History

In 1983, Tripp Murray and I (Ernie Mellor) were sitting around deer camp cooking a wild hog harvested that morning. We weren’t exactly sure how the barbeque would turn out, but we knew it wouldn’t be bad. Man were we right. It was GREAT! This was just the beginning of a "real" good thing!

Over the next few years we found ourselves cooking for friends and family. A group of close friends hosted an annual "bang up block party" and they asked us to cook the barbeque. We left the folks ravin’ over the ‘Que’. "This stuff is incredible!" became the regular compliment.

In 1985, a friend asked us to join their barbeque team, "The Rolling Wonder Pigs", during the Memphis in May World Championship Barbeque Cooking Contest. This was the major leagues, and we were competing with the very best BBQ cooks in the world. Through several years of cooking, asking questions, eating, listening, watching, eating, learning, trial and error, playing with recipes, eating, a few cold beers, eating some more and changing and honing those recipes, we became World Class Barbeque Chefs ourselves.

In 1987, HOG WILD was formed. And in 1993 all of our barbeque education paid off. We took a strong 2nd place finish at the Memphis in May World Championships and we followed up with a solid 9th place finish in 1994. Our Killa’ Wet Sauce placed 4th in the Kansas City Barbecue Society American Royal BBQ Sauce Contest. 1998 was another strong year with another runner up placement in the World Championships in Memphis.

Over the last 13 Years HOG WILD has catered some very prestigious events. On June 1, 1997, I decided to take the HOG WILD operation and turn it into a full time venture. The primary emphasis was catering and setting the goal to take all of our sauces commercial. With the help of close friend Ed Labry, this happened. We hit the ground running and haven’t slowed up yet. In March of 1998 we leased a 10,000 s.f. facility, just north of downtown Memphis. The building was a food service establishment in its heyday, but had been vacant for over 5 years. We had a large clean up and paint job to get the building ready for the equipment to fall into place and ready for business. The place looks great and is extremely functional. The new Headquarters is simply called Tully; the address is 1291 Tully Street.

April 1998, the St. Louis Cardinals Triple-A farm team, The Redbirds, moves to Memphis. HOG WILD secures the BBQ concessions contract. The evolution of "BBQ Nachos" is born. A bed of nacho chips topped with award winning pulled pork shoulder, an ounce or so of Killa’ Wet sauce and a big shot of nacho cheese sauce. We couldn’t make ‘em fast enough. Now every BBQ company in town is selling them.

1999 and 2000 were very good years. We increased our client base and increased sales dramatically. Thanks to a new client, we catered our largest event yet, 2600 people. The same day at the same time we were operating our concession stands at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium and catering for the TV sportscast crew and 3 luxury skyboxes. Heck of a day! It’s 2001 now and the XFL games are rockin’. The XFL is gone but HOG WILD BBQ is still in the Liberty Bowl Stadium and at all of the University of Memphis home games, The Southern Heritage Classic & The AutoZone Liberty Bowl itself.

Gourmet food selections and upscale catering has become a serious focus over the past 6 years. The summer of 2001 we came up w/ an additional name for the company to focus on the gourmet and upscale side of the biz. ‘A Moveable Feast’ was born. Since then we have catered several hundred large wedding receptions, rehearsal dinners, cocktail parties and elegant open houses where barbeque was not in the picture. This side of the biz is typically more time consuming and labor intensive but very rewarding. The Society of Bacchus, an international wine group, had their annual meeting in Memphis several years back. HOG WILD catered the first evening of the weekend and "knocked their socks off" as quoted by Mr. Robert Mondavi himself. Whole rabbit, wild pheasant, rack of venison, a Ferrell Pig with all of the trimmings were cooked on site. Take a look at the gourmet section of our website: A Moveable Feast.

We are in the process of developing a business plan to put in a USDA kitchen at the Tully Street facility. This will allow us to ship our World Renowned BBQ, Ribs and Chicken straight to your doorstep. Please feel free to call w/ any questions on this subject.

We have grown from $100,000 in sales to just over a $1,000,000 in 10 short years. We appreciate everyone’s biz!