The latest episode of The Building Texas Show, hosted by Justin McKenzie and recorded live at the San Antonio Home & Garden Show, features Sloan Rinaldi. She's the founder of Texas Q, a barbecue brand built on sauces, rubs, and a media business she's building around it. She's also a fourth-generation pitmaster: her family has been in barbecue since 1909, when they opened a shop in Crockett, Texas.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube

Texas Q is based in Houston, where Rinaldi hosts private barbecue crawls and is building out the rest of her media ventures.

Rinaldi spent years in construction before walking away at 50, right as the industry moved from paper plans and cold calls to phone-based bidding and takeoffs. She'd already sold her business to a team of longtime employees and was still deciding what came next. Then a sliced brisket sandwich at Killen's Barbecue changed her mind about a cuisine she'd never much cared for. She'd never cooked a brisket in her life.

That one sandwich led to:

• Commissioning her own smoker from East Texas Smoker Company and teaching herself fire management from scratch, after noticing only one woman, Melissa Cookston, on the barbecue competition circuit

• A first competition at Bands, Brews and Barbecue, benefiting the Ronald McDonald House, followed by a 14th-place finish out of 250 teams at a Texas State Championship

• Landing a statewide deal with H-E-B for her original Texas Q sauce, then pulling it back off shelves to reformulate without high fructose corn syrup

Rinaldi has a simple explanation for why she thinks barbecue connects people like nothing else:

“You can put the richest guy and the poorest guy at the same table, having the same meal. You can't get that in any other cuisine. So it is the most uniting cuisine or culinary culture on earth.”

Hear Rinaldi's full story - watch on YouTube

That philosophy is the spine of her next project: From Texas With Love: United We BBQ, a nine-episode series filming across eight countries and three continents, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, and Japan. It looks at live-fire cooking traditions from Ibérico hogs to Japanese wagyu to Argentine gaucho asado. Every episode ends with a Texas barbecue collaboration, and the final episode brings every featured cook to Houston for one last cook-off.

Rinaldi's international reach is already further along than a TV pitch. She recently hosted two Taiwan-based venture capitalists on a private Texas Q barbecue crawl in Houston. They flew 15 hours and fasted for a full day beforehand to prepare. The itinerary included one of only three Michelin-starred barbecue restaurants in the world, plus two Top 15 stops, one of them Top 10. By the end of the day, the conversation had moved from barbecue to business. Rinaldi shares which cities are now in play in the full episode.

Back home, she's also filming Grillz on Grills, a new Houston culture series with Bun B, Slim Thug, Trae tha Truth, and Paul Wall. It digs into the city's food, music, and custom-grillz scene, which Rinaldi says has gone global. She and her co-host get their own custom grillz built during the series.

FAQ: Texas Q and Sloan Rinaldi's new projects

What is Texas Q?

Texas Q is Sloan Rinaldi's barbecue brand: sauces, rubs, custom cutting boards, and barbecue crawl experiences, built after she left a career in construction to become a competition pitmaster.

Where is Texas Q based?

Texas Q is based in Houston, where Rinaldi hosts the brand's private barbecue crawl experiences.

What is From Texas With Love: United We BBQ?

It's a nine-episode TV series filming in eight countries across three continents. Each episode pairs a Texas barbecue tradition with a different country's live-fire cooking culture, and the series ends with a finale cook-off in Houston.

Where can I watch Grillz on Grills?

It's expected to launch on YouTube. Rinaldi says she'd like to bring it to Netflix too.

Watch more from The Building Texas Show

This episode is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the entrepreneurs, tradespeople, and creators shaping Texas's economy and culture - from construction and home services to food and media. New episodes post 2-3 times a week.

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About The Building Texas Show

The Building Texas Show, hosted by Justin McKenzie, profiles the entrepreneurs, tradespeople, and creators shaping the state's economy and culture, from construction and home services to food and media. Recorded on location at industry events like the San Antonio Home & Garden Show, each conversation surfaces practical lessons and Texas-sized stories.

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Justin McKenzie

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