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Barbecue on the rise in Miami Valley

OinkADoodleMoo, Pig of the Month two examples of new ventures.

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By Mark Fisher, Staff Writer 7:04 PM Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Miami Valley may not be quite the barbecue hotbed that Kansas City, Mo. St. Louis or Memphis, Tenn. is. But we’re getting closer, courtesy of an increasing number of restaurant entrepreneurs who are betting on Dayton-area diners’ hunger for smoked meats.

Local business owners who have dramatically expanded barbecue enthusiasts’ choices across the region include the founder of a four-restaurant chain whose aggressive expansion plans call for 1,000 units nationwide by 2020, and a 24-year-old finance major who left her job on Wall Street to launch a company that ships barbecue to subscribers throughout the country.

On the restaurant front, barbecue has been smoking the last two years, with new eateries opening in Kettering, Beavercreek and Englewood. Upstarts such as OinkADoodleMoo, Company 7 and Woody’s are now competing for taste-bud allegiance with stalwarts such as Old Hickory Bar-B-Que and Hickory Bar-B-Que and other players such as City Barbeque, Smokey Bones, Hickory River, Smokin’ and many more.

Mark Peebles said when he and his business colleagues developed the concept for Englewood-based OinkADoodleMoo in 2006, “we never expected anything less than to be a national brand.” OinkADoodleMoo opened its second and third locations in 2010 and is poised to add a fourth in Troy next month.

“We are going to continue over the next two years selling franchises in Ohio, but will quickly expand into surrounding states, then nationwide,” Peebles said. “Our target is to hit 25 units by 2014, 200 units by 2016, and 1,000 units by 2020.”

Peebles said Dayton-area residents “have shown a craving for real, slow-smoked meats. Consider how many Mexican or Italian restaurants we had five years ago versus what we had to choose from in the barbecue category. Now, we have options in that barbecue category, and it’s a great thing for our region.”

Lea Richards, a Vandalia native who earned a finance degree from the University of Dayton in 2009, is also a barbecue entrepreneur, but is following a different path. After graduation, she got a job on Wall Street “and hated it,” she said. She returned home and with the encouragement of her family, launched Pig of the Month at 2571 Timber Lane in Harrison Twp., which accepts internet orders for ribs, pulled pork, sauces and other items shipped locally or nationally. Customers also can purchase frozen slabs of ribs and other specialties at the Pig of the Month shop.

Sales have increased 400 percent from August 2010 to August 2011, and Pig of the Month has more than 100 people who have signed up to receive a monthly delivery, Richards said.

“This is a lot more fulfilling than Wall Street ever was,” Richards said.

For more information, visit oinkadoodlemoo.com and pigofthemonth.com.

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