Meet DJ William

Today, we’d like to introduce you to DJ William . DJ was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Shannon Jackson.

DJ , thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to bring our readers up to speed – can you introduce yourself and share your story?
Hi there I’m DJ, in 2020 I decided I needed to change careers, I was a landscape Foreman at the time, while the pay was nice the work was intense, and a lot on the body, and I knew I couldn’t do it forever. With having 2 young kids at the time I knew I needed something new. So with cooking and smoking meats for family and friends they were all telling me I needed to start a business and make money doing what I love, I decided to use my GI bill from the Army, and go to culinary school, to get some paperwork behind my name and become a chef. I enrolled in Paragon Culinary school here in Colorado Springs and the journey began. I talked with my master chef a lot about wanting to have a bbq food truck one day and run it with my family… after I was in school about a year chef Victor Mathews (the dean of the school and master chef) invited me to open a bbq stand at his distillery in green mountain falls, The Black Bear Distillery. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that! So we did, Last Bite BBQ, we would smoke meats and prep then load everything up and head to the Distillery on Saturdays in the summer, as time went on my wife an I had our 3rd daughter, and the end of Culinary school was coming to an end. One day while scrolling Facebook I saw a post, well 3 friends tagged me in the post saying The Great Food Truck Race Season 15 was looking for contestants, I said shooooot I want a food truck, I love what I do n love to talk, why not? Well I applied with my 2 good friends that I met in culinary school, Houston and Gio Greenlee. And we made it! We made the cut! And that is when Southern Pride Asian Fusion was born. We went on the show and got to bring some great food to the people, and I was doing what I loved. We ended up getting eliminated 5th in the competition, we left our mark for sure! Everyone loved the Veteran team from Colorado. That was just the beginning.. we came home and I knew I needed to get my way into a truck one way or another to bring the food back to the springs. So I searched and searched and eventually found someone that let us lease to own their truck, so I had to jump on it if I wanted my dream to come to life.. so I bit off more than we could chew and agreed to wild payments as a new business… then 5.5 months later and lots and lots of hours on the truck and away from my 4 ladies we were able to pay off the truck completely..I kept telling myself the work is going to be worth it, keep going, don’t give up, kept thinking of my 3 girls, kept thinking if I fail and we lose the truck, it’s gonna be fine I’ll start over and do it again.. the stress, the arguments, the tears the happiness, the joy, the excitement.. it was finally there, were are now owners of our own food truck Southern Pride Asian Fusion BBQ! I’m not slowing down anytime soon and seeing where I can take this amazing adventure. We have been doing monthly multi course dinners with cocktail pairings, with new menus each event all created from my mind somehow haha.. as the 2023 season gets rolling we look forward to serving all those we can. In closing we want to say thank you to all those that have been supporting our family ran business. Chase your dreams, cause they aren’t going to chase themselves!!!

They say if you do a job you love you will never work a day in your life, I never believed it till now, if you couldn’t tell I love what I do and wouldn’t change it!!
Chef DJ

Please tell us more about your brand, Southern Pride Asian Fusion BBQ
On our food truck we are bringing together southern style bbq cooking and all different Asian foods, our number one item is probably our Brisket Eggrolls, and we are the only ones, or at least 1st ones to do Brisket Eggrolls, we also have an amazing Chicken Sandwich the SPAF Chicken Sandwich! It has Sriracha Mayo, Wasabi Nori, twice fried chicken thigh, Asian slaw and bbq sauce! Lots of layers but works really well together! A big thing we are doing now is our multi course dinners, I’m a classically French trained chef so they get real exciting. Come check us out.

Shannon Jackson has been a great friend to us and I know you’ve got a great relationship as well. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about Shannon and your experience with them.
I first met Shannon at Paragon Culinary school where she was an instructor, then when we started our bbq stand we worked along side Shannon at the blackbear distillery. As time went on and I graduated and started our truck, I had an idea of doing Elevated dinners and thought the bear would be the perfect location, because it’s in a small mountain town, who doesn’t want whiskey and bbq, especially in that setting. So I came up with a menu and sent it to Shannon and she built a cocktail menu to pair with it, and it went perfect! We are having our 3rd event together for st Patrick’s day this year and it is over halfway sold out within 40 hours of opening reservations. Shannon has been a great person to bounce ideas off of and I try my best to do the same for her. So with that these are some exciting fun events, if you get an opportunity to come to one please do!

Instagram: Spafbbq

Facebook: Southern Pride Asian Fusion BBQ

Image Credits:
Chef djs journey