About Us

Our Name Says It All

100% American made, American owned.  Marc Rinehart, CEO and founder of QST Smoke Flavors started the manufacturing companu in middle TN in 2018.  Quality, Service, and Trust are attribute that have followed him and his vision for over 30 years in the food and meat industry.

Quality, Service, and Trust

QST began as a seasoning company in Southern CA in the late 1990s.  All along it was always involved with smoke flavors, both as a broker and distributor, which provided a tremendous opportunity for understanding product supply as a customer.  The vendors QST worked with during these times were often quite unreliable.  The production of smoke flavors is a very specialized field that was operating by about 5 processors all fully or partially foreign owned.  In order to maintain quality, service and trust Marc knew he needed to build the only fully American owned and operated smoke flavoring manufacturing business.

Opportunity Knocks

The Crace family has been involved in the charcoal business in middle TN for 5 generations and smoke flavors for 3.  Fifth generation, Josh Crace began working with smoke products in the original QST facility in Southern CA in 2014.  It wasn’t long before QST realized that in order to supply the highest amount of quality, service and trust, that it needed to begin manufacturing its own products.  The manufacturing center in middle TN was born in 2018 as a result.  Since then, QST has not looked back and neither has a market that was looking for consistent quality, reasonable lead times, and service that they could trust.

Small and privately owned, QST continues their success with plans of future expansion to meet customers’ growing needs.  With an expanding staff QST is poised to rapidly handle customers increasing needs from product matches to on time deliveries.  In addition, QST has produced a full line of products designed for diversity and uniqueness in regards to it’s customers’ new product development.