Woodridge man’s side hustle doing a crisp business

Charlie Zieserl is a 15-year restaurant veteran in kitchens from Chicago’s hip Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba to Lisle’s Schmaltz Delicatessen.

The 37-year-old Woodridge man could have been the Tapas Guy, the Braunschweiger Guy, or reflecting his current position as food receiver and prep cook at Lettuce Entertain You’s Beatrix restaurant in Oak Brook, the Egg White Omelet Guy.

Nope. He’s actually Charlie The Bacon Guy.

Why bacon?

“It’s bacon,” Zieserl said, sound logic given the popularity of the mouthwatering side dish.

Borne of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly through word-of-mouth over four years and outside of his day job, Charlie The Bacon Guy has grown an online business that currently offers two dozen flavors of bacon, another dozen types of bacon jam, and has expanded into merchandising and bacon charcuterie boards.

“I think bacon chose me,” he said.

Zieserl, who grew up on the North Shore and finished high school in Boston to play ice hockey — he still plays in leagues in Romeoville and Woodridge’s Seven Bridges Ice Arena — did not plan on becoming a bacon impresario.

He was more interested in helping people and providing good, homemade food to family and friends.

Shortly into the pandemic, Zieserl heard of purveyors he knew struggling financially due to restaurants closing and food orders vanishing.

From one of them, Catalpa Grove Farm in Dwight, Zieserl ordered $500 worth of pork belly to drum up some business.

Using a process Zieserl learned under chef Tim Cottini, one of his mentors at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba and now at Bub City in Chicago, Zieserl made bacon and braised pork belly and began sharing pictures of his creations on social media. (Charlie The Bacon Guy has more than 1,100 Instagram followers.)

Friends and family soon started asking for product, many offering to pay for it.

“Absolutely you can pay for it,” Zieserl told them.

A few months after that initial $500 investment, a woman with her own premade meal business ordered 65 pounds of bacon.

“I kind of thought, ‘Here we go,’” and by the early spring of 2021 he’d incorporated Charlie The Bacon Guy.

Juggling work, his marriage to wife Rachel, helping raise their daughters, Sasha, 3, and Sydney, 6, and, yes, his hockey schedule, Zieserl uses a 497-pound Marshall smoker that over several hours can cook some 70 pounds of pork belly — about six bellies at a time.

Then, it’s off to the curing refrigerator, the slicer and, eventually, the freezer, all at their Woodridge home.

“About a week later you have bacon,” Charlie Zieserl said. “The longer you let it rest after you smoke it, the better.”

He’s created 35 different flavors for his bacon, starting with maple pepper and including his favorite, chorizo.

He’s since worked to create Canadian bacon, English back bacon, and pork belly cinnamon rolls.

Maybe it was only foreshadowing, but perhaps not surprisingly Charlie and Rachel Zieserl have a dog called Bacon Brisket, a Shiba Inu, German Shepard and Labrador mix named before Charlie officially became The Bacon Guy.

About 65% of annual orders come in during the holiday season from November through January, Zieserl said, and the rest of the year he processes about 100 pounds of pork monthly.

Those 100 pounds yield around 112 12-ounce packages of bacon, with the scraps going into bacon jams. Zieserl rotates his current online selection several times a month, with made-to-order selections from the “Bacon Vault” requiring 10 to 14 days to execute with a minimum order of three packs. Each pack is $12-$13.

Zieserl has promoted his company on podcasts, done a little advertising, and draws attention with The Bacon Guy hockey sweater he wears to the United Center for Chicago Blackhawks games. Word-of-mouth recommendation provides the company most of its business.

And business is crisp.

“It’s almost four years exactly later that we’re going strong,” Zieserl said.