This Wichita chef has fans across the globe — and he doesn’t even work at a restaurant
Chef Tom Jackson is huge in Australia. When he attends food festivals there, he can’t walk 50 feet before someone gasps and stops him.
“Chef Tom! It’s Chef Tom!”
Wichitans recognize Jackson as the bearded barbecue aficionado who leads classes and stars in cooking videos produced by All Things Barbecue, the Delano store specializing in smokers, grills and outdoor living accessories that Yoder Smokers founder Don Cary opened at 818 W. Douglas in 2013.
But people across the country — even across the world — also recognize Jackson, who has become a social media star with his YouTube series called “The Sauce.” The series, which started in 2015, has helped All Things Barbecue’s YouTube channel amass 645,000 followers. To date, the channel has posted around 1,100 videos.
Most of them show Jackson demonstrating step-by-step how to prepare a dish: recipes like beer can turkey, cured pastrami, competition brisket or maple glazed ham. All of the dishes are prepared using smokers, grills, sauces, seasonings and other items sold not only online but also at the giant All Things Barbecue store and showroom.
In the videos, Jackson, 40, comes across as friendly, confident and competent, and people have responded. Rubs, sauces and grills tend to fly off the shelves as soon as they’re featured in an episode of “The Sauce.”
Jackson’s growing food fame has earned him invitations to the country’s most prestigious food festivals: He was paid about five years ago to attend a barbecue festival in Australia called Meatstock, and he’s been to the giant Bourbon & Beyond Music Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, two years in a row.
He also recently returned from his fourth visit to the invite-only, food celebrity-studded South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami, where he not only hosted a 100-person barbecue dinner but also provided food for an event attended by 1,000.
“I only got invited to that because somebody on staff at the festival was watching my videos, and they were like, ‘We’ve got to get this guy down here,’” he said.
Jackson, who comes across as reserved when he’s not on camera or around his closest friends, is humble about his foodie fame and even tries to downplay it.
But he can’t deny that it’s real, especially when people shout his name across the meat aisle in Dillons or when cross-country travelers make detours through Wichita just so they can stop into All Things Barbecue and have their photo taken with him.
“People get to know me without me knowing them, and then there’s a connection. And because of that, I’ve honestly made some real friends long distance,” he said. “People that are passionate about cooking, they kind of buy into what I’m doing, and then they buy into what we’re doing. The end goal is to get them into our products, but it’s connected me with a lot of people that I didn’t know. “
Pastries to pastrami
Jackson grew up in Wichita and attended middle and high school in Goddard. As a teen, he picked up the guitar.
After graduation, he attended Wichita State University for two years, majoring in communication. But then a friend asked him to join his rock band, called North of Okay. The band wanted to tour, but their guitar player wasn’t interested.
Jackson left school and hit the road with the band, which toured off and on for about three years. In between tours, Jackson would come back to Wichita and work at Starbucks.
At one point, the band relocated to Michigan so the drummer could be closer to his girlfriend. Jackson and his wife, Kristy, lived in a 100-year-old house with all the band mates.
The house was cold, so to stay warm, Jackson camped out in the kitchen.
“I started baking pizzas and making bread, and I was like, ‘I think I really like this,’” he said. “Then the band was done, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do now? I guess I’ll go to culinary school.’”
In 2008, he enrolled in the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland, where he specialized in baking and pastry. After graduation, he got a job at Portland’s Ken’s Artisan Bakery, which was owned and run by James Beard Award-winning chef Ken Forkish.
Jackson started on baguettes, then moved on to pastries. He worked there for more than four years, then moved on to an Indian fusion restaurant. While in Portland, he and his wife had their first child, a son. They’d never planned to stay in Oregon permanently and decided they wanted to get back to Kansas to be closer to family.
Then, Jackson heard from the Cary family, who needed someone to spearhead the cooking classes at All Things Barbecue. Jackson had met Don Cary’s children at church when he was younger, and they’d remained friends.
It seemed like a good excuse to go home, Jackson said, and he took the job — even though his specialty was sweets not meats.
When he arrived, Jackson didn’t know much about barbecue cooking, but he picked the basics under the tutelage of Andy Groneman, a Kansas City-based barbecue chef who owns Smoke on Wheels BBQ and had been traveling to Wichita on weekends to teach classes for All Things Barbecue.
He also had to learn the ins and outs of all the equipment the store sells, from Yoder smokers to pellet grills to pizza ovens to Kamado Joe grills.
Jackson had been on the job for about two years when Don Cary’s son, Justin — a film school graduate who’s worked all over the country as a director of photography — approached Jackson about making cooking videos.
It was uncomfortable at first, said Jackson, who’d never really been on camera before.
“If you go back and watch the first ones, I’m so awkward on camera,” he said. “Now it’s my life. I’m comfortable. But I didn’t set out to do that.”
The two started out producing one video a week: Jackson would come up with the recipe and cook it on camera, and Justin Cary would film the video and edit it together.
Now, nine years later, coming up with recipe ideas and recording videos is the majority of Jackson’s job. (Though he’s about to get busy with cooking classes again: All Things Barbecue put them on hold during COVID-19 but is reviving them this month.)
The duo now produces two videos a week. Most are recipe videos, but they also film various specialty series — one on tips and techniques, one about vegetarian cooking, and one called “Will it Taco?”
“Say I released a video on Tuesday, and I’ve got another one coming out on Friday,” he said. “Whatever I cooked on Tuesday, I’ll see if I can turn it into a taco.”
The videos, most of which are filmed on All Things Barbecue’s spacious Douglas-facing patio, are clearly produced by a professional who understands lighting, sound and photography. The videos, which feature lots of closeups of Jackson’s hands working with the ingredients, are photographed so viewers can see, hear — and practically smell — the smoke coming off the grill or the sizzle of garlic hitting a cast iron pan.
At the end of each video, Jackson digs into whatever he’s cooked and describes in mouth-watering adjectives what he’s tasting: No one should watch on an empty stomach.
All Things Barbecue owner Don Cary said it’s been fascinating to watch the popularity of the YouTube series grow. Though the series is huge on YouTube, Cary said, his team is looking for ways to grow Jackson’s reach. They’ll soon be experimenting with short-form videos that would work as Instagram reels or TikTok videos.
One of Cary’s favorite things to do is read viewer comments on the videos, he said. People love Jackson, he said. They feel like they know him. Many of the ideas for his cooking videos come from commenter requests.
“People enjoy Tom’s cooking style and educational cooking,” Cary said. “He presents it to where it is easy enough to understand and really take it home and do it yourself. And he has an approachable personality.”
Introvert influencer
“Chef Tom” lives by the Notes app on his iPhone. It’s filled with dozens and dozens of ideas for future recipe videos.
Each week, he chooses one with an eye on the calendar. Is it time for a St. Patrick’s Day-themed Irish meal? Are people planning their Thanksgiving menus?
He shops for ingredients then rehearses the recipe at least once in the massive, state-of-the-art test kitchen set up on the east side of the All Things Barbecue building.
And then he does what he does.
To date, the most popular video was one posted in 2017 that showed Jackson making pastrami from scratch on a Yoder offset smoker. It got 3.5 million views.
Jackson faces many of the same things other online influencers do, including occasional hecklers in the comments section. Though 99% are positive, he said, he can’t really handle the 1% of haters, so he just stays out of the comments.
“But my wife will read them, and she’ll start reading me all the good ones,” Jackson said with a laugh. “And I’m like,’I don’t even want to hear those.’”
The only other issue — and it’s not really an issue — is that Jackson is a bit of an introvert whose job requires him to perform. When he goes home, especially at the end of long filming days, he often needs to spend time alone to recharge his social battery.
Being “online famous” also isn’t particularly comfortable for Jackson, who humbly refers to his role in the company as “just a guy flippin’ burgers.” But he’s learned how to turn it on when he needs to.
“I give people every bit of joy that they need out of it, but it’s uncomfortable for me,” he said. “But I decided a long time ago that if someone wants to take a photo with me, then I need to let them feel like that’s cool. It’s not that I don’t want to do it. I’m just like, ‘Why would you want to?’ But if they think that’s cool, I should let them have that moment.”
Though he didn’t end up a restaurant chef, Jackson said, he thinks he got the better deal. His menu changes every day, and he’s able to be as creative as he wants to be.
He doesn’t prepare only barbecue, Jackson said, because his culinary interests are much more varied. Though he does plenty with steak, pork shoulder and brisket, he also regularly demonstrates dishes like bulgogi, empanadas and lasagna as well as side dishes, desserts and drinks.
“I like that,” he said. “There’s joy in repetition and getting really good at one thing, but I also find a lot of joy in creating something new constantly. And that’s not just a benefit of my job, it is my job.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 5:02 AM.
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