My Story… So Far.

How did I get here? It’s kind of a long story. Here’s the short version.

I was born in Ashland, a small city in Kentucky. I lived in a suburb of Ashland until I was four. I will spare you most of the drama, but in short, we were poor, my biological father sucked, me and mom hit the road. Which road exactly? Grandview Gardens in Kenova, WV where I would spend the next 16 years. My mom and the man I call dad still live there.

Kenova is an interesting city. I can still tell you all the neighbors’ names for 20 houses in either direction of my parents’ house and I’ve been inside all of those houses. My best friend lived next door. The people you went to church with were also the people you went to school with and played baseball with. It’s a wonder we weren’t sick of each other. The primary entertainment was Save-A-Lot.

I met my wife in Kenova. She moved there in 6th grade from St. Louis when her parents (more on them later), followed a job and a calling. I remember thinking she must be so cool to be from a big city. I was right. We began dating the summer after 10th grade, but in 11th, another calling came. Her family moved away to Zionsville, Indiana. I hate Zionsville to this day for taking her away.

But alas, we persevered through an almost 3-year long-distance relationship. For her sophomore year in college, she moved back to West Virginia and we both attended Marshall University (unsuccessfully). After 1 year of college, and one year of being married and just working, we decided to move to St. Louis so I could go to culinary school and she could be close to extended family.

My 20s were complicated. This is where I really learned to cook, not just BBQ, but classical French and Italian cuisine as well as upscale American classics, and I can bake a little. We had two of our 3 boys in our 20s. I developed and beat an alcohol addiction. Also during that time, the in-laws had yet another calling to a little city called Brandon, Mississippi.

In my late 20s, I became burnt out on cooking and fell in love with personal finance. I enrolled at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. After having done a couple of years at Marshall and completing my associate’s degree, I only needed 4 semesters to complete a bachelor of finance. But… I had 2 realizations during my first 3 semesters: 1. What I wanted to do in personal finance was help poor people become not poor. The thing about that is that is hard to monetize. Poor people don’t have money to give you for advice. They need groceries and gasoline. 2. Cooking, specifically cooking my own food, kept calling me back.

For my last semester, I switched from Finance to Business Administration, found a nice little restaurant for rent in Flowood, and moved our family 7 hours south. I word it like that on purpose, because we literally opened the restaurant during my last semester. I still don’t know how I passed those classes.

And now here we are 4 months later. The restaurant is running smoothly. We are about to receive our second smoker to keep up with demand. We have a 2nd location, a 2nd restaurant concept, a kitchen remodel, a food truck, and a patio in the planning stages. Life is good. Crazy, but good.

Thanks for reading.

-Kendall