.

John Fuhrman Wait. We claimed it.

Angela Barrett “Yeah. Well, I’m looking for it. I haven’t tried it, until you reached out. I’ll be the first to say I didn’t know it existed, but now I’m glad I do, because we are. I don’t like to get my hands all messy with the wet stuff, so, I like dry rubs.”

John Fuhrman “And I’ll give you a lot of. I give you a I give you a quick dry rub tip that, because a lot of guys want it on there, and then they’re finding it in. Don’t get that messy sweat near me. So what that means is just take your one side of whatever it is you’re cooking. Put the rub on.”

John Fuhrman “I usually just lay a paper towel over it, right. And just let it sit for a while. When you open that up, you’ll see that the meat is sweat through, and now that rub is going to stick. So when you flip it, it’s not going to fall, right? They just flip it over and do the same thing. Yeah okay.”

John Fuhrman It does keep your hands clean. So you’re not like.

Angela Barrett “Oh I meant when I was eating, you know like a lot of people like all the salsas and things like that. Yeah. I’m more of a dry girl.”

John Fuhrman “Oh, I get it. I had been, you know, it’s funny, there are very few, places that I’ve been in in the whole state, that you can order dry.”

Angela Barrett Right?

John Fuhrman “You know, they all want to put their sauce on it. I like the places they serve it to you dry, and they have sauces on the table, and you know, do as hard as you will. you know, we do. We have, recipes on the website to use our rugs to make your own socks, you know, and then the flavoring, obviously, is whichever one you choose.”

John Fuhrman “but, yeah, I’m a I’m just dry. Yeah. I mean, you’re going to get to, you know, especially if you’re cooking it low and slow, the fat is going to render through and that’s going to make it nice. And boy, she don’t need the sauce for you know, and sometimes not all the time. But sometimes that sauce is like I’m eating sauce.”

Angela Barrett Yeah. That’s right.

John Fuhrman because you’re not getting the flavors right. That’s not it. That’s that’s really important.

Angela Barrett “Yeah. So, I know that you are in several different grocery stores, here locally as well as many other places I saw that are on your website. But you can also order and tell everybody how to do that.”

John Fuhrman Yeah. you go on the website dot com and mothers.com and what’s cool is there’s a spot where it lists every place we are. Yeah. So if that’s convenient for you can certainly go there. If it’s not you can certainly order on the what the important thing this time of year is we’re on our Memorial Day to that trick day run.

John Fuhrman “And what that is, is we’re a veteran owned company. We do everything we can to support veteran. So each year since since the year we started, we go from Memorial Day to Veteran’s Day and a portion of every single sale goes to veteran charities and, you know, the last couple of years it’s been pretty good. In fact, the last year in Maine, we were able to donate $1,500 to the Maine Veterans Project.”

John Fuhrman “Nice, which they were able to use for heating oil for veterans who couldn’t afford it to get through a Maine winter. So our goal this year is 5000. We’re going to split in half. We’ll take a local, South Carolina veteran charity and one national charity as well. Yeah. So those are some medicines.”

Angela Barrett “And so when you go online or you can, donate to that or you’re just saying that product. No problem. Yeah. They don’t really seeds.”

John Fuhrman Part of the proceeds. Yeah.

Angela Barrett Nice.

John Fuhrman “I learned a long time ago people started sending money. Okay. And I, I had to send it back on. I can’t use that money. I’m not a charity. I’m a commercial business. So you just buy the stock and, you know, we’ll send it. The nice thing is. Excuse me. We’ve got some packages. You know, where you can buy bunches of wraps, save a few dollars.”

John Fuhrman “And we have our our barbecue pack, which is six layers. Every one of those we sell, $5 goes right into the kitty. And then now that we have nine flavors, we we have this big giant. You can’t see it. It’s it’s a part of the Pitmaster pack. It’s got all nine flavors in it. And we donate every one of those.”

John Fuhrman “It’s sold. We donate $7.70. So, you know, it’s it’s funny, having those two, I think gives us the most help to to reach our goals and, and be able to help veterans.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah. Well what what a great way to do it. And from all the reviews I’ve read and great products and I’m looking forward to, trying it and, and maybe even looking forward to that Chipotle ranch that you might, but and if you need me, you know, I’m right down the road from you, I think so.”

Angela Barrett “Okay. You need me to come and, you know, do a test. Test? Yeah, I know, and.”

John Fuhrman “We appreciate all the volunteer help, too. Yeah.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, I think now I absolutely do. I think.”

John Fuhrman That’s right. Yeah. There’s it’s a skill.

Angela Barrett Yeah. That’s right. Well thank you so much for being here today. And this was this was a pleasure. And I’m glad to learn about your products. And it was so nice to meet you.

John Fuhrman “my pleasure. Thank you guys and your whole crew and all your support. People like that helped put this together. You know, we’ll do it again. But we have another Chipotle ranch or something.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, yeah, let’s say let’s do. Thanks a lot.”

John Fuhrman We’ll give you a credit. All right. Thanks.

Angela Barrett Thanks.

John Fuhrman Thank.