Born to Grill Stories Meet Kelsey Heidkamp

Q & A with Kelsey Heidkamp

Let’s cover the obvious question first: you’re clearly an accomplished and driven woman with a sincere love of the BBQ lifestyle. How was Weber lucky enough to land you?

KH: Oh, we were lucky to find each other! [Laughs.] But I grew up in their backyard. My hometown is Palatine, Illinois — where you’ll find their corporate offices. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s funny that I’ve been working for the brand for the last decade when I essentially grew up around Weber grills my whole life. Not only did my mom and dad cook on Weber products at home, but their first factory was just 10 minutes up the road from us!

So, I first got into this gig after a history in restaurants: Chinese takeout, little mom-and-pop shops, sandwich shops, high-end dining… you name it, I probably did it. Now, I’d just graduated college and moved back home from Iowa when I first heard about this “Grill Academy” opportunity. That involved training on new products, bringing external retail partners in, and so on — so I went in, because of a passion of creating great meals and teaching people how to cook, then was handed training responsibilities and the curriculum. The rest is history.

You’ve done plenty of world traveling with Weber, too. What can you tell us about that? Where’s the most exotic place it took you?

KH: Oh sure! I spent five years running Grill Academy HQ, which now have satellite Grill Academies around the globe: we’re in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Asia, and India. That involved traveling around to some of these places, teaching colleagues the Weber way of basic grill mastery and Weber classes… As for the second part of that question, I’d have to probably say Hong Kong.

When I’m flying, I rep the Weber brand wherever I go, so it’s funny to look back on some of the interactions I’ve had sitting next to strangers on a plane. The one that comes to mind now is this guy who turned over and said, “Hey, so my grandma back in ’87 had a Kettle and loved to smoke turkey on it every Thanksgiving…” Everyone knows Weber. You wear that logo, and you’d be surprised at the stories you hear. Each and every one puts a smile on my face.

So, how did you become an official Weber Grill Master? What’s that process look like?

KH: Oh, I’m definitely happy to talk about that. I’m actually the first official female Weber Grill Master on the globe! To get there, I started as a Grill Ambassador and went through this 3-year program of increasing education and responsibilities. So it went: Ambassador, Specialist, Expert, Master.

Essentially, the whole thing from beginning to end — you have to log a certain number of hours on certain grill types. I know now, almost a decade into the company, I’ve got well over 5,000 hours booked. We’re talking years ago, so you’d have to literally log these into an Excel spreadsheet! [Laughs.] And you’d describe your experiences that day. “Oh, today, I’m doing a brine and some pork tenderloin.” This meant talking about what kind of grill you were working on, how the environment played a factor, how the rub and brine affected the meat at the grill, what was the flavor profile, and what were the overall learnings from it.

Going up in levels meant checking off these increasing boxes. You log certain hours on grill type, then it came down to food type, and so on — and you present your learnings to our senior leadership team and our board of directors. You had to teach a certain amount of classes, and develop your own hands-on grilling classes. There was this whole curriculum around this, involving media training, running classes, developing recipes… but mainly, logging many, many hours of grilling. At the end of the day, when someone says “Grill Master,” Weber wants to know that person understands the product and has the most diverse palette of food groups imaginable.

And so, I graduated and got my black coat, became an official Weber Grill Master while managing the Grill Academy. It’s one of my proudest accomplishments, this journey that I and these four other guys went through. It’s funny. I mean, I get it. Lots of people consider themselves grill masters. My dad calls himself a grill master. But when it comes to Weber, if you start a culinary path to become that… it’s not a generic phrase. It’s a certification. And it takes years.

That’s an incredible amount of hard work! Now, while we’re on the topic of Weber grills, how would you define their story? And what is it about Weber’s story and its reputation that resonates with you?

KH: I think what’s cool about it was, George was just a family guy, right? But he had twelve kids to feed. When you get down to the science of it, he took the three basic elements of cooking — conductive heat, convectional heat, radiating heat — and he was, you know, probably pretty angry at the products he had at the time in the ‘50s. We’re talking the old days, before closed cooking contraptions, but he came up with an idea and he just went for it. I think Weber’s story is a true example of someone just passionate about cooking with a big family, who loved being outside, and who saw a way to make things better. And they built something that’s touched so many lives with it.

Now, my goal is always to empower people, and be approachable to people — and from the inside looking out, I’ve seen for myself that Weber really embraces that ethos. We want to teach people how to be comfortable behind the grill. We just happen to be doing it with a product that hasn’t gone through all these crazy evolutions. Do something well, do it consistently, and be inventive. Isn’t that what cooking’s all about? And when you do see success, really understand what made it work so well… Don’t betray that. In my eyes, that’s how you take something great and you make it really iconic.