How a joke at a family barbecue launched multimillion-dollar business

Gabriel Gewargis left high school in year 10 but a joke at a family barbecue started a business that is now a multimillion-dollar success.

When Gabriel Gewargis joked at a family barbecue he wanted to start an online business selling charcoal grills, his dad and brother called him crazy.

This was in the late-2000s before charcoal cooking became a food trend and online shopping was still a small player in the retail space.

“My dad was cooking on a product that today is known as a Cyprus Grill – it’s a rotisserie like barbecue we bought over from Cyprus,” Mr Gewargis told news.com.au.

Initially, the Sydney man bought two Cyprus Grills (a term he’s now trademarked) and set up his business, The BBQ Store, on eBay.

The plan was for his wife, to help run the online store while she was looking after their small children.

“My wife and I initially bought two and thought we’d sell one and keep one,” said the father-of-four.

“For us it was a secondary income my wife could do to help pay some bills – that was originally where we thought it would end.”

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The barbecue enthusiast credits his success to his unique product as well as being an early adaptor of e-commerce. Picture: Supplied.

However, the grills quickly sold, prompting Mr Gewargis to buy more stock. “We bought four, then eight, to lots of 20 and 50. Once we got to the 50s we finally acknowledged this was going to be something serious,” he remembers.

The turning point for The BBQ Store came a year into their business when one of their grills was used by former My Kitchen Rules contestants Steve Georgiou and Helen Demetriou on Better Homes and Gardens. That weekend they made 150 orders and the “momentum just continued”.

“I remember that weekend my wife and I had a couple of friends over and we were packing orders all weekend,” he says. “At the time we were manually invoicing the orders and booking couriers one at a time instead of automating the process.”

A few months later, Mr Gewargis transitioned from being a sole trader to registering The BBQ Store as a company on January 1, 2011. The business continued to hit milestones.

“A lot of our sales come from word of mouth and referrals when someone goes to someone’s house and sees the machine in action. You eat meat that’s been cooked on it and you can’t compare the flavour of charcoal cooking to a gas barbecue.”

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Mr Gewargis has now expanded his business to sell pizza ovens, smokers and creates custom outdoor kitchen set ups too. Picture: Supplied.

One of their biggest milestones was becoming “an eBay millionaire” in 2014 when The BBQ Store made more than $1 million of sales on the platform. Mr Gewargis says the online marketplace is still a key part of his business, which he combines with his website and wholesale operation.

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The business grew from an idea at a family barbecue. Picture: Supplied.

While The BBQ Store is about to celebrate their 10-year-anniversary, 2020 has been a challenging year for the business – as it has been for most. Faced with a “triple-whammy” of bushfires and floods in January and February and then COVID-19 in March, Mr Gewargis recalls a period where his sales completely stopped.

“It was early April when I said to my wife: ‘The phone’s stopped, the emails stopped, the orders stopped,’” he says. “We had ordered hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock and people just weren’t buying our products."

Although the first few weeks of April were dire, The BBQ Store later experienced a record boom in sales. While the classic Cyprus Grill remains one of their bestsellers, their smokers and pizza ovens have also soared in popularity.

“Restaurants had closed down and people started eating at home more and ordering more online,” he says.

“Every month since then has just been a record month and it’s been better than our December trade.

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Reflecting on his business, Mr Gewargis concedes he never thought they would become “the store they are today”. In 2019, The BBQ Store had a turnover of $2.4 million and they’re on target to pass $3 million by the end of this year.

“I basically dropped out in year 10 so I don’t even have that formal education,” he jokes.

“We started from humble beginnings, from two barbecues and now we have around 1200 different products on sale. It’s quite an achievement.”