While lockdown was tough for many, for Reyan Fernando and Mark Kuch it also provided an opportunity, as Ash Bolt discovers.
Geelong friends Reyan Fernando and Mark Kuch found an online community of people who shared their love for barbecue during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The pair ran the Rib Appreciation Society with some friends, where they reviewed barbecue ribs at restaurants around the region. But when lockdown closed restaurants, Reyan and Mark took up cooking their own barbecue and found an online community.
“Lockdown hit and we had just coincidentally started barbecuing at home and stumbled across this amazing barbecue community online,” Reyan said.
“I noticed a whole bunch of people going online and just chatting about barbecue and I was dying for another hobby because I was doing nothing at home.
“I said to Mark, ‘let’s just get on and start talking about barbecue’.”
The pair started their own online show on Instagram, the BBQ and Brews Show, to share their passion for low ‘n’ slow barbecue.
“The first couple of episodes we did, we just had a chat [between ourselves] and we thought this isn’t going to work, and so we started inviting other people from the barbecuing community to come on with us,” Reyan said.
“Initially it started with a couple of guys from Sydney who came on for a chat – and it was a great chat, everyone was having fun and sharing knowledge.
“From there we’ve just kept going. We’ve had about 50 guests now.”
Mark said the show became about getting other members of the barbecue community to share their unique experiences and expertise.
“It was all about getting people to share their experiences and talking about how they got to where they got to,” he said.
“We were home cooks with no experience whatsoever but the community is so embracing and we were getting tips from people all over the country.
“We wanted to share that, so we talked to people from all different backgrounds – we talked to people who do rubs, we talked to the farmers themselves, we talked to the cooking community and the people who do competitions.
“And they all had something interesting to share.”
Mark said the show also allowed the pair to help highlight the great barbecuers from around the Geelong and Surf Coast, as well as across the country.
“They’re so many great companies locally in barbecue, whether that’s making rubs or steakhouses, and to be able to help promote them was great,” he said.
The show took off during lockdown and more and more high-profile guests in the barbecue community got involved.
“We were doing it live on Saturday nights and we had the perfect captured audience, because people couldn’t go out,” Reyan said.
“People were looking for something to do and some social connection and that’s where this started from.”
Mark added the pair had made many connections with people they’d never met and made new friends along the way.
“All these people we met along the way and the people we had on the show, now that we’ve been out [of lockdown] we’ve been able to organise real-life catch-ups,” he said.
“We’ve had two meetings in Melbourne where we’ve invited all these people and it’s crazy meeting all these people you’ve been talking to online for the last 12 months.
“That was really cool.”
The success of the show also saw them invited to take part in Meatstock – Australia’s largest barbecue and music festival.
“We’ve had some high profile guests, like Jay Beaumont, who is part of the group that started the Australasian Barbecue Alliance and that interview got us into Meatstock,” Reyan said.
At Meatstock in Melbourne last month and Toowoomba earlier this month, Reyan and Mark hosted a live on-stage Q&A session with some of the biggest names in barbecue, called Meet the Pitmasters, which they’ll do again when Meatstock heads to Sydney next week.
Reyan said talking to stars of the barbecue community such as Tuffy Stone, Christina Fitzgerald, Mike Johnson, Laura Rome and My Kitchen Rules winners Dan and Stef was a dream come true.
“Tuffy Stone is a six time world champion and in the Hall of Fame in America,” he said.
“American barbecue is on another level – we’re catching up but we’re not on that level.
“So for us, just two guys from Geelong, to be rubbing shoulders with this barbecue royalty, in both Aussie barbecue and American barbecue, it’s next level. It was so cool.”
As they adapted to the lockdown, the pair is now adapting to the end of lockdown after finding their Instagram show was no longer working for its audience.
Reyan and Mark said they were now trying to grow the show into a multi-platform experience that will allow them to present their guests in new ways.
“We want to bring a bit more international stuff and get some more international guests,” Reyan said.
“And it would be awesome to do a bit more live stuff. I’d love to get to a few more events – at Meatstock we recorded like 25 interviews in person and the goal is to do another 10 or 15 in Sydney.
“We’re posting those interviews on Youtube at the moment and we’re looking at July, once Meatstock is out of the way, at starting up the live shows again in a new format.”
But Mark said the important part was ensuring it provided a place for barbecue fans to come together and chat.
“[The show] was a release for me and for others – it was a way for us to talk to other people and feel that connection when we were locked inside,” he said.
“It’s been a really exciting time and I never thought it would get to where it is now when we did that first show, but I’ve really enjoyed it.”
