Ron Locke, Author, Chef & CEO, ChuckWag Productions
By Alex Vaughn
Ron Locke, better known as the “Chuckwagon Cowboy”, can be found on Youtube & Facebook.
How long have you been here? What brought you to South Florida?
I’ve lived in South Florida since 1990, from Racine, Wisconsin. The initial attraction to the sunshine state was the sun, ocean and more relaxed lifestyle. I vacationed in Fort Lauderdale on spring break in the 80’s and knew someday the area would be my home.
Please tell Agenda readers about your business.
I am known as “The Chuckwagon Cowboy”. Cooking has always been one of my biggest passions in life ever since I was 5 years old.
Throughout the years, I did catering jobs on the side of my 60 hour a week corporate job I held to maintain my interest
in the culinary arts.
When I was laid off from my company in 2010, I used the free time in between looking for work to pen my forthcoming cookbook coming out this fall and started to develop a cooking show, “The Chuckwagon Cowboy,” which can be seen currently on YouTube.
I’m also days away from releasing my own website and also continue to cater parties as well, when time allows me to.
I formed the company ChuckWag Productions in June of 2011 to umbrella all of my growing culinary ventures.
How long have you had your business and how is it going?
I started “The Chuckwagon Cowboy” cooking show with a couple demo episodes in the winter of 2011. After getting a lot of praise on the two shows, and taking some time to get some upgraded equipment and resources, I decided to create the show full time with 26 episodes each and the first episode debuted on May 26th, 2011. The show is getting close to the middle of Season One currently.
The show is doing fantastic and grows viewership with each new episode. I am currently being shown on TV on KPVM in Pahrump, NV, as part of their local human interest show. I also have been picked up by a web TV station and in negotiations with two more TV stations.
What niche did you feel was missing, that you started your business?
I think you always try to turn a tragedy into a triumph and that’s how I look at being laid off and living in these hard economic times. This allowed me to reinvent myself and take something that I’ve always enjoyed doing and turn in into a career. So, if you want to say in my circumstance what the missing “niche” was, it was always time and security of a Monday – Friday job and not having the time to devote to creating your own business.
How does your business benefit the community?
In many ways! I open the door for men and women who never entered a kitchen before or have very little cooking experience to see for themselves just how easy it is to prepare a delicious recipe in very little time and trouble with a few basic ingredients. My cooking method is based on the K.I.S.S. (Keepin’ It Short & Simple} way of cooking. There are a lot of wonderful chefs out there who prepare these fancy Five Star meals and do a great job at it, but for the common person, it’s very intimidating to try to recreate and also very expensive. My recipes are very “blue collar style comfort foods”. These are what my momma prepared for our family and what I’ve adapted from her basic recipes into my own creations.
They are economical and easy to create and my recipes and videos are very basic and inviting to the viewer, taking them step by step through the entire process. I also invite parents to get their children involved into the process as well in my videos as I was introduced at 5 years old from my momma. It’s all about the family getting back together again; working and talking with each other again in a positive and educational way!
What advantages do you feel there are having a business within the gay community?
Well, I can certainly tell you that being gay doesn’t come with a cooking gene! I know many gay and lesbian people that have come to me for help and guidance with cooking, baking and grilling. One of my future goals is to become more involved in the local South Florida gay community by offering workshops on basic cooking 101 with my K.I.S.S. method of cooking!
What disadvantages do you feel there are?
For my business, I don’t see any. If you can develop some basic cooking skills along with one or two “in the pocket” recipes to dazzle and impress your family, friends and associates with, you’ve got a great base for enjoying the culinary arts! Plus the many compliments you’ll receive from your fantastic recipe will propel you back in the kitchen to create even more wonderful dishes. Gay or straight, everyone should be able to use a stove top or oven!
How would you identify your management approach? Iron Fist or more Flexible? What do you see as the advantages to your approach?
Being a manager for many years in my corporate career, I always expected excellence, and sometimes that meant having to get tough when the tough times were upon the department, but I was always open to communication and constructive suggestions to improve upon that excellence. My team was always cognizant and appreciative to the “Open Door” policy I had. So, I guess you could say my style was “Firm, but Communicable”.
The advantages to my approach were that everyone was accountable for their roles in the department and learned a sense of planning and timing which each role interacted with each other. Also, having an “open door” management approach allowed my team to feel comfortable about discussing either openly in a team meeting or one on one about issues or suggestions relating to their job or department.
What do you feel about the idea that the summer season is slow? How do you combat this pressure?
For me it couldn’t be HOTTER with the amount of momentum my company ventures are taking off, and it’s not looking to cool off anytime soon with the release of my long awaited book, “Cooking With Momma – A Collection of Short Stories & Recipes from the Hearth of The Chuckwagon Cowboy,” due out this fall (targeting for October) and new and exciting ideas already in production for an exciting Season Two of “The Chuckwagon Cowboy” cooking show that will start Jan 2012.
How do you think the community as a whole responds to your business?
I’ve heard nothing but great things from the community. I have a lot of friends in South Florida and through meeting with them or on any of the social media sites (Facebook, Twitter or YouTube), they are so pleased at what I am doing for everyone and giving people something back of the knowledge I’ve amassed over 40 years!
In your lifetime, how do you feel the gay community has changed?
Yes. I was a late teen through the AIDS outbreaks in the early 80’s and that took promiscuous sex to a more cautious level with many gay men. Over the past few years, I have seen a return to that lifestyle again with the great HIV drugs that are out now and the fear that what was once a death sentence is now much more controllable, so I can see how the
promiscuousness has come back over the past couple years. Also, I think the biggest
challenge the gay community is facing now Is the marriage act discussions going on across the county and how that will play out to gay couples over the next 5 years.
Do you see a positive change in attitudes towards the gay community?
Certainly! I personally see more acceptance of it as the generations pass and get older. We will always have bigotry in our society. What the gay community needs to do is rise above that and work with the straight community to find common goals and boundaries that we can all accept and flourish in!
Do you believe there is credence to the idea a business geared towards the gay market is cutting out a major section of the wider community?
Yes and no. I don’t think just because you embrace and include the gay demographic as a primary focal point of your business that it will eliminate the straight or wider approach to your business, but I do believe a good business can interweave various demographics into a successful business.
How do you minimize that effect?
If you balance it outright by providing a service that will appeal to a cross section of people, I think you can create a much broader and successful business for everyone and not feel you have to eliminate a certain demographic.
What plans do you have for the future?
I will be working on my next book of recipes and short stories starting in the winter of 2012. I already have a working title and
penning some notes for recipe chapters. I also will be filming Season Two of “The Chuckwagon Cowboy” cooking show along with finalizing my website, which should be released in early September. I have an idea there will be A LOT more coming in the next year, stay tuned!
If you had an open check book, what business would you go into next?
I’d stay right where I am at! I couldn’t be happier with what I am doing right now, although the open check book would make things happen a lot faster with some better “bells and whistles”. For now though, I’m enjoying life in “Chuckwagon Country”!
Entrepreneur Series Profiles for The Florida Agenda Over the month of August, we will be highlighting entrepreneurs of the community and getting their take on building a successful business within the community.
