How Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce Honors Family Tradition

Any barbecue or grilling enthusiast who has spent time on social media in the last few years has likely come across content using Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce. Last year I first decided to give it a try when one of my favorite Instagram accounts, @eatwithme_xyz, started regularly sharing Asian-inspired recipes using the sauce.

Once I ordered my first set of Bachan’s sauces, I could not get enough of them and a few weeks later, I ordered another batch to give away to all of my friends. In no time I developed several recipes using this versatile and flavorful sauce (see our Recipe of the Week for Thai-Inspired Chicken Wings below).

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Justin Gill, founder of Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce, to learn more about the story behind the brand, how the sauce recipe was developed, and more. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Justin Gill is the founder of Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce, based in Sebastopol, California. (Photo courtesy of Bachan’s)

The Smoke Sheet: Can you give a little background on Bachan’s sauce?
Justin Gill: We’ve had our sauce in our family for multiple generations. Bachan is a Japanese American term of endearment for grandmother or granny. My Bachan is who taught my parents how to make our sauce and every year since I was a young kid, we’d get together during the holidays and make a big batch in a kettle. We would hand bottle it and deliver it to clients of our family landscaping business. Every year people would just be waiting for it to show up and would just be so excited. After every holiday season people would show up at our office with empty bottles and they would want to buy some sauce or buy the recipe. I just saw the high demand for the product since we had this heirloom family sauce. I just kind of tucked that in the back of my mind that I’d like to bring that sauce to market someday. I was kind of an entrepreneurial kid.

TSS: How did you get started in founding the company?
JG: I had a clothing line and that was going really well, but then the recession hit in 2009 and I ended up having to shut that business down. I went back to doing landscape design and consulting and things that I'd done in the past. Fast forward to 2013, we had this beach house and I was thinking, “I want to get back to doing entrepreneurial things.” The whole weekend we were eating something with this sauce so I thought, “Okay, I want to bring this to market.” I was sitting with my Bachan and thinking about what we should call it. Then I thought ‘Bachan’s’…that would be awesome. I looked up the name and sure enough, it was available. I bought up every form of the domain name. 

Judy Yokoyama is Justin’s Bachan (a Japanese term of endearment for grandmother) and is the inspiration for Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce. (Photo courtesy of Bachan’s)

TSS: How did you end up taking your family sauce recipe and making it on a commercial scale?
JG: I started talking to formulators and co-packers in Northern California. I had zero experience in the food and beverage industry. When you are starting a new brand, they don’t take you seriously at all. Luckily, the sample that I had was a really good sample, so that kind of got me in the door. Every single one of them told me that to commercialize the recipe, you have to pasteurize it. They said, “You’re gonna need to add water to it. Your ingredients are expensive.” I took what they told me, went home, and tried it. It just changed everything about the sauce. The flavor profile, the nose, the mouthfeel, everything. I noticed that the number one ingredient for 95% of the sauces on the shelves was water. People add water first and then add all the other ingredients. The top sauces like Tabasco, A1, Huy Fong Sriracha, and other iconic legacy brands didn’t do that. I had to figure out how to not pasteurize the sauce. It took me a couple of years to figure out. I think I did 47 different variations of our formulation. Once I could make it shelf-stable, I knew I had something.

TSS: Is that when you brought the sauce to market?
JG: One of the co-packers I wanted to work with said ingredients don’t matter. All that matters is how many marketing dollars you have. That put a chip on my shoulder. One of our taglines is ‘Our Ingredients Matter.’ All of our products have minimal processing and the best products in the world are made like that. I started bottling the sauce myself and selling it to restaurants, but I saw quickly that this is not a scalable business for me. I finally found a co-packing partner that could meet our quality standards. My wife and I went down on our 15-year wedding anniversary and got our first production run done, and it was one of the best days ever. We sold to a couple of local stores. We launched our website and basically turned our whole house into a distribution center. When the pandemic hit, we were all home anyway and our kids were helping us pack orders, and we would drive to the post office. Then we got a small warehouse and instantly outgrew it. We got into Whole Foods. Just this year, we're really starting to expand out into a lot more stores. Today I think we're in around 3,500 stores, and we have another 3,000 already committed for the first half of next year. So we're growing really fast.

Bachan’s has been successful at digital marketing on social media. (Photo by Wai Chan)

TSS: You are very visible on social media. What’s the story behind that?
JG: We have this amazing community of people supporting what we're doing, commenting on all of our posts, and using our products. Someone even got a tattoo of our logo this year, which was crazy, you know? We saw a really good return on our [social media] ad spend and our kind of digital marketing efforts. We doubled down and tripled down on that and acquired a lot of new customers who all became repeat customers. Right now our team is 15 people in our town of Sebastopol. My Bachan still comments on every single one of our social posts and writes a blog for us. 

TSS: How did the pandemic affect the business?
JG: Once we saw what was going on with the demand, we knew the supply was going to get constricted. So we invested in all of our hard-to-procure materials, and we brought our bottle production that was happening in China over here to the U.S., so we wouldn't get caught in all this shipping stuff. We didn't really have any interruptions to our supply chain or operations. With other brands that were off the shelf, stores were looking for good products to fill the void and we capitalized on that.

The Bachan’s Original Japanese Barbecue Sauce is based on a family recipe that has been handed down through the generations. (Photo courtesy of Bachan’s)

TSS: The first product you brought to market was your original family recipe. Tell us about your other sauces.
JG: We never want to be a brand that has a million sauces across a bunch of different product categories. We just want to make the best sauces in the world. We launched a gluten-free sauce because we listened to our customers. We developed that one and put it out to the market and even though it’s a small part of the market, I think it’s underserved. The people that buy it really love it. The next thing we wanted to do since people really wanted some spice was a spicy sauce. We tried all kinds of different chilies and the one that gave the best flavor was fermented red jalapeno. It has a sweet heat that balances with our original formulation. At the end of 2021, we launched a yuzu [citrus-flavored] sauce, and I am really proud of that one because I started working on it two years ago. I use it almost every day. It’s really good on a ribeye or a fatty cut. The acid cuts the fat a little bit.

Bachan’s can be used with grilled and smoked meats and is versatile enough to be used in other applications as well. (Photo by Wai Chan)

TSS: As The Smoke Sheet is a barbecue newsletter, I am intrigued your sauce is marketed as a barbecue sauce. How has the reception been?
JG: Here in the United States, we have a lot of different barbecue sauces. In Japan, there are different sauces that people barbecue with but primarily, it’s a sauce like this. It's a soy-based sauce with some mirin, some sugar, and some other fresh ingredients added to the sauce. I never wanted this to be like a really obscure product that would be stuck in the Asian side of the store that people really understand. When I grew up, my dad had a Weber with charcoal on the patio and we barbecued all the time with a sauce like this. So everything just made sense to bring to market a Japanese barbecue sauce that didn't exist here in the U.S. that could also be used for all sorts of other things.

TSS: What is next for the brand and what do you want to do in the next year or two?
JG: We might make one or two more sauces. We’re really thoughtful with our product innovation, and we want to make something that is special. We don’t want to just put something out. We don’t want to break the trust we have with our customers. So we’re going to get our core sauces into more stores. We want to make our sauces available to more people.

–

Thank you to Justin for sharing the story behind his family’s barbecue sauce and discussing how he started Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce. Be sure to check out the brand's products and recipes on their website, and follow it on Instagram and Facebook.

Ryan Cooper (BBQ Tourist) 
Co-Founder, The Smoke Sheet

Thanks to our sponsor DennyMike's, which offers outstanding seasonings and rubs for every situation. Learn more about DennyMike's here.

—Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis was named as the top BBQ joint in Missouri on Southern Living’s new reader-focused list of The South’s Best Barbecue. (Photo by Ryan Cooper)—

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Each year, Southern Living magazine publishes a survey of tens of thousands of readers to name. Author and historian Robert Moss wrote the introduction for the list this year and emphasizes in his that he did not pick these joints personally, some of which are sure to be controversial in barbecue circles. “Southern Living readers love their barbecue, and they hold strong opinions about which joint serves the best in each state. Their picks this year are a mix of old-school classics and relatively new arrivals, and the 2022 lineup changed a bit from past years' surveys. Five of the restaurants selected are at least a half-century old (with two dating back to the 1920s), but there are plenty that were founded in the 21st century too.” READ HERE.

The Shed BBQ and Blues Joint in Ocean Springs, Miss. has made a name for itself nationally for both its barbecue and great events. The Shed will soon have a second location, this time in Baton Rouge, La. This location will be taking over what was formerly The Oasis, but the team from The Oasis will still have a hand in the operation. “God closed one door but opened a new door for me,” wrote Oasis owner Luke Forstmann in a Facebook post. “7477 Burbank Drive will be opening as the world-famous [The Shed], as seen on Diners Drive-In & Dives, Food Network, and Travel channel. We can’t wait to share some amazing BBQ, blues, and drinks with everyone.” READ HERE.

Tomball, Texas (just outside Houston) has been a barbecue destination for years thanks to the acclaimed Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue. Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly writes that there is now another player in town serving up excellent barbecue and helping put Tomball on the map — Bexar Barbecue. Opened by Justin and Kathyrn Haecker in June 2020, the joint serves up good brisket, ribs, desserts, and more. The Haeckers are also raising their own cattle, with plans to sell raw beef at the restaurant down the line. READ HERE. 

In a recent column for Houston Chronicle, J.C. Reid writes that recent James Beard award nominations (which included many BBQ joints such as Blood Bros. BBQ and Horn Barbecue) are putting the next wave of BBQ in the spotlight. “All of these barbecue joints are representative of a trend I call ‘fourth wave’ barbecue, reflecting the next era of Texas barbecue that is building on the craft movement,” Reid writes. READ HERE. 

ADDITIONAL READS

Eater Carolinas writes that Lechon Latin BBQ is bringing new flavors to the Raleigh, NC barbecue scene with Puerto Rican, Peruvian, and Argentinian dishes.

Texas Highways spoke with pitmasters including Evan LeRoy and Nick Resse about how they make Texas-style smoked burgers.

Smokin Barrel Barbecue in Omaha, Neb., which has customers lining up early daily, was spotlighted by KMTV recently.

Texas Monthly's Daniel Vaughn wrote about Mark Gabrick finding his sweet spot with a line of H-E-B-approved BBQ sauces.

Acclaimed Charlotte BBQ restaurant Noble Smoke will soon open a second location at Optimist Hall.

Seattle pitmaster Ernasto “Red” Jackson was nominated for “Best Chef in the Northwest” for his creations at Lil Red's Jamaican BBQ and Soul Cuisine.

Pure Grit BBQ will be opening an anticipated vegan BBQ restaurant in New York City this May.

The Denver BBQ Festival to bring top pitmasters from around the country to Mile High Stadium this June.

Southside Market’s Taste of Texas BBQ is now shipping nationwide. Place your order now.

—Quy Hoang from Blood Bros. BBQ in Houston was featured recently in a new video from Eater. (Photo by Wai Chan)—

WATCH

How Houston Pitmaster Quy Hoang Is Bringing Asian Flavors to Texas Barbecue — Smoke Point

At Houston-area barbecue joint Blood Bros. BBQ, pitmaster Quy Hoang combines his love for Texas barbecue with Asian influences to make gochujang ribs, smoked char siu pork belly fried bao buns, brisket burnt end steam buns, Thai-red-curry-and-chili sausage, and much more. WATCH HERE.
 

LISTEN

Abe Delgado and Josh Swope Interviews — Harp Barbecue Podcast

Tyler Harp is the owner and operator of Harp Barbecue in Kansas City. In the inaugural episode of the Harp Barbecue Podcast, host Harp brought in two BBQ road warriors. The first guest is Josh Swope, AKA "Pops", who has been traveling around to different barbecue spots before many BBQ blogs and podcasts even existed. The second guest is Abe Delgado, a native Texan and the host of the I Crush BBQ Show. Listen as these three BBQ experts map out an ideal food road trip and drop some insider knowledge along the way. LISTEN HERE.

READ

Ultimate Book of Barbecue Sauces: American Classics and International Favorites — Sterling Smith

Sweet or tangy, spicy or mild, barbecue is often about the sauce—and this cookbook shows you how to make your own from scratch! Taste familiar sauces and new flavors alike as you dig into bold ingredients and become the master of backyard cookouts. Start with a quick intro that covers the major American barbecue sauce styles and includes expert tips for making sauces at home. Whip up 60 barbecue sauces, rubs, and marinades from the states and around the globe, then put them to the test with 15 simple meal recipes where these sauces are the star. Learn how to pair sauces with different meats, fish, and veggies for results that bring everyone back for seconds. Create a huge range of homemade sauces that elevate any barbecue dish with The Ultimate Book of Barbecue Sauces.  ORDER HERE.

—These stellar Thai-style chicken wings will be a hit with family or friends.—

Thai-Style Chicken Wings

By BBQ Tourist

Chicken wings are hard to say “no” to and relatively easy to prepare. If you’re looking to shake up your normal wings routine, our Recipe of the Week shows you how to make great Thai-style chicken wings with some help from Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce. You’ll also add crunchy peanut butter, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, and sweet chili sauce as well to give the wings a lot of flavors.

Learn more about Southside Market Barbeque.

—A lot of big barbecue events are planned for 2022. Let's go!—

March 25-26, 2022: American Royal Backyard BBQ & Steak Contest — Kansas City, Missouri
The relatively new National Steak Championships from KCBS will have one of its biggest events thus far during the 2nd American Royal Backyard BBQ & Steak contest. It will be hosted at the American Royal Complex in the West Bottoms. Registration for the event closes March 16th. MORE INFO HERE.

March 26-27, 2022: Meatstock Music and Barbecue Festival (Melbourne edition) — Melbourne, Australia
Meatstock will feature a stacked line-up of barbecue enthusiasts and bands. The two-day event brings American pitmasters Down Under; sees BBQ teams go head-to-head over the coals to be crowned the city’s best barbequers; and features live music, food trucks, and pop-up bars. Additionally, American BBQ joints such as Louie Muller BBQ and Blue Oak BBQ are scheduled to be there as well. MORE INFO HERE.

April 3, 2022: Houston Barbecue Festival — Houston, Texas
Houston's largest barbecue festival will return after a two-year hiatus to the Humble Civic Center Arena Complex. It will feature many of the best barbecue joints in Houston and the surrounding area, including 1701 Barbecue, Blood Bros BBQ, Brett's BBQ Shop, Burns Original BBQ, CorkScrew BBQ, Daddy Duncan's BBQ, Dozier's BBQ, Burro & Bull, Feges BBQ, Gatlin's BBQ, Harlem Road Texas BBQ, J-Bar-M Barbecue, JQ's Tex Mex BBQ, Khoi Barbecue, Killen's Barbecue, Pinkerton's Barbecue,Roegels Barbecue Co, Tejas Chocolate & BBQ, and Truth BBQ. MORE INFO HERE.

April 20, 2022: Brisket King NYC — Brooklyn, New York
If you love brisket (and if you're reading this you probably do), you won’t want to miss Brisket King NYC 2021 in Brooklyn. The event will be held at the huge outdoor space at Pig Beach NYC in Brooklyn. More than 15 chefs and pitmasters will be there serving up their takes on brisket and pastrami. MORE INFO HERE.

May 6-8, 2022: Kansas City BBQ Festival — Kansas City, Missouri
The second year of the “KCQ,” a non-competition barbecue event that celebrates barbecue from Kansas City and many other barbecue towns. It will take place in the parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium and feature barbecue from KC-based mainstays and out-of-towners. Last year’s event featured ‘cue from Joe’s Kansas City, Jones Bar-B-Q, Plowboys BBQ, 2M Smokehouse, Black’s BBQ, Central City BBQ, and Sugarfire Smokehouse, so expect great joints to be involved in 2022. MORE INFO HERE.

May 11-14, 2022: Memphis in May — Memphis, Tennessee
The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is a four-day competition held in Memphis, TN. Teams representing the best of barbecue that have been honing their craft for years compete for the title of World Champion and a share of the more than $140,000 in prize money. The Contest features championship pork categories of Ribs, Shoulder, and Whole Hog, as well as the ancillary competitions of Hot Wings, Sauce, and “Anything But Pork.” The 2022 competition will be held in the Memphis Fairgrounds due to construction at its normal home at Tom Lee Park. MORE INFO HERE.

May 22, 2022: Carolina BBQ Festival — Charlotte, North Carolina
The first-ever Carolina BBQ Festival will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, with some of the biggest names in Carolina barbecue. The event is the creation of Lewis Donald of Sweet Lew’s BBQ in Charlotte and will celebrate three regional styles of Carolina barbecue. The one-day event will include legendary barbecue from Bryan Furman, Buxton Hall’s Elliott Moss, Jon G’s Garren Kirkman, Lexington Barbecue’s Nathan Monk, Southern Smoke BBQ’s Matthew Register, Tay Nelson of Bobby’s Barbecue, and more.. MORE INFO HERE.

June 10-11, 2022: Made for KC BBQ Championship — Kansas City, Missouri
Pitmasters in the Kansas City area are invited to compete in the first annual “Made for KC BBQ Championship,” with a chance to win a combined prize purse totaling $46,000. The Grand Champion will be showcased in a competition BBQ-themed restaurant in the new terminal at the Kansas City International Airport. The Outstanding Hospitality Management Group is partnering with the Kansas City Barbeque Society (KCBS) and Old World Spices & Seasonings to hold the event on June 10-11, 2022 at Worth Harley-Davidson. MORE INFO HERE.

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