From B2C to B2B, how Mat Flosse and Meatings Barbecue went from catering to wholesale

Mat Flosse, founder of Meatings Barbecue, is busy these days selling his products at the Canadian Tire Centre, through local eateries and, eventually, at grocery stores. But his beginnings were a little more humble. When Flosse started Meatings in 2012, he was a 21-year-old university dropout cooking for his friends and looking for his next […]

Mat Flosse, founder of Meatings Barbecue, is busy these days selling his products at the Canadian Tire Centre, through local eateries and, eventually, at grocery stores. But his beginnings were a little more humble. When Flosse started Meatings in 2012, he was a 21-year-old university dropout cooking for his friends and looking for his next opportunity. When everyone kept asking him to cook a pig roast for events, he knew he’d found his calling.  After seeing a St. Catharines-based company showcase its commercial stainless steel pig roaster on Dragons’ Den, Flosse saw a way to bring his BBQ business to the next level.  “I begged my dad to buy this thing for me. It was $5,000 and he laughed in my face. I wasn’t attracted to going to business school, but I was very persistent. After a couple of months, I put together a business plan. I presented it sitting at the kitchen table, and (my dad) bought in.” With the money he got from selling his car and funds from his dad, Flosse was able to buy the roaster and a small trailer to do catering at events. After five years of catering weddings and local events, Flosse opened his first restaurant on St. Joseph Boulevard in Orleans in 2017. But rapid growth proved to be a blessing and a curse.  “We got to a point where catering was growing so much that we were doing prep in the front part of the restaurant, where guests would be coming in in half an hour,” he explained. “We ended up expanding and creating an independent catering location and operated our catering and restaurant separately.” By 2019, Meatings had outgrown both locations. At the beginning of 2020, Flosse signed a lease on a 5,500-square-foot space on Canotek Road to house a restaurant, catering kitchen and office space. “We signed that in January 2020, so three months before COVID hit,” he said.  In early 2020, Flosse was preparing to cater a St. Patrick’s Day event at Lansdowne Park. When the event was cancelled and pounds of barbecued meats were going to go bad, he had a lightbulb moment.  “I remember pacing around my kitchen thinking, ‘What the heck am I going to do with all this meat?’ I had the idea of vacuum-sealing it and we sold it on Facebook. Within 48 hours, we sold out of all our meat.” With his restaurant and catering operations forced to close due to the pandemic, Flosse said he was able to keep the business afloat by starting a retail division.  “So the idea of smoking the meat, packaging it and selling it was a pretty big turning point in our business … We found a way to overcome the shitty situation and find some positivity. It saved our business big time.” With a view to further expansion, Meatings partnered with local eateries such as Heart and Crown and G Burger to craft barbecue-inspired dishes and cross-promote on social media.  But Flosse said Meatings’s big break came when he struck a deal with the Ottawa Senators to become a concession partner at the Canadian Tire Centre, a gig that started at the beginning of the 2025 NHL season. 

With Aramark being the main food and beverage partner at the CTC, Meatings needed to work with that company to craft its offerings at the arena. And in order to sell its food to Aramark, Meatings needed to get it in the Sysco wholesale product system.  And so began a whole new growth journey for Flosse. To produce food for the CTC, Meatings needed a hazard analysis and critical care points certification, a food safety management system. Lacking the space and infrastructure to get certified, Flosse decided to seek help from a third-party producer. A short runway to get the project off the ground made things even more tricky.  “Because it took so long to negotiate with the Senators and Aramark to finetune all of the specifics of the deal, we had a very tight timeframe to get ready for the season. We reached out to our Sysco rep and they got us in contact with a company in Antigonish, N.S. that was available to make our meats in a very short turnaround.” The Meatings team went to Nova Scotia to oversee the production of the pulled pork and chopped chicken for the CTC at a kitchen that was already certified by Sysco. “Then, after the first month, we were sampling the product at one of the games and we found it wasn’t up to our standards. So we started to seek out other partners, other co-packers, to try and match our level of quality. “Consistency is huge in the food business. We want someone that comes to our restaurant to taste the same pulled pork that they would have tasted at the game,” Flosse explained.  After researching other potential partners, Flosse found King Cole Kitchens in Newmarket, Ont. – a duck farm turned wholesale business with a certified kitchen facility that was able to accommodate Meatings’s needs. While switching gears mid-season was not ideal, Flosse said it allowed his team the space to finetune the product.  “That’s where we started doing a lot of R&D testing, (looking at) how much spice rub to put on (the meats) and how long to smoke them. We based it off of what we were using here in our facility, but with different infrastructure and equipment over there.” Getting the wholesale business right is important, as Meatings competes with giants such as Maple Leaf Foods and Olymel Foods. “They have their own farms in-house, so their price point is a lot cheaper than what ours is. But we’re going for a quality, premium product while supporting local businesses.” The whole experience got Flosse thinking. “Initially, (our wholesale line) was restricted to the Ottawa Senators, but we’ve negotiated a deal with Sysco to open it up to the public,” he told OBJ.  Now, in the two weeks since Meatings’s pulled pork and chopped chicken launched through Sysco, many food service locations have shown interest, including several long-term care facilities and golf courses.  What started as a branch of operations with “marginal impact” has grown to make up one-third of the business, Flosse said.  “We see that as being the best point of scalability for our business,” he said. “In 2017, I’d always thought about how we could get Meatings across Canada. ‘Well, let’s franchise the restaurant.’ That was kind of what I knew were our opportunities to grow.” But Flosse knew that franchising would come with its own set of hurdles, including maintaining consistency and finding the right franchisees. By expanding its wholesale business, Meatings has found the best route to provincial and eventually national growth, he said.  “We are working with Sysco and we plan to work with other food distributors in the future. There’s GFS, there’s ItalFoods, which is an Ottawa-based company, who can then help us get our products out across not just Ottawa, but Ontario.” Flosse said he’s continuing to focus on expanding the wholesale business by leveraging his partnership with the Ottawa Senators and selling through local restaurants, something that has helped increase visibility.  “Doing these collaborations has been amazing. We’ve seen our own following grow exponentially. For each of the businesses that we partner with, I think it’s been their biggest revenue-driver in terms of specials.” This month, Meatings is partnering with five Orleans and Cumberland-based restaurants in a “passport-style” food crawl to celebrate its 14th anniversary.  “Our business has always been about community. It started with family and friends. Now it’s working with local restaurants and producers, which has been an integral part of the Meatings brand,” he said.  And, in a full-circle moment, Flosse told OBJ that he recently hired his dad as director of sales. Flosse is looking ahead to the next phase of growth for Meatings, which includes expanding the wholesale concept to grocery stores. “We’ll be selling our spices and sauces (in grocery stores) and for food service too. We’ll have shaker-size barbecue spice rubs for beef, pork and chicken.”