Ever since he could remember, Elias Williams has been an entrepreneur.
“I would try to sell anything, anything I could get my hands on at a young age,” Williams laughed, remembering. “I used to sell my lunches to my friends and go buy candy after school.”
So it came as no surprise he saw an opportunity after a night out last year.
“We went over to a barbecue place in Etobicoke,” said Williams. “The ribs were fantastic. They were good, but part of me just thought I could maybe do a little better.”
It was his ‘aha moment.’ The 27-year-old had just been laid off from his job and never cooked a beef rack in his life. Yet, he started searching on Google, finding ingredients and cooking methods, and perfecting his own sauce.
“Our group of friends, we had all tried the ribs,” said longtime customer and marketing consultant Kirat Pannu. “And we’re like, ‘Bro! you need to — we need to — make this a thing, we need to sell these.”
Buoyed by his friends’ stamp of approval, Williams took a leap of faith, plastering ‘Biggs Ribs’ all over social media. It started slowly at first, with just a couple of buyers. But then, it snowballed to 15 to 20 racks sold each weekend, then—
“We sold over 100 racks of ribs this month alone,” said Williams.
And now, he’s on track to hit a total of 1,000 racks of ribs sold by the end of this month. His pop-ups sell out within a couple of hours — every time — he says.
“I get four hours of sleep on some nights and some nights (before) pop-ups, I don’t even sleep at all, just trying to make everything happen,” said Williams.
Safe to say, the business and his ribs can no longer fit in his mom’s fridge and kitchen.
“I obviously grew out of my house,” said Williams. “I can’t prepare there anymore.”
His fall-off-the-bone ribs are so divine, his church now serves as a ghost kitchen.
Williams is often without a sous chef. And he manages to pull this off, all while working a full-time job with Toronto Public Health and running his YouTube channel.
“It definitely takes a village,” said Williams. “I know that I’m loved because everyone is pitching in, giving whatever they can just for me to succeed and asking for nothing in return.
“I have people in the background taking care of marketing, a friend of mine made my logo, my parents let me use the car to go to the pop-ups, my girlfriend helps me pack bottles of sauces, so many people help me.”
Cooking beef ribs can be messy work–and Williams’ father, Eugene Williams who pitches in with the clean-up afterwards says he’s happy to do so–because he believes in his son.
Williams says the addictive secret to his success is in the sauce.
“It has to be the brown sugar and honey,” said Williams. “I use a lot of honey in my sauce. And that’s what makes it, I guess, stand out because it’s really sweet. But then once on the barbecue, it gets a little bit smoky taste as well.”
He says, the fact he’s found a hole in the market helps as well. Williams is Seventh-day Adventist and does not eat pork. As a result, he only sells halal beef ribs — a commodity hard to come by.
“It covers a lot of people that either for religious or personal reasons, don’t eat pork,” said Williams. Going out of his way to make personal connections, helps too, he says.
“I try to have an individual relationship with every customer,” said Williams. “On Instagram, I react to their stories. One of my longtime customers, he had back surgery so I check up on his back. So little things like that, go a long way.”
It seems to be appreciated. Several customers who dropped by Williams’ house one afternoon to pick up their orders all had similar things to say: that Biggs Ribs were “the best in the GTA.”
As for long-term goals, Williams says he hopes to open a food truck, then a permanent storefront and hire some staff — with the goal of hopefully getting some more sleep.
“All the hard work won’t be in vain,” Williams told Global News, nodding his head with conviction. “And when things like articles pop up, or people tell me how much they love the ribs, it makes it all worth it.”