Smokin’ street food

What do you get if you combine an old diesel tank and old skip, a love of BBQ and a commitment to sustainability? Meet The Roaming Smoker...

The brainchild of passionate foodie and former aerospace sustainability strategist Chris Saunders, it’s a mobile smoking and roasting device made from reclaimed and upcycled materials. Inspired by the culture and principles of American brisket BBQ-ing, Chris worked with a local welder to create something bespoke that could turn low-value cuts of meat from old dairy cows into a desirable, high-end product.   

Operating like a street food van – but with more theatre to the process – he's been road testing the machine at events and festivals throughout summer 2024. And if the finger-licking compliments, queues round the block and repeat customers are anything to go by, it seems the British public do have a taste for more unusual cuts of meat. If they’re slowly smoked, BBQed and served with a portion of coleslaw (including British grown cabbage, carrot, onion, cider vinegar, honey and rapeseed oil), British grown quinoa and a dollop of tangy mustard, of course. 

The reimagining and utilising of by-products from farming systems – in this case dairy cows from The Roaming Dairy – is at the heart of the Pitch Up! circular economy philosophy. The Roaming Smoker joins other innovators at Kingsclere Estates including Monch, which makes nutrient-dense rabbit food from farm forage, and The British Quinoa Company, which specialises in growing UK climate suitable strains of the protein dense pseudo-grain (which features in The Roaming Smoker’s serve).  

As a successful Pitcher emerging from the 2023 Pitch Up! applications season, Chris chats to us about his journey so far, how being part of Pitch Up! has helped get his business off the ground, and what’s next for The Roaming Smoker…

What inspired you to start The Roaming Smoker? 

I’m really passionate about food. I’ve introduced a lot of local guys to smoked food and it’s always been an interest of mine. The idea for The Roaming Smoker came about from the knowledge there was an old diesel tank sitting on Tim’s farm (Kingsclere Estates) and talking with him about the possibilities of using it for a BBQ or a smoker. I started to look into it and it went from there.

How did it go turning it from an idea into something operational? 

There are good resources online about building smokers and BBQs. It’s all about the physics. You need to have the right ratio of firebox to chamber to smokestack, and as long as you have that right you can go as large as you want. It’s all made from reclaimed materials, including an old skip. To get rid of any diesel residue we put a gigantic fire through it – 300-odd degrees – which ripped through and removed it. It’s been treated with linseed oil, but to get the metal to absorb it you have to get it really hot which involved Tim walking around it with a flame thrower and me following with the linseed oil. All very DIY.

Did you know much about animal farming before you started? 

I don’t have any background in farming. I wasn’t even sure you could eat old dairy cows. I learned all that by talking to Ollie Chedgey from The Roaming Dairy [a mobile milking parlour also based at Kingsclere]. I had no idea how to butcher a cow – so that was a learning curve. Our cows all go to the abattoir and are then sent back to us to cut into different joints. I also had to learn a lot about what happens to a dairy cows once they’re no longer fit for milking. From a sustainability point of view, we wanted to use the whole cow and that makes the business more resilient as it’s using low value cuts of meat that would otherwise be turned into mince. 

Will this approach make your business more financially viable? 

Yes, we should get a better margin and that also allows us to flex with higher prices for big commercial events and lower prices for community and charity events. It’s been great having Tim and Ollie to bounce ideas around with as the type of farming they do is more entrepreneurial than what I was doing in my former career. They have experience in how to actually make a buck out of this.  

How has being part of Pitch Up! helped get your business off the ground?

A lot was about the process of understanding an industry which I had no knowledge of at all. And after I’d worked on the business plan and the pricing, I could keep bouncing ideas around with Tim and Ollie – looking at mark-ups against variable costs and so on. What I’m hoping to show is that you can make a decent return on something which is genuinely local and really thinking about how sustainably you can make a product.

You’ve been doing a lot of events and festivals this first summer after your launch – how did The Roaming Smoker go down? 

Very well. We had one lad turn up five times – so we invented double beef portions based on demand. The other thing is people aren’t always honest – they don’t want to offend you – so we went around checking whether the bowls were empty, which they were, which is usually a sign people are happy.

Will you only be working with beef? 

Probably not. The smoker roasts veggies really well and we’ve tested it out with pheasant, partridge, lamb and venison which have all cooked well. We’d like to have a crack at pork too. 

So what’s next for The Roaming Smoker? 

Have a bit of a rest! Then back on it. There are also some tweaks we can make. We’re playing around with doing a big roast dinner event with the local pub – I reckon we could do lunch for 200, so we’ll see. We want to use The Roaming Smoker in ways which can entertain and also, we hope, do a bit of good. 

The Roaming Smoker at Groundswell, June 2024