The Faces of the Golden Strip wants you to meet James Hester….
Q: Please tell us a little bit about you, your family, and your background.
A: My wife’s name is Marketa. We’ve been married now for two years but we’ve been together for 5 years. My father is the president of Wholy Smoke, I’m an appointed partner but as far as building a brand of Wholy smoke I had no interest in it initially at all. I’m totally an heir to the Wholy Smoke, thrown in if you will. It was through a friendship with Leonard Pitts, and his big support of Wholy Smoke. He orders his food all the time. He came across this building and we decided to marry two companies and make one. Wholy Smoke Partnership Group was formed from LP enterprise, I am LP enterprise and Wholy Smoke. There are three owners here, John Hester, Leonard Pitts, and James Hester. I’m the guy you are gonna see all the time when you come in here. I’m the guy you going to see if you have any trouble or need anything. I’m the guy you’re gonna deal with mostly, but these guys are somewhere working terribly hard, keeping me from worrying about stuff that I normally would have to worry about.
Q: What inspired you or led you to your current career?
A: Long story short, I moved to Texas about 15 years ago. I had a commercial cleaning service that dealt on a corporate level with apartments, turning apartments over from one tenant to the next. We did everything from getting them move in ready and that’s from paint to the cleaning and everything. I was sitting in the office one day and this guy came in. He said “I like you, I like the way you operate and I really would love to hire you.” I never really cooked barbecue before because my grandfather and my father had that covered. This guy told me about this big $50 million truck stop that he was building in Tyler, Texas, and how he wanted me to be a part of that team. On weekends, I was a manager at Target, and a musician and I had this other business going so I really wasn’t interested and especially after he offered me $8 an hour to come to do it. I couldn’t sleep that night, something was telling me to go get that $8 an hour. I was there a month, when the manager quit, and then in the midst of my training, I was the next person in line and we turned a nothing business into a $300,000 a month operation at a Truck Plaza in Tyler, Texas. Quickly we became known as the best Texas smokehouse. My real knowledge of barbecue was trial and error and my daddy coached me over the telephone because he was here in Greenville and that’s how I kind of got pushed into it. The short version is that my father has always had a passion for barbecue, he’s always done it. And again, I stressed that the only reason I ventured further into it was because of the opportunity that was presented to me when I was in Texas.
Q: What do you love most about what you do?
A: I’m a big guy, and I do love to eat. I love food that’s full of flavor, anything from vegetarian vegan, to lamb chops to cowboy rib eye steaks. I think the real enjoyment is sharing that love with people when they try my food.
Q: How long have you been doing this in this career?
A: 17 years since I’ve been in it full time. I left BMW about 6 years ago and I’ve been doing it full time for 6 years now in the food truck industry.
Q: Have you ever lived in the Golden Strip area?
A: No, I have not. But my food truck has been around Simpsonville, especially during the pandemic. My brother and I are graduates of Mauldin High School.
Q: Where are you originally from?
A: My parents moved here from Clinton, SC. My father is a pastor, and accepted an assignment right behind the GE plant in 1979. He is now 84 years old and he’s been preaching since he was 17.
Q; Describe the strangest or funniest incident that you’ve experienced in your business?
A: I think the funniest and probably the strangest one happens all the time. People ask me, “what is beef brisket?” Once I explain to them what beef brisket is, they ask me, “does it comes from the pig or the cow?” I absolutely think it is hilarious and I laugh every time. It’s so funny.
Q: What’s the best advice that’s ever been given to you?
A: As I said, my father’s been preaching since he was 17 and when I was a little guy I always wanted to be around my dad and his friends. I eventually started playing the organ and traveling with my daddy on revivals and crusades. I think the best advice that he’s ever given me was always be true to yourself. He said that for some people, it can be easy to lie to other people, but remember that when you start lying to yourself, you are in big trouble.
Q: What is something on your bucket list?
A: Wholy Smoke Mauldin is on my bucket list. Helping this community grow, maintaining it, being a good tenant of Mauldin, and helping someone else grow their business are all part of the plan. We do have plans, we’re not just here to grow profits, we’re here to help grow Greenville, Mauldin, and Simpsonville. Our bucket list is vast. It is it’s really time for us to leave our footprints on the scene so that’s what we’re planning on doing.
Q: What made you focus specifically on the Golden Strip area and Mauldin in particular as your brick and mortar?
A: We bought our first food truck just to run caterings out of it as the restaurant grew. We were known then as ribs and such, but it just wasn’t a good situation. The building was questionable and frankly, at nightfall, the clientele was not interested in stopping. Some years went by, and I thought if we were going to move it would have to be the right situation, the right commercial, high traffic piece of property and it would literally have to fall in my lap, and that is what happened. Did we target the Mauldin area specifically? No, but when we came to Mauldin with this opportunity, we didn’t realize that it was the perfect spot for us to do what we wanted to do.
Q: When are you planning to launch?
A: We launched last May 15th with our curbside and outside dining.
Q: Please tell us about the food.
A: Our barbecue has been our focus over the last six years. We do a dry rub barbecue, Texas-style. Texas-style means that we rub it, we marinate it, we cook it low and slow and it’s not pre sauced. It has to be a good piece of meat before any sauce hits it. We are a barbecue restaurant for short, but we are really grill masters, we’re pit masters. We specialize in a variety of foods like beef brisket, pork, spare ribs, baby back ribs, beef ribs, Rosemary smoked chicken, skinless chicken breasts, sausage, smoked red snapper, and smoked salmon. We also have some fried foods like fried lobster tails and we are also reaching out to vegetarians and vegans. One of our weekly specials at some point will be a vegan pasta with all vegan inspired items in it, with little pieces of veggie protein that will feel like meat in your mouth. It will have a good marinara, and will be topped with a plant-based cheese. When you get ready to go out to eat, we don’t want you to be split between choosing us and someone else so we want to target the whole family and have something for the kids and make this a really nice family restaurant and atmosphere.
Q: Do y’all make your own sauces?
A: We have an original sauce, it’s tomato-based. We have another red sauce that is a spin off of our original red sauce, but it’s a little tangier, a bit more flavorful. I stayed away from mustard-based barbecues for years because I thought all of it was just mustard with pepper in it. We have a mango habanero sauce that has a nice fuel to it. We’ve got five different sauces here including a vinegar-based sauce we don’t produce, we’ll buy it from a vendor.
Q: Even for friends or family, what is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
A: I’m very musically inclined. A few of my customers happened to catch me at Greenville Centre Stage a few years ago. I had a leading role in a play that ran for three months called ‘Through the Night.’ No one knows that I’m an actor, no one knows that I’m a musician, they just think that I’m the barbecue guy.
Q: What do you play as far as instruments?
A: I play the organ and started off by playing the drums at my father’s church. It was really funny when I first came out on the stage because I heard somebody say, that’s the barbecue guy! Also, I’ve worked part-time for years now at Beasley’s Funeral home and play the organ.
Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?
A: I spend all of my extra time at home with my wife. When we’re not wasting time at home, we’re traveling. When we want amazing seafood kind of quick we’ll hit the coast. We’ll ride along the coast, and hit places like Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Savannah, and Jacksonville. I married my wife and when we went on our honeymoon, we took my mom and daddy with us. It’s really hard to rest here, I don’t relax here. When I go home, I sleep very well at night, but my mind starts moving at about 5:45, and at six o’clock I’m up and ready to go. When my wife is sick of that early morning routine and days of go, go, go, she takes me out of town.
Q: Do you know anyone else that you would like to see nominated as a Face of the Golden Strip or anyone that works or lives in Simpsonville, Mauldin, or Fountain?
A: I mentioned the Beasley’s. Mr. Marion Beasley and his brother had a funeral home in Laurens. Marion decided he wanted his own funeral home and that very house where they sit now is where he started a Beasley Funeral Home. Do you do churches? I would nominate the Change Church pastor, his name is Zachary Brewster. He is also a business owner, he is the CEO of Bridge Builder, a human resource consulting company founded in 2013.
