The culinary program partnered with Evie Maes in 2019 when they formed their first Barbecue Competition Team. Robbins and pit manager Nathan Pier served as mentors, coaches, and provided resources for Frenship students and the culinary teaching staff.

Amy Baker, Frenship Career and Technical Education (CTE) Coordinator said Evie Maes has provided knowledge, insight, and recommendations on what materials the competition team needs to be truly competitive.

“The best part of that partnership is that they [Evie Maes] were willing to get on board and be all in,” said Baker. “We could not have made it through without their partnership.”

Baker said typically barbecue is not a huge part of the culinary department’s curriculum, but because it is more of a Texas way of life, they wanted to find more ways to include it for students, and add the element of competition to it as well.

“I think we are going to have more kids now that want to participate because we have a name like Evie Maes backing us up,” Baker said. “We have skilled students and we have skilled instructors, but to have that community partnership is invaluable.”

For their first competition season, the team relied heavily on the use of Evie Mae’s smoker, and other community sponsors resources. After the season, Frenship reached out to Robbins to see if they would be willing to help build a smoker that the culinary students could use year- round as a training resource, and to compete with. Evie Maes offered to donate their time to custom build the smoker for the culinary department.

Evie Mae’s owner Arnis Robbins said when Frenship came to him with a request to build the smoker, he was excited to help.

“I was really happy to put something together,” Robbins said. “As of now, this is the best smoker I’ve ever built, and it should serve them well.”

The smoker has even deeper ties to the South Plains, as the propane tank used was made in Lubbock. Robbins said that it “seems very appropriate that a tank built in Lubbock in 1961 would live the rest of its life as a smoker for Frenship High School’s culinary program.”

For more information on the partnership check out these videos Frenship media students created:

Watch: Evie Maes and FHS Culinary

Watch: Nathan Pier Coaches Culinary Students in Preparation for Competition