We knew we had something special and that it was the direction we were meant to go.
While barrel cooking is nothing new, never before has a cooker been brought to the mass market in a form that is both affordable and extremely easy to use. The meat-hanging method in the design of the Pit Barrel® eliminates the guesswork and has established a new paradigm in outdoor cooking.
In 2003, Pit Barrel® founder Noah Glanville served as a Navy Corpsman attached to a Marine Corps unit in Iraq. Upon their return, he and his unit were welcomed home by a group of veterans who hosted a barbecue in their honor. “Older veterans greeted us with a barbecue. I remember the smell of the charcoal, hot dogs and hamburgers,” Glanville says. “It’s a good, familiar smell, and I knew that I was finally home.”
Subsequently, Noah would return to Iraq and Afghanistan as a private security contractor.
PTSD is something a lot of guys don’t want to talk about.
Time spent overseas took its toll, and the road from Glanville’s departure from the military to the launch of his company was a long one. He suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an often debilitating challenge for those left to cope with the after effects of sometimes inconceivable experiences faced in battle.
Despite knowing that the memories would forever remain, and recognizing the obstacles that he would face in starting a company, Glanville made the conscious choice to focus on and leverage his entrepreneurial spirit as his outlet.
“We worked with different types and sizes of drums,” he recalls. “We wanted to get this thing right.” Based on his concept, Noah would build 29 prototypes, continually adjusting the airflow and charcoal basket until he was satisfied. In late 2010, when he knew without doubt that the product was ready, he and his wife, Amber, founded the company – and what is known today as the Pit Barrel® Cooker was born.
Glanville recalls the early days, “There are a lot of costs and a ton of risk to starting a business from scratch, but with faith, hard work, and people we could trust along the way, we knew we could follow our hearts and make our passion a reality.”
Pit Barrel® Cooker Company is Family Owned
The Glanvilles would exhaust every resource they had at their disposal in pursuit of this dream, but based on consistently rave reviews from novices to industry professionals, there is no question that the result is exactly what they set out to achieve. The Pit Barrel® is not just a product; it’s a passion shared by Noah, Amber, our team, and our customers. It is with humble appreciation that we leverage this passion to continually strive to meet and exceed the expectations of Pit Barrel® Cooker enthusiasts, the industry, and ourselves.
