For Brooks, this opportunity came at just the right time. He's faced an unrelenting series of obstacles since 2018, when a truck drove through the living room of his home; that led to the closing of his flagship restaurant, an eatery in his house with a full commercial kitchen and smokehouse pit in the yard. He and his wife, Louella, had hoped that Brooks Smokehouse BBQ and Cajun Cuisine could be a retirement project, allowing them to retire from their jobs at Denver International Airport and just cook at home, but the accident put an end to that plan for a while.
At the same time, Cafe UR Way, the brick-and-mortar they'd opened on East Colfax, was having troubles, and it closed within a year.
Then COVID hit.
The Brookses weathered the pandemic, slowly reopened their in-home restaurant and kept the business going with catering gigs handled by their mobile unit. The comeback was short-lived, though, because Aurora changed its zoning policies, and the restaurant was no longer in accordance with codes.
They lost their license last year. “They was just giving us one runaround to another," recalls Brooks. "We’d get dizzy. I don’t know what was the problem. I’m not going to let it get to me.”
But another car accident did: Brooks was coming back from catering a successful fourteener hiking event in Leadville last August when "I took a curve too fast and flipped the truck," he says. "That put an end to the mobile.”
Brooks thinks he could challenge the Aurora code changes, but between the costs to pay for a lawyer and to renovate the restaurant, the fight isn't worth it, he says — not when he can apply his energy elsewhere.
Brooks got involved with Walmart through his wife, who arranged for the couple to travel to Las Vegas for a business conference in 2023. “We got in touch with some people, and they took all of my information, I gave them a bottle of sauce, and they showed me how to get started,” he says.
Brooks was brought on to a Walmart introductory program aimed at promoting small-business owners. The team at Walmart reached out this February to walk him through creating an account and establishing brand trademarks, and by March, the link to purchase Brooks Smokehouse BBQ Sauce "Creole Style" was live on Walmart’s website.
Brooks Smokehouse BBQ Sauce "Creole Style"
Walmart.com
Getting his sauce to market has become a re-centering of sorts, Brooks says. He grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana, a small town known for farm life and tight-knit communities; he got his education in Southern cuisine through neighborhood cookouts and playful rivalries over the best family recipes. In the process, he learned the importance of developing deep, well-balanced flavor in every dish, from a simple classic American hamburger to a low and slow Cajun-style brisket.
Brooks moved to Houston from Louisiana, then bought his house in Aurora in 1996. Seven years later, he was working a job laying carpet when he passed through Frisco, where the Frisco Colorado Barbeque Challenge was in full swing.
Perusing the vendors and finding that their offerings lacked Southern charm, Brooks spoke to the event organizers and showed up the next year to participate. Over the next few years, his efforts were recognized by people's choice award for side dish (potato salad, 2005) and second place barbecue sauce in 2010.
That was the professional start for what would become Brooks's twenty-plus-year barbecue career, and he's still eager to share what he's learned.
“You’ve got to sample your meat without barbecue sauce," he notes. "Then you know it’s cooking. Because if you need barbecue sauce to make it taste like barbecue, it’s not barbecue.”
While Brooks attests that the true mark of quality barbecue is the dry rub and the cooking technique, he believes his sauce is the perfect finishing touch. His original recipe for Creole-style barbecue sauce offers up a distinct blend of smokiness that highlights the char of a protein, with enough tanginess to cut the fat and a subtle sweetness with just enough heat.
By selling his sauce through Walmart, Brooks is confident he can keep his barbecue business going. “We ain’t going nowhere," he says. "We’ll stay right here on this corner, because this is home. We’ve been here for thirty years.” He's again thinking that he and Louella will be able to retire from their airport jobs within the next few years, then focus on the barbecue sauce business from home and contemplate a few other projects.
Brooks is considering offering intimate, hands-on classes on barbecue, how to smoke meats, and preparing other Southern-style recipes; he's even holding out hope to open a restaurant again. This time he'd put Brooks Smokehouse in a new spot, with a team of young, ambitious cooks to whom he can pass along the tricks of his trade.
“If you don’t try to leave something behind so people can learn from you, all of that is lost," he says. "So I’m going to continue to try to teach the art to people.”
