Notable barbecue joints have closed at a more rapid pace than usual this year. That includes three spots from our 2021 Top 50 BBQ list and three more from the 2023 list of the 25 best new and improved barbecue joints in Texas. Those come on the heels of last year’s loss of Brett’s Family Barbecue, in Rockdale, and Pit Commander Barbecue, in Van Alstyne, which rebranded with a focus on wood-fired pizza under the name Texapolitan Pizza.
Last year I predicted that the Texas barbecue bubble was about to burst. There were simply too many options for great barbecue, and restaurant owners worried there wouldn’t be enough diners to keep them all profitable. I talked to the several owners who chose to close their barbecue joints this year, and they shared their reasons. I expected to hear similar answers about inflation, but I got a myriad of motivations that ranged from quality of life and health issues to the inevitable financial hurdles of running a restaurant.
Convenience West
Marfa
When this year’s James Beard Award nominees were announced, Convenience West, a roadside joint open just twice a week, was a surprise entry in the Outstanding Restaurant category. Before the owners traveled to Chicago for the ceremony in June, co-owner Mark Scott said they had already discussed the idea of closing down the restaurant that had been open since 2017. Langbaan, in Portland, Oregon, took home the prize, and the following month Convenience West announced it would be closing for good. What if it had won? “We may have tried to figure out how to move forward,” Scott said, but it would have just delayed the inevitable.
After seven years serving the Marfa community, the Convenience West team was simply worn out, Scott said. “We’ve run our course,” he added, “and it’s time to see what’s next.” But Scott doesn’t see closing as a failure. “We accomplished so much more than any of us thought we would with the project and this journey,” he said. As for the two five-hundred-gallon smokers, Scott isn’t planning to get rid of them anytime soon. “I don’t know if full-time barbecue will ever be in my future,” he said, “but I will always dabble with live-fire cooking.”
Coyote Smoke
Winnsboro
When Wylie Smithwick closed Coyote Smoke the first time, in 2022 (the same year it opened), he knew it was temporary. He was planning a permanent spot to park his trailer and reopened on the edge of Winnsboro last June. He had picnic tables under a metal roof, a cooler, storage space, and consistent hours, but it wasn’t enough. Smithwick said the flow of business was either really busy or dead. Customer traffic remained unpredictable, which is a challenge for a model that relies on guessing how many people you’ll be cooking for that day.
“It just seems like there’s less and less chance of success in small towns,” Smithwick said of the barbecue business. He’s echoing a problem I mentioned in last year’s article about the crowded barbecue field in Winnsboro, a tiny East Texas town. It’s not so crowded after Coyote Smoke closed and East TX Rust BBQ moved to nearby Gilmer.
Smithwick said he closed up this June before the financial toll got too large. “I got to where I didn’t want to hate barbecue,” he said. He has since sold his smoker and found a job in the pit room of Hutchins BBQ in McKinney. The metal building that once housed his business is currently for sale.
Douglas BBQ
Dallas
Doug Pickering had a vision for his path at Douglas BBQ. He knew opening the restaurant, which he did in 2022, would demand long hours, as would getting it on a firm foundation. Pickering took on the role of general manager as well as chef until he could afford to hire a GM, which he assumed would happen within the first year. Business was good the summer shortly after he opened, but sales fell off 60 percent the following year. “We couldn’t drive a lunch crowd because of a lack of parking,” Pickering explained. He didn’t have the budget for new general manager.
“Two years of one-hundred-and-twenty-hour workweeks was not a life to sustain,” Pickering said. He was neglecting his wife and three young children, he said, and that was time he knew he couldn’t get back. Pickering found an entity willing to take over the lease and gave the public and his employees a month to prepare for the closing, in March.
Pickering said he’ll always love barbecue but doesn’t expect to open a restaurant again. I talked with him shortly after he passed his licensing exam to start a new line of work selling commercial property insurance. He’ll miss cooking for living but said, “If I mention the idea of another barbecue joint or restaurant to my wife, she’ll cut my head off.”
Fargo’s Pit BBQ
Bryan
Belender Wells and Alan Caldwell started Fargo’s Pit BBQ as a cash-only takeout spot 24 years ago. Thanks to its popularity, it had moved buildings twice since then, to a larger one each time. Over the past few years, profitability suffered. “Our meat prices go up, and if you try to make any type of profit, you lose your customer because folks can’t afford to eat out anymore,” Wells explained.
She added that construction of a controversial median completed last year along Texas Avenue in Bryan blocked what was once easy access into their parking lot. Finding the lot entrance was a challenge during the construction, and after the project was finished, any southbound traffic had to go a quarter mile past the restaurant and make a U-turn.“You gotta really want the barbecue to get there,” Wells said. Business dropped off further, and they simply weren’t making money.
A life in barbecue has also been tough on Wells and Caldwell, who are both in their sixties. “When you start physically breaking down and you’re not making any money, what other signs do you need?” Wells asked. Since the restaurant closed in July, Wells can finally take the time to have ankle surgery. Though their retirement from barbecue was earlier than expected, Wells said she and Caldwell are thankful rather than bitter. She said, “We’ve been blessed and we’ve been able to be a blessing, and that’s what is most important in life.”
Hays Co. Bar-B-Que
San Marcos
Six years ago, Michael and Asenette Hernandez proudly opened an expanded version of Hays Co. Bar-B-Que, originally established in 2007, in San Marcos. The space included a large dining room and a second building with a bar. This year they were ready to downsize and temporarily closed operations in June. “With inflation going on and labor issues being a constant, we kind of wanted to scale back,” Michael said, while noting that the restaurant remained profitable. They sold the building to the Hays County Food Bank, and are working on opening a new location about half the size seven miles north, in Kyle.
“We miss the smoke,” said Michael, who is antsy to get cooking. Closing for good was never an option for him. “If you cut me right now, I’m going to ooze brisket grease,” he said. The opening of the new place is still several months away, but Michael said he’s hoping to have a food truck parked out front to serve a basic menu in the meantime. Even when the new place opens, it’ll keep a slower pace and stick to being open just four days a week.
Heritage Butchery & Barbecue
Denison
Brad Hammett feels like Denison wasn’t quite ready for the barbecue joint and boutique butcher shop he opened two years ago. “People were more familiar with their Uncle Bob’s brisket in his backyard and sort of turned their nose up to craft-style barbecue,” he said. The prices were higher than normal for barbecue in the area, and there just weren’t enough affluent customers to support it. “We were winning people over slowly, but there was definitely a sticker shock,” Hammett said.
Hammett believes the butcher shop lost customers because it was principled on remaining a whole-animal butcher rather than ordering boxes of popular steak cuts. That meant when it ran out of ribeyes, strips, and filets, selling less familiar cuts could be challenging. “They don’t know about flat irons and bavettes,” Hammett said of many customers. Some of them scoffed at Heritage’s raw meat prices compared with the commodity meat at Walmart, and Hammett said there was no way to compete with that, so he closed up shop in June.
Smokin’ Joe’s Pit BBQ
El Paso
Joe Martinez announced that his Smokin’ Joe’s Pit BBQ trailer, established in 2022, would close for good several times before instead finding the will to reopen. This last time, in July, the closing does seem to be for good. Cooking and serving barbecue in the El Paso heat was supposed to be temporary. “It’s something I really wanted to grow,” Martinez said of his now extinguished aspirations for a brick-and-mortar. But he explained simply that “the workload was greater than the money coming in.”
Martinez also has a barbecue YouTube channel to fall back on for income. “My views are down, but my subscribers are still there,” he said. His brother and former business partner, Martin Martinez, didn’t have that luxury. He reopened the food truck under the name Sun City BBQ, and serves Thursday to Saturday from the same spot beside Buddy’s Beer Barn.
Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ
Buda
Miguel and Modesty Vidal made a big jump from a food truck in South Austin to a massive new brick-and-mortar in Buda last June. It hadn’t been open a year when the Vidals announced on April 25 via Instagram that the restaurant would reopen under new management. The reopening never happened, and the building currently sits vacant.
The financial obstacles began to mount for the Vidals even before the opening. Construction costs ballooned over their original budget of around $2 million, so they sought a loan for an additional $1 million from Austin-based restaurant coupon app InKind to cover the differences. The opening was delayed by months. The $20,000-per-month rent payments (compared with $5,000 at the previous location) were being deferred, but back rent would be due once the restaurant opened. As the unanticipated costs mounted, Miguel Vidal convinced himself that the restaurant’s future success would cover it all. “I made myself believe that we would be fine if we just got open,” he said.
Miguel said the original plan of preparing a team was jettisoned in favor of just getting open as soon as possible. “We closed the trailer and did one day of training with everyone, then opened up,” Vidal said. He hoped everyone would learn on the job, but the number of employees and output had doubled. “It was like a Saturday every day,” Miguel said. Until it wasn’t.
When I visited in January, the cracks were evident. The restaurant was nearly empty on a Friday at lunch. Customers complained of poor service, and a tipping scandal at the restaurant was fresh on their minds too. Miguel loudly lectured an employee in the dining room while I ate. His stress level was peaking because he knew the end was near. “In the last three months we were pulling in the same amount of sales at the trailer,” Miguel said, knowing that was thousands of dollars short every day of what they needed to pay their bills. The restaurant was so far behind in its debts that food suppliers stopped delivering. Miguel and other employees made rounds to local grocery stores. “I was driving myself crazy reflecting on how it got to that point, and the mistakes I made, and things I should have done better,” he said.
Those debts remain, and Miguel is working to file for bankruptcy protection. “I want to make things right as best as I can,” he said.
“People make mistakes, and that’s how they learn. I just made a really big mistake,” Miguel told me, so I asked which mistakes he thought led to the closing. “If I had time and was more self-aware with everything, I would have been more patient and took the time to be a better teacher,” he said. He’s well aware of the importance of profitability, but warned others not to use money as their motivation in the barbecue business. “Money is not first,” he said. “It’s the love for what you’re trying to do and the business you’re trying to operate. The money comes.”
For his next step, Miguel said he hopes to get back to what first drew him to the restaurant business. “I know that my superpower is cooking,” he said, ”and that’s the only one I have right now.” A new venture may not have the Valentina’s name, which has been in existence since 2013, but he said he will be back. “No matter what it is, it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.”
