Our Story
How this all started.
In 1991, David Cox — Uncle Dave to most of us — drove from Jonesboro, Arkansas down to Memphis to compete in the World Championship BBQ Cooking Contest at Memphis in May. He brought a rub he'd been working on. No secret ingredient. No mystery powder. Just proper proportions of standard kitchen spices, mixed in his garage.
He won.
That's not a story we made up for marketing. That's Memphis in May 1991. You can look it up.
Or just read the plaque.
What Uncle Dave was actually like.
People who knew Uncle Dave will tell you the trophy was the least interesting thing about him.
He was loud. He was generous. He had what his sister always called "a penchant for panache" — meaning he'd show up to a backyard cookout in a button-down shirt and somehow be the most comfortable person there. He could talk to anybody. He could feed anybody. And if you sat down at his table, you were going to leave full and you were going to leave laughing.
A Cox family cookout. Uncle Dave in the middle, right where he belonged.
He passed away in 2008. We miss him every day.
Why we put it in a bottle.
After Uncle Dave passed, the rub kept showing up at family reunions. Somebody would dig out the recipe, mix up a batch, and there it was on the brisket again. Every time.
A few years ago, I (David Stover, Uncle Dave's nephew) started thinking about how many people never got to sit at one of his tables. Never got to taste what he made. Never heard one of his stories. And the rub — the actual recipe, in the actual proportions — was sitting in a notebook in a drawer.
So we put it in a bottle.
That's all this is. Uncle Dave's recipe, made the way he made it, with the same proportions he used to win Memphis in May. We don't make it in a fancy lab. We make it with Valdez Spice Corp in Texas, and we ship it from Texas, and we still call Arkansas home.
Perfected in Arkansas. Made in Texas.
What we promise.
We make a great product. We treat our customers with respect. We do things the right way.
That's it. That's the whole brand.
Welcome to Cox BBQ.
— David Stover Cox BBQ, LLC