Junior and the Kid for new BBQ takeaway
Fourteen years in law enforcement told Chris Villeneuve that it was time for him to do something else: in short order, he found himself standing over a barrel-smoker preparing brisket, pork belly and jerk chicken and the accompanying sauces.
To do that, he drew on his passion for cooking and on his family’s food background creating a unique brand called Junior and the Kid BBQ located in Rockland.
“Junior is my grandfather, Gerry Villeneuve. For a short time, he had a restaurant called Homesteaders, a family-style diner, in Ottawa. I kind of followed in his footsteps,” says Villeneuve.
“Our family grew up eating together, having dinner, and Junior was always chef for the family. He really sparked a fire for me for cooking.”
As a youth, Chris was inspired to experiment in the family kitchen and combined ingredients to see what flavours he could create.
Then came barbecue as he embraced live-fire cooking.
“I’m a meat guy. So I always barbecued at home,” he says.
In 2018, Villeneuve started making barbecue sauces, which he eventually sold at farmers’ markets as a sort of weekend side-hustle that served to stoke his passion for food and cooking.
The Junior and the Kid name and the brand started to resonate with customers as he peddled maple-bourbon, chipotle-peach and blueberry sauces: they got enough traction that people started asking him if he could do some private catering and pop-ups.
He then approached the markets about selling hot food like pulled pork sandwiches: while the pandemic crushed a lot of businesses, Villeneuve thrived there using only a single 55-gallon barrel smoker.
Fast forward and Villeneuve took the plunge to open a bricks-and-mortar venue at 733 Rue Industrielle Drive in Rockland, a few doors down from Brauwerk Hoffman microbrasserie.
Junior and the Kid – the takeout iteration – was born in 2,500 sq.-ft. of space that opened a few days before this past Christmas and started having regular hours only on January 8.
For more, visit Vision Andre Paquette Editions.
