Ronnie Lee (Lil' Ronnie's BBQ, Taste of Tofino): From a $200 Tent to the Hall of Fame
A Smoker Called Johnny Cash
During his first semester at culinary school in Toronto, Ronnie Lee wandered into Cherry Street BBQ and met the owner, Lawrence La Pienta, a pitmaster who'd spent years competing on the Kansas City Barbeque Society circuit. That single bar stool conversation rearranged everything. Lee had enrolled thinking fine dining. He left thinking wood fire.
But before he could chase that, a friend from Tofino called. Come out west, the friend said. Lee had never been. He went anyway.
He landed a job in the kitchen at Wolf in the Fog, which had just been named Best New Restaurant in Canada by Air Canada's enRoute. He worked under chef Nicholas Nutting alongside James Marinoff, who'd later become his own executive chef. Fine dining paid the bills. But the BBQ itch didn't go away.
So Lee drove to Ohio, bought a 10,000-dollar offset wood-fire smoker, and hauled it back across the continent. He named it Johnny Cash.
Better guest experience. Bigger nights. $299. Once.
The $200 Tent
In 2017, Lee set up behind the Schooner Restaurant in a tent that cost him two hundred bucks. He cooked overnight, slept in his car when he could, and served meat all day. There were no short cuts and no pretensions. "You have to have someone standing at the smoker for 16 hours putting a log on the fire," he told the Westerly News.
Word spread the way it does in a town of 2,300 people. Locals showed up. Then tourists. "Locals kept us alive," Lee said.
The tent became a spot on Campbell Street. Campbell Street became a permanent home in the old lobby at Mackenzie Beach Resort. By the time Lil' Ronnie's Beachside BBQ settled in, it wasn't just a restaurant. It was a co-op: seven partners, including front-of-house manager Marty Kukler, who moved back from Nanaimo and slept on Lee's couch for a month while they pooled savings to make the Mackenzie location work.
That's the part most business stories skip. The couch. The pooled savings. The friends who bet their stability on your idea because they believed in it too.
1,350 Turkey Dinners in One Night
The community feasts started by accident. A storm knocked out Tofino's power, and Lee decided to cook all the food he had on hand rather than let it spoil. He gave it away. The next year, he did it again on purpose, this time as a sit-down Christmas dinner at the community hall.
By December 2021, the tradition had grown beyond anything he'd planned. Lee's crew was up until 2 a.m. mashing 500 pounds of potatoes. They served about 1,350 people free takeout Christmas supper in a single evening. Tofino mayor Dan Law and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation's Iris Frank coordinated deliveries of 170 turkey platters to 470 people across the communities of Opisaht, Esowista, Ty-histanis, and Tin Wis. Law himself helped deliver 40 platters to 160 people in Ahousaht, a half-hour boat ride from town.
"I'm just really grateful for everybody," Lee said. "Once the pandemic is over we will all get together and break bread at a table, but for now this is how we have to do it."
This wasn't a marketing play. There was no social media campaign. A Maritime kid who'd been in Tofino for four years was feeding entire First Nations communities by boat on a December night because he'd cooked too much food during a power outage once and liked how it felt.
The Ups and Downs Nobody Advertises
Lee never pretended it was easy. "There have been a lot of ups and downs for us," he said. "There were multiple times we all thought we were going to lose everything."
The recognition came anyway. In November 2021, Lil' Ronnie's was named Tofino's Business of the Year by the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. "Winning the Tofino Business of the Year through the chamber really brought a tear to my eye," Lee told the Westerly News. "It showed that we really do make an impact in the community."
In 2022, the Small Business BC Awards named Lil' Ronnie's a Top 5 finalist for the Business Impact Award. They finished third out of 636 nominees.
And the thing Lee seemed proudest of? "We opened back up and we have a full kitchen team. Everybody just came back. You must have a good work environment if people are just coming back."
In an industry where retention is the crisis nobody has solved, that line says more than any award.
Closing on a High Note
In October 2024, after eight seasons, Lee announced that Lil' Ronnie's would close. Not because it failed. Because he was ready for what came next.
The farewell was pure Ronnie: gratitude for the staff, the suppliers, the musicians who'd played the backyard patio. "To our musicians who came from far and wide to play at our venue; music will live on in this community, in my heart, and in the hearts of my family forever," the team wrote.
Lee pivoted to Taste of Tofino, a wedding and event catering company built on the same wood-fire foundation. Different format, same ethos: local ingredients, soulful hospitality, Tofino on a plate.
In 2025, the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame inducted him into its 23-member class. A Maritime kid who showed up to Tofino with no plan and cooked his way into the province's permanent record.
What Other Operators Can Take from This
Lee's story isn't a franchise blueprint. You can't replicate "drive to Ohio, buy a smoker, set up a tent in a surf town." But the patterns underneath it are worth sitting with.
He built something cooperatively. Seven partners, a couch, pooled savings. Most restaurant advice says go it alone or get investors. Lee got friends.
He turned accidents into identity. A power outage became a Christmas tradition that fed over a thousand people. The best things about his business weren't planned. They were responses.
He closed while he was winning. Hall of Fame, Business of the Year, a catering company already running. Most operators hold on too long. Lee read the moment and moved.
And he never forgot who kept him alive. The locals who showed up to that first tent. The First Nations communities he delivered turkey to by boat. The staff who came back every season without being asked.
Running an independent restaurant is the hardest job most people will ever love. Ronnie Lee loved it for eight seasons, fed his town along the way, and left before the fire went out.
Sources: BC Restaurant Hall of Fame, Westerly News, Port Alberni Valley News, Westerly News, Daily Hive.
