Billy Howell, Co-Founder & CEO, The Cajun Turkey Company : "A Turkey With Attitude—and a Business With Legs "

It's good to have you with us.

I'm really happy to be here.

Thanks for having me.

So like I say, you're not a startup.

I mean, you, you've, you've shipped a quarter of a million turkeys.

How did you get in this business? Cause when I was looking at your, your background, you're, you're in the apparel business.

You used to go to the apparel market.

Yeah, it's a God thing, you know, but, um, I love to cook.

I got transferred from New Orleans area to Dallas.

And a catalyst, you know, what we started doing, I started frying turkeys for my friends when we'd come over and watch Saints games or LSU games, Ole Miss games, college games and things.

And on some of these occasions, you know, having a couple of cocktails and beers and boy hound dog your turkeys are really good man we should open a store and sell them oh yeah man that's a great idea i think we should do that you know and then my buddy paul called me about a week later and said so let's do this and i went paul you're in commercial real estate i'm in the apparel industry i don't know anything about the food industry This is in 1994.

And he said, well, call the health department and find out what we can or can't do.

And I said, OK.

So I did.

We kind of got the runaround.

I said, Paul, I can't make hide nor hair what we can do legally.

And he goes, hound dog, let's just make up a name, Spicy Cajun Turkey Company.

You fry the turkeys in your garage or backyard, and we can advertise through my office, and you can put your phone number on there at home.

And we'll take orders.

And I went, well, that's a grand idea.

So that's what we did.

That first year, I cooked 600 turkeys in my garage in the backyard and patio.

This

is the way garages all over the South get burned to the ground as people, novices, deep-frying turkeys in their backyard or in their garage.

So you had to go to school pretty quickly on this.