William "Boogie" Whitfield of Slo-Mo-Que: BBQ World Cup Qualifier

Before William Whitfield was a Grand Champion, before he was a plumber or a father or a caterer, he was a two-year-old asleep at his grandparents' house in St. Louis, dancing in his sleep to a Boogie Oogie song on the radio.

His grandfather looked over and said, hey, look at little Boogie.

Nearly fifty years later the name has never let go.

Call him William and you probably know him from work. Call him Boogie and you know him from the barbecue.

He is, by his own account, a happy guy, and he means it as something closer to a mission.

Life is too short to not be happy, he says, and the world is hard enough, so put a smile on a face wherever you can.

It is a strange thing to hear from a man whose paying job is putting out fires.

Whitfield is a union plumber by trade, running commercial service departments in the Pacific Northwest, days spent herding a crew across job sites while the phone never stops.

Barbecue is the opposite of all that. A bed of fire, some wood, a cup of coffee, and a parking lot at five in the morning.

That, he says, is where he finds his zen. Where else would I be right now, he asks himself out there. This is it.

Where Boogie Whitfield Learned Barbecue: St. Louis

Barbecue was in the blood long before it was a craft.

Whitfield grew up in St. Louis, a city where you could find good smoke on any corner, and he was drawn to a kitchen early.

At seven he asked his mother to let him cook for the family, walked to the library for a kids' cookbook, picked out a recipe, and made the family spaghetti.

The men who made barbecue mean something to him were two grandfather figures, George Mims and George Brown, the first people he ever watched smoke a whole hog.

He can still picture the old guy with the tongs and the white towel in his pocket, click click click, everybody gathered around.

Barbecue meant family. He thought so much of those two men that he named his cooking trailer George after them.

The move west is what turned a love into an obsession.

In 2004 Whitfield and his wife settled outside Seattle, and eventually landed in Eatonville, a small town at the base of Mount Rainier about an hour and a half south of the city.

The reason was family. He wanted his parents and his in-laws out of Missouri and near enough to help care for, and one by one he got them to come.

What Eatonville did not have was barbecue.

In St. Louis he never had to make his own, because it was always down the road. In Washington he had to learn it, so he did, cooking for company picnics and plumbing events until enough people told him he should do this for real. Catering followed.

How Boogie Whitfield Got Into Competition BBQ

The competition side started, of all places, on Instagram.

His wife had been after him to post his cooks, and around 2017 he finally did, tagging into a Meat Hustlers hashtag run by a man named Joe Garcia out of Forest Grove, Oregon. Garcia invited him to a rib rally, then dared him toward a real contest down in Coos Bay.

Two weeks later, having never cooked a competition in his life, Whitfield drove eight hours to the Oregon coast and signed up straight into the professional division, no backyard warmup.

The wind took his tent into the bay five minutes after he set up. Teams he had never met came over with spare tents and a hand, and a cook from California in the next stall, one he still sees every year, helped him through it.

He drove six hours home that night having lost a small fortune and did not care one bit.

This is happy, he remembers thinking. This is home. He had found his people.

Why the Team Is Called Slo-Mo-Que

The team name is pure St. Louis.

When he needed something to call his page, Whitfield started playing with where he came from and where he had landed. St. Louis, Missouri, and Oregon gave him the letters S-L-O. That looked like slow, which fit, because low and slow is the whole idea.

He shortened it to Slo Mo, then figured there had better be a Q in there somewhere, and Slo-Mo-Que was born. A little wordplay on a hometown, and now it is stitched on a Grand Champion's banner.

How Boogie Whitfield Won the Fly-In Pig and Qualified for the BBQ World Cup

Getting to that banner took the long way.

Whitfield cooked Memphis in May on a team put together by friends in the Northwest, learning under Chris Hollis of Booty Barbecue, and came away with a second-place finish in ribs against some of the best in the country.

Then the sport nearly lost him. Worn down and frustrated the year before his big break, he stepped back, told himself he would just focus on catering, and sat out the back half of the season.

Friends pushed. You have never really committed to it, they told him, never given it a full year.

So he did. He handed a whole season to competition and stopped hedging.

That season ended at the Fly-In Pig in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, a Pacific Northwest BBQ Association contest run over two days in May of 2026. Slo-Mo-Que won it outright, Whitfield's first Grand Champion after eight or nine years of chasing one.

He did it with three first-place finishes on the same day, taking brisket, taking ribs, and posting a perfect 200.00 in chicken, a run that carried him to 781.44 points and the top of a 32-team field.

It took weeks to land on him. It's just a comp, he kept telling people, until enough of them looked him in the eye and said, do you understand what this was.

That win punched one of the Pacific Northwest's tickets to the BBQ World Cup, where 100 pitmaster teams from around the world will cook in Las Vegas in April of 2027 for $1,000,000.

Boogie Whitfield's Family and His Plan for $1,000,000

The people in his corner are the whole point, the same as always.

His wife Christy has been beside him for 31 years, the two of them married sixteen years before their first child came.

His daughter Kendall is fourteen and the family carnivore, the one asking daddy to bring the brisket home from every contest. His son, eleven, is named William Goldie after Whitfield's own father and his father-in-law, though everyone calls him G, and he is the baker of the two.

His younger brother Cory is the one most likely to be standing next to him at the pit in Las Vegas.

When Whitfield is asked who he wishes could see this, the answer is quick and quiet: both of his grandfathers, and the father-in-law his son is named for.

Ask him what a million dollars would do and he counts it out like a man who has already thought about it.

First, a fund for his kids, money for whatever education or travel or non-traditional road they choose.

Second, a food truck to grow the catering into the next phase of his life, maybe finally under the name he and Cory keep coming back to, Aunt Tony's Kitchen, after the aunt whose open-door table fed every kid they knew.

And whatever is left, a trip anywhere Christy wants to go.

As for the walk to the stage if his name is called, he has already rehearsed the self-talk. Keep the heart inside the chest. One foot in front of the other. Take your time, it's normal.

And then, knees permitting, maybe a little boogie.

Sources

William "Boogie" Whitfield, Road to 1 Million qualifier interview with Shannon Pruitt (BBQ World Cup). BWC Qualified Pitmasters Tracker (Grand Champion, Fly-In Pig; team Slo-Mo-Que, Eatonville, WA). Pacific Northwest BBQ Association, 2026 Fly-In Pig results, Myrtle Creek, OR, May 16-17, 2026 (Grand Champion Slo-mo-que, 781.44; first in Brisket, Chicken 200.00, and Ribs; 32 teams). BBQ United team profile, Slo-Mo-Que (founded 2017; sponsors Royal Oak Charcoal, Slow Porkin, JDQ; Instagram @_therealslomoque). Hero photo: William Whitfield headshot, BBQ World Cup pitmaster program.