Mel Hollis started barbecuing, Texas style, around the same time he started working in the wood flooring business—that is to say, he's been doing it a long time. A couple years ago he married his interests when he constructed his own trailer-mounted BBQ pit, like the ones featured on televised BBQ cookoffs, and installed a wood floor on it made of Brazilian cherry.
Hollis, who now works as southwest regional sales manager for Johnson Hardwood, says Brazilian cherry was once considered the Rolls Royce of wood flooring material. Why install such a fine wood where it's bound to get dripped on? He says it's dense. He says it's a good outdoors wood. Then he says, "and because I can." There's the cowboy rub.
Hollis takes a similar approach to his barbecuing, choosing to cart his pit and his award-winning secret recipe only where he really wants to go. Right now, that means fundraisers, where he has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Ronald McDonald House Charities and wounded veteran charities.
While the wood goes unnoticed at most weekend BBQ tournaments, sometimes there is a wood industry person who identifies the species and can't believe it. Then Hollis tells them what he does for a living, and it clicks. "I'm in the wood business. I had to do something cool."
