Good Morning! 

Solo Stove and their parent company Solo Brands are making big moves in their rebuilding efforts. When their CEO stepped down at the end of last year, they named an interim CEO. They removed the interim tag this week, and now have a permanent CEO to focus on their journey forward.

Another big step forward was they amended their credit agreement with the bank. They announced last winter that they would be outside of their debt covenants and needed to work with the bank to change that and avoid default. They were successful in doing that and freed up capacity on their credit revolver in the process.

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Another change at Solo Brands that came out this week is they sold TerraFlame back to the original owners. They bought the brand in 2023, but like IcyBreeze, they chose to get rid of it. It's not a conventional divestiture though because they still retained branding rights.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it for my monthly time lot on The BBQ Central Show this week. It was a great show though, starting with Ryan Zboril from Pitts & Spitts talking about how business is looking and their new products. He was followed-up by Steve Ray, Owner of Owl's Nest BBQ who knows about competitive eating in addition to barbecue.

In the second hour of the show, Chris Prieto from Prime BBQ was on talking about going from competitive barbecue to having a restaurant in North Carolina. The last guest was BBQ editor for Texas Monthly Magazine, Daniel Vaughn, who went over the recent top 50 barbecue restaurant list.

There's a really cool sweepstakes running right now from YETI and Texas Monthly with a tie-in to the top 50 list. The winner receives a $100 gift card to each of the top 10 and them and 3 friends don't have to wait in line to use it.

Gozney has relied on crowdfunding to grow their business since the beginning. They raised equity through crowdfunding and grew the Roccbox pizza oven that way too. They're doing another equity raise with crowdfunding to fuel their growth. It's an interesting business case and an opportunity to buy some equity in Gozney.

Camp Chef is continuing to add to their Gridiron griddle line-up. They released the Pro model this week which has the same great features as the other models, but adds a Sidekick side burner. The burner can be used with 14" accessories like their Grill Box and Pizza Oven.

Weber is in a trademark dispute with a well known barbecue restaurant in Chicago. The restaurant is Smoque BBQ. The name Smoque is also used by Weber for their most recent pellet grill.

Finally, Napoleon has opened a manufacturing facility in Mexico. They started building it in 2024 before the current tariff environment. It was built to move manufacturing away from China.

Thanks for Reading!

Wes Wright

Founder and CEO

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