Cape Girardeau firm's disaster relief efforts started with Katrina

It was 16 years ago, almost to the day, when David Knight received a call from one of his sales representatives in Mississippi.

The caller told Knight, president and founder of Ole Hickory Pits in Cape Girardeau, about the devastation along the Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina.

"He said it was really bad in Jackson, Mississippi," Knight recalled. "He said they had no power, no fuel and no way to feed people and asked if we could bring down some pits to help mitigate the situation."

Knight and his then 14-year-old son, Alex, loaded three of the company's barbecue smokers onto a flatbed gooseneck trailer and hauled them through the night to Southern Mississippi. From there they were delivered to the Superdome in New Orleans to help feed Hurricane Katrina survivors as well as emergency personnel and volunteers.

That was the first time the Knights and Ole Hickory Pits helped with a disaster response effort, but it wouldn't be the last.

'Hogzilla' heads to Louisiana

Over the years, the company has provided a fleet of industrial grade barbecue smokers to Operation BBQ Relief, a not-for-profit group in the Kansas City area which as, in turn, used the equipment to prepare millions of free meals for countless disaster victims and relief workers.

And this week Ole Hickory Pits is sending more smokers to Louisiana -- including one of the world's largest manufactured rotary smokers (dubbed "Hogzilla") -- as part of Operation BBQ Relief's response to Hurricane Ida. The two-and-a-half ton barbecue smoker was loaded onto a trailer Monday for the trip to Hammond, Louisiana, about an hour from New Orleans, where it will be used to prepare tens of thousands of meals over the next 2 to 3 weeks.

Ole Hickory Pits has been a partner in Operation BBQ Relief's disaster response efforts since 2011 shortly after a tornado devastated Joplin, Missouri.

"Our experience following Hurricane Katrina was one of the compelling reasons why I said yes when I was approached by my barbecue buddies who had been cooking in Joplin and said they needed more 'firepower'," David Knight said. "The need rang a bell with me, very clearly." Ole Hickory Pits initially donated a trailered smoker to the organization.

"That's grown to a donation of 10 barbecue smokers to date and we're donating three more in October," said Alex Knight, now 30 and living in Colorado where he helps coordinate Ole Hickory Pits' disaster relief efforts with Operation BBQ Relief.

Ole Hickory Pits augments Operation BBQ Relief's smoker fleet with additional equipment when the need arises, such as Hurricane Ida and other recent storms along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Ole Hickory Pits also supports a pair of smaller organizations -- Giving Bak and United by BBQ -- both of which are also setting up relief efforts in Louisiana this week.

Millions of meals

Since its founding in 2011, Operation BBQ Relief has served more than 9.1 million meals and has contracts with numerous relief agencies such as the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and is now among the nation's largest "mass feeding" organizations.

Thanks to the "fire power" Ole Hickory Pits is providing, Operation BBQ Relief will be able to serve more than 60,000 meals a day. "They should hit the 10 million meal mark during this deployment," Alex Knight said. "And anyone who's receiving a meal gets it free with no out-of-pocket costs."

Much of the meat used by Operation BBQ Relief is donated by Seaboard Foods, headquartered in Kansas City.

Meanwhile, Ole Hickory Pits is also sending two pallets of barbecue sauce, two pallets of wood, one pallet each of barbecue seasoning and water along with spare parts for the smokers. "We partnered with First Auto Credit of Jackson to arrange for a driver to help get some of the supplies delivered, along with a local volunteer to drive one of our trucks with Hogzilla to Louisiana," Alex Knight said.

It's volunteers such as the drivers -- as well as the hundreds of volunteers who prepare and distribute meals on site -- that make Operation BBQ Relief possible.

"My hat's off to all the volunteers," David Knight said. "Because without the volunteers there would be no Operation BBQ Relief. They're the ones that make the magic happen."

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