We had the good fortune of connecting with Sarah & Tony Bolding and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah & Tony, what do you attribute your success to?
We teach BBQ cooking classes to Backyard enthusiasts — not competition cookers, which is what most people in our industry are focussed on.

We offer a fun, interactive and complete class for all levels of Backyard BBQ enthusiasts. Everyone can learn at our classes and walk away with the confidence to cook for family and friends.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Sarah and I are both from the advertising world. We have both been agency and brand / corporate side. Our backgrounds provide business and creative points of view for all that we do. We are very passionate about how brands are represented, messaged and promoted.

Throughout our careers, we’ve learned to jump in and “Fail Forward”. This means that we are proactive and love to dive right in to challenges, resolve issues and work hard to make great experiences for those interacting with our brands (and with us). 

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Denver and the surrounding areas provide so many options!

We tend to visit our favorite food halls and breweries from Denver (of course), Fort Collins, Boulder, Littleton, Lakewood… so many options and not enough time!

We both love local restaurants. We love to find the local hidden gems. Since we are fairly new to Denver (~20 months), we are always looking for new places to explore and try. Our visiting guests get to explore with us.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?My ex father-in-law, AP Patschke and his BBQ friends, Larry Lane, Brian Cotter, Mike Cotter and his BBQ Crew, and the Roughriders BBQ team (all in Texas) have influenced my interest, learning and passion to cook traditional TX BBQ and competing.
For the past 25+ years everyone of these guys have played a part in my evolution from enthusiast to competitor to now a Backyard Pitmaster that shares my love and passion through teaching classes.

My wife, Sarah, for understanding my passion and supporting me in all the events I participate in each year. I continue to compete a few times a year, cook for fundraisers and teach classes and private events about 6-10 times a month.

My 2 sons, Colee and Wyatt for being my side kicks throughout my evolution and now they are becoming good pitmasters themselves. They love to cook and compete.

My 2 daughters are my in-house taste-testers. They are beginning to show interest in cooking. They love good BBQ!

Website: https://learn2bbq.info, and https://colorado.brisketu.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backyardpitmasters_co/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/backyardpitmasters.co

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/backyard-pitmasters-colorado-denver

Other: We are Franchise #1 of Backyard Pitmasters / BrisketU from Texas. We are the only franchise – testing out the system with the founders. We own the rights to Colorado. There are original sites for all the social media for the main business… the listings above are our local CO links.

Image Credits
Backyard Pitmasters Colorado

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutColorado is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.