DON WILEY

D. WILEY, INC.
200 Hy Rd.
Buda, TX 78610
(512) 431-6330

“Each pit that I build I number. And so I’ve got a record of every pit that I’ve built since 1981…I told my wife—I said I would retire at 400 pits. That didn’t happen. My customers wouldn’t let me.” – Don Wiley

Since 1981, Don Wiley has built over 1000 custom-made barbecue pits for businesses, college football teams, and individuals in and around central Texas and as far away as New Jersey and Colorado. Each pit is numbered and built to customer specifications. Some of his pits can cook up to 90 briskets or 1000 turkey legs at a time, depending on the needs of the customer. When asked what qualities distinguish a Texas-made pit from others, Wiley is quick to point out that Texas pits just “cook right.”

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Don Wiley talking about the different kinds of pits he sells and to whom. Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Don Wiley
Date: June 26, 2007
Location: D. Wiley, Inc. – Buda, TX
Fieldwork Director: Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt
Fieldwork Team: Marsha Abrahams

Produced in association with the American Studies Department at The University of Texas at Austin and the Central Texas Barbecue Association.

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Marsha Abrahams: This is Marsha Abrahams. I’m sitting here with Mr. Don Wiley at D. Wiley, Incorporated in Buda, Texas. Today is June 26, 2007 and, um, we’re going to get started with the interview. So, Mr. Wiley, if you could tell me when and where you were born—

Don Wiley: I was born in Stockdale, Texas about thirty-six miles from San Antone [Antonio].

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So, how long have you been working with pits and doing this as a profession?

I built my first pit in 1981, and each time I build a pit I number it. So, the pits that I’ve numbered since right today, is 1072 that I’ve put on wheels. 

Wow, that’s pretty amazing. So what made you interested in getting into this profession, and what sort of sparked your enthusiasm for it?

In 1981, there was a man that I was—I was, uh—well he came by my shop and he saw me building a pit for myself. So, I finished that pit, and he came back two days later and he said, “I want that pit.” So, I sold it to him. And then two days later he came by. He wanted another pit. The same man, I never will forget him. His name was Ed Black. So, three, uh, three days or four days later he wanted another pit. So, I sold my first three pits in 1981. Of course, I had another business since 1982 when I sold it. And then I went full-time into the pit business. […] Well—and when I sold that business in ‘82, I walked to work. And really my job was the pits, the barbecue pits. And since then I’ve just—I just like doing what I do.

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All right. Um, could you tell us what your most common type of job is?

Uh, mostly, uh, we build just a shorter pit, uh, say a pit that will cook twenty briskets. And this for, uh, mostly people that go to cook-offs and they want a shorter type pit, not the great big commercial type pits. So, we have a lot of business there. About, I would say, half of the business is for those type of people and referral business.

Now the people participating in the cook-offs, are those individuals or are they business owners who just want a smaller pit to use for those occasions?

Well, both of them are—sometimes they’re just individuals. They are people that go together and buy a pit. Uh, they’re people, uh, that do not like to borrow other people’s pits. So, we have a chance to equip them with what they need.

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All right. Um, could you take a minute to describe, sort of, the range of pits and how they operate and, sort of, the process that really goes into preparing food in one of your pits?

In building one of these pits, we start out with a round cylinder and we put a firebox on it. We put, uh, heat diverters inside there. So, this would give you equal heat all the way down your cylinder. We take pride into saying that, when you build a fire in our firebox, that the fire is free-flowing smoke. In other words, the heat goes down the heat diverters and then it comes up out of the exhaust. We have a damper on the exhaust. We have a damper on the intake of the air. Uh, we have, uh, burners that we can put in these units. We have steamers that we put in these units. We have rotisserie motors. We have automatic burners that will come on with a thermostat. A lot of the people like to, uh, cook different types of—like they’ll cook a brisket, they’ll cook chickens, they’ll cook sausage, hams. Any type they want to put on this pit they can do. On the rotisserie type pit, there’s a different style in that. It has—it rotates over and over and each basket feeds the other basket with moisture. So this makes it cook real, uh, smooth. It makes it have a good flavor.  And we do not have to, uh, have steamers to moisten the meat. Uh, I take pride in some of our pits. We just—some of them just don’t need steamers and some of them there are customers just want them to have so they’ll have hot water. But most of the time they do not need steamers, in our type of pits.

All right. Could you describe the difference between a smoker and a pit?

A smoker does not get as hot as a pit. You can—you can regulate a smoker and not—not have the heat that goes into that smoker. Uh, mine is a pit. And it serves as a smoker and a pit. So we—we also—we have those type of boxes that we put up for smokers and have shelves in them that people want. Of course, we custom build every one of them. But we use our type of system in all of our pits. They might want something other, but when it comes right down to building a pit, it takes about fifty-two hours for two men to build one pit. So, we take pride in each one of our pits and we, uh, check it out before it leaves and make sure everything’s fine, and then they go off hopefully a happy customer.

What would you say has changed the most over the years since you started your business? Have you changed anything about the pits or have they remained the same throughout that period?

Definitely my first pit, we still use the same air intake on our firebox. We use a little bit different type. We have, uh, heat diverters that we put in 1983. Uh, and we’ve been using those same type heat diverters. And we use the same type intake. And we—and the exhaust, we use the same type. We do not, uh—we haven’t changed that method since 1981. We like that free-flowing smoke and we do not trap our smokes in our exhaust. Uh, we have those grates that we put in there. All of the, uh—all of the shelves that we put in there is removable. All of the, uh, grates or the heat diverters can be raised. And it is attached to that top so that it’s easy cleaning inside the barrel because cleanliness is very important when you’re cooking, uh, on some of our pits. And out pits, uh, we take pride, we have—we have drains in them. If you—when you—we always tell our customers that when you heat your pit up spray some Wesson oil on this pit. This tempers the metal and it also keeps your pit moist on the outside. And you do this and you’ll have a longer lasting pit.

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What goes into the design of the pit? Do you do individual designs for individual customers or do you have sort of a general design that you modify based on the customization that’s necessary?

My design goes with all of my pits. And then I customize what they were asking for. Uh, if they’re asking for burners on the side or a box underneath their pit to put their, uh, seasoning, salt, and things like that, we put that under there too. Uh, but, uh, basic Wiley pits is strictly my design. I’ve designed it. It works well, so we don’t, uh—only thing we do extra is maybe have the shelves that, uh, swing-out shelves so you can get up closer to your pits. We have, uh, doors that—that we have ballasts on them, which means if they’re too heavy then we—we can make them to where they’re feather-light doors. Uh, we have hinges that will last for long time. We have, uh, designs of the trailers we enclose and make them fancy-like. We’ll put, uh, stainless steel around them.  We’ll put, uh, different colors of the pits. We’ll put any type of colors, but it’s still basic Wiley pit.

I noticed when I walked in, the pit sitting outside has the Longhorn symbol on it [Laughs]. Is that something you regularly do, or was that specific to that pit?

Well, this pit that we’re talking about is going to Colorado. Uh, he used to live in Buda, [Texas], fifteen years ago, and he’s always wanted one of my pits. So, he finally broke down and said, “I want one of your pits, and so would you bring it to Colorado to me?” So, we are supposed to take this pit to Colorado probably in the next week or two. My wife and I enjoy, uh, seeing the country. So we’re delivering this pit and, uh, as far as the Longhorns—yes, this, uh, customer, his name is Brad Shaw, and he used to live here, and he was a Longhorn, and he wanted it dressed up with the Longhorns and other things that we do.

So would you say, generally, the most typical client for you is commercial or residential? Or if you could just describe your sort of most typical, common client?

Our people that we—we deliver to is mostly catering type people that has cater jobs. For instance, we have one caterer that ordered four pits from us. He has a rotisserie type pit that will cook ninety briskets at one time on eight shelves. He also has a smaller roto-pit that will cook thirty briskets at one time. It is propane fired. It also has a firebox on it for wood. Uh, most of our regular customers are, uh, customers that like to go to cook-offs and see if they can get the best results on my pits. And I’ve had a lot of them that come in first, but that’s—that’s a lot of times it’s not all pit. It’s the guy that’s seasoning up the meat that they’re cooking. We have very few, uh, clients that—that are individually, uh, motivated, like backyard pits. We just—we just don’t build a whole lot of those. We don’t have a lot of requests. Um, we take pride in our customers that like to go to cook-offs, our caterers, our restaurant people. We like to take care of them pretty quick.

You mentioned that you were about to deliver that pit in the next week or two. How often do people from out of state order your pits?

I would say the last—longest was in Cape May, New Jersey. We delivered a pit there. We dropped off one in, uh, Georgia. We took another pit to the Georgia Bulldogs. They, uh—the baseball team has it right behind the, uh, batters. Of course the Georgia Bulldogs, it has to be red. So, we put red and we put a big “G” on the back of the pit. Uh, Cape May is a restaurant owner that heard of us over the e-mail, internet. We delivered one to, uh, California, Oregon, Utah. This is just a few of the states that I—I think there’s one in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So, there’s another one—a lot of them in Texas. We just go all over. But I—that’s just a few that I can remember right now.

Would you say there’s anything distinctive about a Texas pit?

It cooks right.

All right. Well, is there anything that we missed that you wanted to mention that’s sort of unique to your business? Or that you would like to share with other people?

Well, I started out building the first pit. And each pit that I build I number. And, so I’ve got a record of every—every pit that I’ve built since 1981. And each one of those pits is by the year. And we try to put a year on each one of those units that go out. We put a number. I do not know how many pits that went out that didn’t have a number. So our—our true count of 1072 is an accurate number, but it could be a whole lot more. I told my wife—I said I would retire at 400 pits. That didn’t happen. My customers wouldn’t let me.

Do you have a new number?

Uh, no.

Well, good. That’s what we like to hear. It seems like people really love your products and clearly they come from all over the country to order them and enjoy them. So, thank you so much.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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