For the past few years, we’ve talked about the BBQ bubble and asked the question, will it ever burst?
Well, with rising beef prices, skyrocketing operating costs, and fewer people eating out, it seems like that bubble is in fact starting to burst.
Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, TMBBQ.com, has been talking to pitmasters across the state who are closing their doors. He joined the Standard to talk about what he heard. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I mean, I can actually visualize a barbecue bubble and it kind of looks delicious. It’s made of sauce. But what we mean is kind of what we’ve seen with breweries, right? There was a flurry of new ones and then we’ve see a bunch of closures, right.
Daniel Vaughn: Yes, and we’ve seen a bunch of closures of places that we have high opinions of at Texas Monthly. Places that have been in our top 50 list, in our honorable mention list as well.
So these aren’t just some fly-by-night barbecue operations. These are some of the spots that we think are some of best in the state and they are no longer.
Goodness. Well, highlight a few for us. I guess there’s Brett’s BBQ in Katy. Is that one worth mentioning?
Yes. Yeah. Brett’s BBQ Shop. When they opened up in Katy, they were immediately serving great barbecue. They got very popular. They expanded, went into a new location.
Turns out in hindsight, maybe it was too large and too expensive of a lease. But on those first couple of years in there, they had lines out the door. They had plenty of business. They had no reason to think that they’d be closing up shop here like they did at the end of last year.
So in that case, maybe it was partly a case of trying to go too big, but what else did you hear from pitmasters having to shut up shop?
Well, you know, some of them just talked about the fact that their regulars are still there supporting them, but they might be coming in once a month or once every other month instead of once a week.
You know, it was actually Brett Jackson who said that he knew there was a problem when he saw families coming in, or couples coming in and ordering one two-meat platter, just sharing that because it was getting too expensive.
And the expensive part is that thing that I think is obvious to all of us who go out and eat barbecue. It’s getting more expensive because beef is more expensive. Texas is the beef/barbecue state and they have to pass that price on to the consumer somewhat.
I was going to ask if there’s a way around that. I mean, it doesn’t seem like there is though, right? I mean if their upfront costs are just so much higher, there’s only so much of that that they can eat, so to speak.
You know, there are some ways around it. And one of those is, you know a lot of the pitmasters will try and find ways to get people to buy pork or poultry in any form.
The other part too, is just that the way that we’ve been sort of trained to eat this new-school barbecue – especially, these big bountiful barbecue trays with five different meats and four different sides that you share amongst friends… You know, it does add up pretty quickly.
And, you know, sometimes you just got to go back to the good old staples like a chopped brisket sandwich or a barbecue-stuffed potato and let the carbs mix in with some of the meat there.
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Yeah, and does that work for pitmasters too? Are they happy to have you order a little less as long as you’re still coming in?
Well, you know, one of the things to remember is, as far as profit margin, meat on butcher paper is a tough way to make a great profit, right? You can certainly do it a lot easier in sides and drinks and stuffed potatoes than you can in just meat on butcher paper.
So this has actually gotten the attention of the Texas Agriculture Department and Commissioner Sid Miller has issued a call to action. Can you tell us what he said?
Yeah, that’s right. Like he put out a call to action basically just letting people know that Texas barbecue joints are in trouble and that Texas barbecue joints are mostly in trouble because of the price of beef.
I will remind folks that this year Sid Miller is all for barbecue, but we did a couple of stories back in 2017 when the barbecue bill was put into action and the barbecue bill 2.0 in 2019 to curb Sid Miller’s, his enforcement, barbecue joints for their scales and sending in inspectors into all the barbecue joints to check their scales, and to collect fees if they were not in compliance.
Well, I know you’re the barbecue expert – barbecue editor, indeed – but is this a broader trend in the restaurant industry or is barbecue just sort of one indicator of what’s happening on a larger scale across Texas?
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, if you look at the Texas Restaurant Association and the numbers that they put out, restaurant visits across the board have been trending down for months and months in a row here.
So it’s not just with barbecue. It’s just, you know, it’s sad to see so many of these places going that have been around for so long. And the places that we have been trying to tell everybody about at Texas Monthly about how great they are and see them closing is a bit of a shock sometimes, and certainly sad.
