KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Veronica Scroggins and Megan Day break the mold in the traditionally male-dominated Kansas City barbecue scene in the most delicious way possible.
Scroggins is a pitmaster at Scott’s Kitchen and Catering at Hangar 29, 11920 N. Ambassador Drive in the Northland, while Day is a pitmaster for the award-winning Burnt Finger BBQ competition team, which also creates and sells a line of rubs and seasonings.
“It’s like we’re unicorns,” Scroggins said.
The pitmaster, or the person who tends to the barbecue for which the city is famous, is a sacred position in Kansas City, but women are scarce in the profession.
“I haven’t met any, to be honest with you,” Scroggins said.
The Jones sisters, who retired after 40 years of smoking the competition in Kansas City, Kansas, rocketed to fame after appearing on Netflix’s “Queer Eye” series.
“The Jones sisters are literally my heroes — literally, my heroes,” Scroggins said.
Scroggins struggled for her opportunity.
After starting her career as a chef, she hoped to pivot and work for a well-known legacy chain in Kansas City, but Scroggins was rebuffed.
“He told me women don't cook in his kitchen,” Scroggins said. “... It took me a little while to find somebody that would train me outside of my community.”
Eventually, she found that somebody in Todd Johns at Plowboys BBQ in Blue Springs, where she cut her teeth as his apprentice for a year.
When Johns decided to retire four years ago, Scroggins moved to Scott’s Kitchen and Catering.
“V, man — she came to us by suggestion from Todd Johns, and we have not looked back,” Scott’s Kitchen General Manager Mackenzie Brittain said. “... She can be a bulldog, but ... there's passion all behind it.”
The initials “KA” — short for kick ass — are all over Scott’s Kitchen. Brittain even has it tattooed on her right biceps — and Scroggins certainly embodies that mentality.
“We take that seriously around here,” Brittain said. “We love to KA every day and play restaurant. Some of us take it real serious.”
Across town, Megan Day — a pitmaster and co-owner of the Burnt Finger BBQ competition team based in Lee’s Summit with her husband, Jason — understands Scroggins' fight.
“There's two things that happen when people figure out that I'm a pitmaster: one, they're shocked because they assumed I was the PR person,” Day said. “... The other thing is, what they say to my husband — it's always so amazing to me — they'll walk up to him, and they'll say, ‘Oh, it's really nice you let her cook, too.’”
Jason handles it with Grace, but it can be grating.
After all, Burnt Finger can fill rooms with the trophies they’ve won, including Best Sides two of the last three years at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. The Days also boast an award-winning line of rubs and sauces, many of which are used in restaurants around town.
“I'm a crafty person,” Day said. “I like to do calligraphy. I like the details in those kinds of things, so I think this is like meats and crafts for me.”
Day said she doesn’t let the occasional slights bother her because she’s found a way to gain an edge.
“It doesn't ever make me angry because I can also use it to my advantage,” she said. “I can covertly walk in, and you don't know how many times someone just starts telling me all their secrets or details, shows me pictures of the turning boxes that they've been doing — no clue that I'm also competing against them.”
And probably beating them, but that defiance is a hallmark of the female pitmaster in Kansas City.
“That just came because he told me I couldn't do it,” Scroggins said. “I think that's what really makes me good at it, is the fact that I don't want to fail, and I like when people tell me my food is good.”
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