Grill and smoker: $600. It comes with four boxes of charcoal and two boxes of fire-starters as a holiday promotion. Photo by Jessica Turner

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John Veatch and Cam Leggett spent three years designing the Maserati of portable grills because they noticed the market for portable outdoor grills was “a race to the bottom.”

NOMAD Grills launched less than a year and a half ago, and it’s already successful enough that they’re planning to move from Bishop Avenue to a larger space on Clinton at West Davis soon.

People kept telling them to move to North Dallas or the northern suburbs.

“We insisted on Oak Cliff,” Leggett says. “There’s nowhere else we wanted to be. We both live here. This is our home.”

They describe this briefcase grill, which is also a smoker, as “weapons-grade.”

Multilayer construction is composed of an interior die-cast aluminum cook box, then an air gap, which no other grill has, and an outer shell. That air gap keeps the outside surface at a low temperature, so it can sit on a wood table or bed-lined tailgate.

It’s also very sturdy, so there’s no risk of knocking it over. Once the cooking is done, you can fold it up and close the vents. It snuffs out the fire, and you can walk away with it. The grill recently won a Red Dot Award, which is given annually to the best industrial designs around the world.

Instagram marketing brought them customers from all over the United States as well as Europe and Asia. The company brought all the fulfillment in house to give customers the quick turnaround they expect in an Amazon-dominated world.

“Launching mid-pandemic was challenging for 1,000 reasons,” Leggett says. “Supply chains have been snarled for the last year, so we wanted to have as much control as we can as a startup.”

They ship orders the same day until 4 p.m. and use FedEx so they can reach either coast in two or three days. Neighbors can visit the showroom to check them out or order online and pick one up on the same day.

Each grill currently comes with four boxes of charcoal and two boxes of Tumbleweed fire-starters as a holiday promotion. It’s fruitwood charcoal sourced in Thailand that takes more effort to light but once it’s going, can smoke unassisted for several hours.

They designed the fire-starter to make the charcoal easy to light. It’s pine shavings coated in natural wax that’s just placed under the charcoal.

“You touch a match to it and leave it alone,” Veatch says.

This fire-starting method was part of their initial business plan. Who wants to use Safeway charcoal and lighter fluid on their SpaceX grill?

Leggett, who grew up in Richardson, and Veatch, who attended St. Mark’s and Highland Park high schools, are planning to throw some parties and events in their new space, which is behind Oak Cliff Beer and Wine.

And we can expect more products from them in the future.

“We’re in the early stages of building out a full lifestyle brand with products that make sense together,” Leggett says.

NOMAD Grills, 111 N. Bishop Ave., nomadgrills.com