Brett Tintera and Joel Austin have turned a neighborly shared hobby into one of St. Louis’ best-known local brands: Two Men And A Garden, specializing in all manner of salsas and pickles. Tintera recently shared about the company’s roots and where it’s headed.
How did Two Men And A Garden start? We joke about how it started, because it was so loosey-goosey from the get-go. It was about 15 years ago—literally just two buddies, two neighbors. It was basically a backyard gardening hobby that blended two gardens. We’ve always made [our products] ourselves and we still do, which is kind of crazy, but at the same time it’s very doable, very scaleable. Joel’s daughter made a logo as a joke, and it started from there. It just started with some of great-grandmother’s recipes and a label that was kind of a joke—it’s the same label we have to this day.
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How many products does Two Men have on the shelves now? Nine salsas, five pickles, and five pickling pouches. The pouches are cool. During the pandemic, we couldn’t get jars. We kept pivoting, and then we thought, What if we can’t get any more jars? Then we thought, It’s not the jar that makes the pickle—it’s the brine. The pouch is reusable, and you can throw anything you want in there.
What’s on the horizon for the company? Our latest pickle is a smoky barbecue, which I’m beyond ecstatic about. Barbecue and pickles go hand in hand. The next ones coming up are a Cajun/Creole pickle and a Bloody Mary one. We’ve never done spears; we’ve always done chips. So we’re using spears on that one and calling them ‘sticks.’ We’re also taking on some partnerships. We were able to get a kiosk in CITYPARK, in Section 117, and we’re doing loaded nachos with our salsa and putting a whole pickle on a stick, putting it in a pouch, and handing it out that way. We’re also partnering with the St. Louis Shock. We’re putting the Shock logo on top of every jar with a QR code. We’re trying to promote the fact that St. Louis has a professional pickleball team.
And you’ve expanded to other areas of the food industry? We’re currently in a large facility in High Ridge, which has led us to a whole second business called Kitchen Hub STL. At our old facility, we realized that people were renting our space and asking us questions daily. We had to grow anyway, so we said, Why not grow and have more space for future customers? The new building had a bunch of cubicles that we turned into small kitchens. We have about 40 members now, and the concept has proven out well. It’s not just a shared kitchen—we have full-time staff to help with recipes, scaling, and business consulting. It’s everything you’d need to grow a business.
