About Us

Our founder Chad Ratta grew up In a small town in rural Ohio, his dad had a construction company which provided a lot of resources for him at a young age. He realize that he could have anything he wanted if he used his resources and built it. This lead to an extreme love for building things in a unique way. After getting out of school, he worked for his dad, who had become known for doing specialty work all over the state of Ohio for customers such as Ohio State University, Proctor and Gamble, one of the key founders of Auto CAD, VetCor and many other businesses with problems they desperately needed addressed.

 

 

The smoker building was inspired by a man named Johnathan Gabis, who worked for Green Acres foundation. Green Acres Foundation is the original estate of Procter & Gamble. They were building a livestock handling facility designed by Temple Grandin. ( a complex cattle handling facility for the humane and ethical handling of livestock)

 

From working together, Johnathan and Chad became friends. Johnathan suggested that he start building offset smokers, due to his love for intricate working parts and so it began.

 

The first smoker was a 24“ x 36“ octagon shaped offset smoker. The original smoker was reworked a total of seven times. Every rendition of it worked better and they learned a lot  redoing that smoker. Chad continued to build several smokers a year for nearly 10 years, while still doing construction involving a lot of structural welding. Too many hours and more projects than you can count, he wanted more time at home with his family. Naturally, with Welding and metal fab always being the forte of his career and smokers being the thing had the most experience with. It made sense to take a deep dive into manufacturing smokers. Fast forward to now, things are going great. We are dedicated to bringing products to the market that the consumer wants, technology and quality that is unmatched. Be a part of something bigger join the community, follow us on social media and order your grill or smoker, so you too can be a proud owner of a Woodfire product.