You gotta love these guys. Lonnie “BUBBA” Smith puts his cell phone number on their logo and it goes on every cooker they make. He calls it the BBQ Hot Line. When you buy one of his cookers, you become part of the Bubba Grill Family. All these fun overtures that embody the spirit of BBQ wouldn’t mean as much without being attached to such beautifully crafted and engineered cooking equipment.

Smith spent 31 years as a process engineer for high speed manufacturing and has extensive knowledge of vacuum technology and design as applied to manufacturing processes. He feels vacuum air movement is the opposite of smoker air movement. “Cooking is not just radiant heat”; he states” it’s moving hot air effectively”. Indeed they are known for large reverse flow smokers where the chimney is located right above the firebox. Hot air from the firebox is guided along the bottom of the large cylindrical cookbox, then reverses course and moves across the upper area and escapes out the chimney on the same side where it came from.

Smith and his son, Lee, built a “Pappa Grill” for Father’s Day in 1991. In 2004 they assembled the Bubba Team composed of friends and family and began winning competitions and doing catering. Bubba Grills offers large capacity cookers and a couple smaller backyard models. They welcome your ideas for custom cookers. Smith invites buyers who pick up their Bubbas to join the team and cook with him for a couple days before heading home.