Friends Make it Fun

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - Lynn and Robert Entrekin didn’t exactly set out to become the King and Queen of Crackers, but you know what they say about necessity. So, when COVID cracked down on their catering business, they turned to what Robert calls those crazy crackers.

“I call it Divinely Organic because there was no plan,” laughed Lynn. “We started in this industry of food and bar-b-q on a whim to compete in a contest in Lake Guntersville many years ago, and we won it and it lit a fire under us. So, we started competing.”

You hear the phrase all the time, The Award Winning This, The Award Winning That, but when we say the Award-Winning Smokehouse Crackers, they really are award winning!

“When started catering, we started using them in our catering business, and then people started asking for them,” continued Lynn.

Robert picked up the story, “COVID hit, and everything pretty much died, so I told Lynn start making them crazy crackers.”

At first Lynn wasn’t so sure, “It was kind of like an epiphany for us. It was like, ‘You really think we can make a living with those?’ And he said, ‘Lynn, sell the crackers.’ Spice’s Smokehouse was our original name for our bar-b-q team, and because we were Spice’s Smokehouse, we decided Smokehouse Crackers was a perfect name. So, God burnt my ship, and in 2020 I went full-time into cracker production, and it blew up.”

With her ships “burned,” it really was sink or swim with those “crazy crackers,” and today in their kitchen in Albertville, they’re packing crackers all day long.

“Nearly everyone that tasted that cracker loved it, even though it was hot for some people, they still said they loved it,” recalled Robert.

Lynn added, “We had a lot of people say, ‘We love your cracker, but we can’t deal with the heat.’ It’s made to be spicy. So that’s when we developed the Bar-B-Q flavor and then the Garlic Parmesan we launched in November, and it’s just really blown up. We are selling in 17 states now, and we have fans in Australia who can get our crackers in Australia.”

And the real secret of the Smokehouse success story? Robert knows even if he struggles just a bit to express it as his voice becomes emotional, “To go from where we were to now, it’s crazy. It’s just amazing, but we couldn’t do it without our team. That’s our backbone.”

They have a saying at Smokehouse, which is printed on every bag: Spices Make It Good, Friends Make It Fun.

And Smokehouse Crackers make it Absolutely Alabama.

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