Hi, my name is Dave and my lovely wife’s name is Jayne.  We both come from families that love to cook.  My parents were great cooks, but when I was growing up if you weren’t at the table come dinner time you fixed your own, so my interest in cooking was born out of necessity.   As the years passed Jayne and I did a lot of experimenting and just couldn’t help trying new stuff.  We also found a mutual love for the “hot stuff” so needless to say we like spicy.  Then along came a friend of mine, Bob, who had a BBQ team (Grate Mistakes) and ask me to help him at a contest and I said yes.  Little did I know it was the American Royal , this is when I got hooked on competition cooking.  So Jayne, I and my two daughters formed a team (Big Daddy and his little grillers).  This was a blast and we had some good family fun and were an okay team.  But as all good things it came to an end because somewhere in that time my little grillers grew up.  So enter my sisters (Deb and Sue), some friends and a few brews at the American Royal and a new team was formed.  Short Bus BBQ Crew (did I mention that I had bought a small bus and converted it into a place to prep food out of the elements) is our new banner.  As competition cookers we learned that most of those we compete against (probably around 90-95%) turn out really good food and on any given day could collect ribbons.  But there are as many tastes as there are cooks, which is good because variety is the spice of life.

Now as to why we opened a store specializing in spices, knives and cooking.  As you can see from above we are ate up (no pun intended) with trying different taste.  We try most everything we can because life is way too short to eat bland food.  So Jayne and I kicked this idea around for about 5-10 years.  I always said that when the little grillers got out of school we would do it.  Well, in May my better half reminded me that my youngest was graduating.  Don’t you hate it when your wife has a great memory and is supportive of your dream.  So off we go to Cleveland (actually a Suburb of Cleveland) to a knife sharpening school even though I thought I knew all about it.  Well turns out I wasn’t so smart and all these years I think I was actually making my knives duller.  When we returned we rented a space in our hometown of Spring Hill, Ks. in the old historic part and Slice and Spice was born.