Lee Quessenberry is co-founder, brand manager, and the operational conduit of Jim Quessenberry BBQ. Older son of two-time world BBQ champion Jim Quessenberry, he grew up on the competition circuit — in 1989 footage a seven-year-old Lee is already on camera rubbing ribs. A year later his mother Donna walked him into Creative Multigraphics in Jonesboro and let him treat a drafting room like the best crayon box in Arkansas. The signs, labels, and site still come from that permission.
After Jim’s passing in 2000, Lee carried the recipes for over a decade. In 2014 he and his brother Michael brought Sauce Beautiful and Spice Beautiful back, using their father’s exact original formulas. Every product is shipped directly by Jim’s sons.
Lee is the one who gets things done. He knows everybody and anybody that’s somebody in the greater Hays Grocery / Northeast Arkansas retail orbit — printers, co-packers, tax and compliance, sell sheets, labels, UPCs, websites, and the human handshakes in between. When Michael and Lee partnered strategically with Mickey King (Hays Supermarkets / Q Sauce Kings), Lee was the wire between brand, shelf, and plant: DirectFX labels, Taste Maker Foods co-pack, Edwards Food Giant commitments, display racks, store-manager tools.
With Michael he caters gravel weekends and other events on Crowley’s Ridge alongside cousins Martin, Kara, and Jackie — championship plates on family ground, meant to pull people into Northeast Arkansas Delta agritourism. Becky is not on that map anymore.
He also publishes the story surface — site, book commerce for Quess: The Arkansas Trav’ler, guides, and the brand systems that keep grocery and DTC on the same voice. His wife, Krystal Quessenberry, is part of that household — including the taste-test crew that helped finish Sauce Beautiful Gold.
