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In just two decades, Texas barbecue has become an international icon of American tradition and craftsmanship. What used to be an affordable, practical meal for bluecollar families has evolved into a gourmet Michelin star delicacy, drawing in tourists and locals who line up as early as 5:00 a.m. to dine at the state's most famous spots. The South boasts the highest concentration of barbecue restaurants in the country. Barbecue there is not just a meal, but a way of life. And each state has its own style. Yet, it's the purest, no sauce, brisket first style of Texas barbecue that has earned national and global recognition. But when we look past the
romanticism and glorification, barbecue in Texas is a grueling business. Owners work from dusk till dawn, and only a lucky few ever make the spotlight. Yet, no one knows how many barbecue spots there are in Texas or in the South, just that there's a lot. Ask any historian, Pitm or LLM, and you'll get wildly different answers that are often thousands apart. All the data available today is either hearsay or non-existent. No one's ever been crazy enough to count until now. We scraped over 200,000 listings across nine states and verified each one manually to produce the first truly accurate snapshot of the American barbecue industry. With these numbers,
we can truly understand just how extreme the Texas market really is. There are more American barbecue spots in Texas than anywhere else in the world, and it's been that way for decades. If we combine all the spots that have ever opened across the other five states in the barbecue belt, they still don't hold a candle to the Lone Star State. But it's not just about size, it's also concentration. Even when stacked up against smaller southern peers, Texas still leads with the highest number of barbecue restaurants per capita. 7.3 spots for every 100,000 residents. Only the best can survive in this saturation, and you'd have to be brave or mad to charge into this fire. Yet, there's
something unique about Texas, where demand runs so deep that you still have a better chance of success here than anywhere else. Since our data captures every barbecue spot that's ever existed, we can calculate the industry's failure rate with confidence. On average, one out of every three don't make it. In Missouri, four out of every 10 shutter their doors, and in Oklahoma, it's over 1 in three. Texas uniquely sits in the middle with a failure rate of exactly 33%. Conventional business wisdom says that new players should run away from competition, not towards it. But when we look at California, New York, and Florida, states that are less crowded, wealthier, or more populous than Texas, the failure rates are even higher.
Outside of the South, barbecue is a treat, not tradition. With lower demand and overall interest, it's tougher to keep doors open. In the South, the challenge is breaking through. The smaller populations and slower economies mean that while survival may be easier, thriving is much harder. This is why Texas stands out. It's the hardest, but also the most rewarding place to start, where the upside in business and prestige far exceeds what you would get opening anywhere else. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. But the question remains, how do you distinguish yourself in the world's most competitive barbecue market? In this modern NBA original, we drive 956 miles
across Texas to understand what it takes to win in the face of saturation and the invisible gatekeepers pulling the strings on who thrives and who must pave their own path. How's that brisket look? Today is chaos for every business owner. Commerce has turned volatile as tariffs get slapped on and then removed, trade policies shift and geopolitical tensions flare up week to week. While economists continue to deny that we're in a recession and that the stock market is booming, inflation is still up, consumer spending is slowing, unemployment is increasing, and layoffs persist in every industry. With labor shortages and supply chains under pressure, cash flow
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figures, download the free book, Navigating Global Trade: Three Insights for Leaders at.com/modern MBA. The guide is free to you at netswuite.com/modernba. It's 7:00 a.m. at Agape Barbecue in Central Texas, and owner Jeremy lights the fire. He'll work until closing at 9:00 p.m. In this line of work, 12 to 16 hour shifts are the norm. In Texas, pit masters are measured by brisket, the toughest part of the cow. It needs to be cooked for 10 to 18 hours for the collagen to break down and every variable matters. Too hot and the meat dries out. Too long and it turns to mush. With the natural fluctuations of a wood fire, variation in cuts, and
variability of hand labor, everything is based on feel. Pit masters like Jeremy must constantly execute and adjust daily to all the elements. When I come out the door, the first thing I do is I look at the stack of the smoker to see what kind of smoke is coming out of it. I can know exactly what's happening in that fire just by the color of the smoke. When I open the smoker and I look at the brisketss or the ribs and I can see the color that they have on them, are they ready to wrap now? You guys are good. It's not always perfect weather. Sometimes it's 32 degrees outside. Sometimes it's raining. Humidity affects how you know the smoke and the density of the smoke inside the chamber. So all
of these things require you to kind of pivot and that's when your instincts really have to kick in to have a successful cook to continue to put out that consistent product and that quality product. Barbecue is uniquely high labor, high skill and high food costs. It's fundamentally incompatible with a conventional high volume, high turnover restaurant business model. As a product, it can't be reduced to exact timers and efficient assembly lines like burritos, salads, burgers, or pizzas. There's no way to abstract this operational complexity and no equipment that can replace the intuition of a pitm. The other angle is yield. Meat shrinks when it's cooked. While ground beef and chicken breast retains 75 to 85% of
their weight after cooking, the yield on brisket after trimming and smoking is just 40%. In practical terms, even though a Pitmaster buys a 15lb brisket, they get just 6 lb of sellable meat. Since all barbecue has to be cooked hours ahead of service and can't be made on demand, pit masters must predict demand accurately every day. Cook too much and you throw money in the trash. That's why most places in Texas would rather sell out and close early than open late and risk leftovers. These reasons are why there's never been a national barbecue chain, only regional ones. Chains like Dickies and Famous Daves do all the trimming and smoking at
a central kitchen before shipping the pre-cooked meat to stores in reheatable bags. This enables scale at the expense of quality as chain stores are run by teenagers with microwaves rather than pit masters with smokers. With the emergence of Texas barbecue, competing on availability and price has become a tougher cell. Dickies has closed down nearly half of its locations in the past decade with similar regression in Famous Daves and Sunny's. Like most chains, their business is not selling barbecue but collecting royalties. The average Dickies grosses less than $500,000 a year, down almost 50% from 2013. Some of the lowest sales in the fast casual industry. The long hours and labor
intensive work mean that the barbecue industry is driven more by passion than profits. It's a market dominated by independence and where chains have never made a dent. Our own data confirms this. Even when we brought in the definition of a chain to any business with three or more locations, chains have accounted for no more than 3% of all barbecue restaurants ever opened. Of all the spots that are still open, all the chains added together barely represent a quarter of the barbecue scene in most states. But even though the chains have the fastest, cheapest, and lowest quality product, they have the best survival rate in the industry. While one
in three barbecue spots shut down, only one out of every 10 chains go out of business. Even with Dickiy's mass closures, the failure rates of chains are one-third, sometimes 1/4 of the overall failure rate in every state. When one franchisee quits, there's often another willing to take its place, meaning the stores themselves rarely go under. Thus, even though the chains will never break out of the bottom of the market, their simplified operations and economies of scale enable longevity, even in a market like Texas. Independent owner pit masters like Jeremy, who make up eight out of every 10 barbecue restaurants in Texas and across the country, are the ones who face the
harshest competition. Independents have the highest chance of closure as their failure rates exceed the overall averages in every state. They do it all alone without the brand recognition, marketing engine, centralized production, and resources of a franchiser. The long hours and high pressure also leads to burnout, which contributes to that higher failure rate for independence. This is why so many barbecue spots are familyun with father and son or husband and wife teams splitting the labor to try and make it work. Still, Texas once again sits in the middle of the road. It's not as daunting as California, where nearly half of independence shut down. For generations, Texas barbecue was seen as
both a rough craft and humble meal for the working class. Value and availability took precedence over quality. A pitm skill lay in making the most out of cheap meat. But in the 1950s, under Louie Mueller and the Schmidt family, barbecue in Texas began to move upscale with better cuts, wood, and precision. In the 2000s, Aaron Franklin and John Mueller pushed that boundary to new heights. They each demonstrated that with dedication and the best ingredients, a pitm could master all the elements to deliver unprecedented consistency and quality day in and day out. Their brisketss ignited the modern craft barbecue boom and decades later still serve as the golden standard that emerging pit masters like Jeremy strive to reach. For
places that aren't aiming for the top of the market craft barbecue or bottom of the market chain barbecue, there are ways to hedge against the highcost, high labor model. You can boost yield by serving brisket alongside tacos, pizza, burgers, or beer. Anything that shifts the spotlight away from the meat itself. With a broader concept, there's more room for differentiation, less onus on the quality of barbecue, and more ways to drive a sale. These are proven tactics for the middle of the market. But today, craft barbecue is king. And when you're chasing after the top, there are no shortcuts.
Victor Jeremy got started 7 years ago smoking brisketss in his backyard for catering. Catering is like the minor leagues of the industry, where pit masters get to develop skills and build up a following in a safe environment. The failure rate for caterers are substantially lower than that of independent brickandmortars across every leading state. In Texas, only 18% of barbecue caterers shut down compared to the statewide 38% and industry-wide 33%. This is because catering grants cost control and operating flexibility that brickandmortar restaurants can't match. Since you know how much is needed and when you can produce with zero waste, you get paid. You can test out equipment and technique with real stakes and you
get customer feedback on your product. It's a universal pathway as to this day there are as many if not more caterers than chains in Texas and just about every other state. Jeremy, like many in Texas, started as a one-man army caterer. As business grew, he snowballed that momentum into a weekend trailer and then eventually brickandmortar with Agape Barbecue. To hedge against burnout and cash flow, Jeremy has brought on Reagan as an apprentice and Lonnie as a co-owner to help with business. Texas is big, and choosing where to open is arguably just as important as what you serve. Houston is the largest city and the most brutal market, as nearly one in every two independents fail. Of the 10
most populous cities, six have worse survival rates than the state average. Jeremy and Lonnie have chosen to stay in central Texas and remain close to Austin, the birthplace of craft barbecue. The city is home to market makers like Franklin Barbecue, Louis Mueller, and Law Bbecue, giants that collectively set the ceiling for quality and pricing for the entire state. For Jeremy and Lonnie, the upside is that people here have the proven income and appetite to support another craft barbecue spot. The hard part is doing it in a way where you're not going toe-to-toe with the Kings on their own turf. So, instead of setting up Austin proper, they've hedged their bet by being the first in one of the fastest growing outer suburbs.
There's definitely an oversaturation of barbecue in Texas, especially in central Texas where we are. The first question we asked oursel was where is there a need and Liberty Hill was the first place we looked at. There was only one other barbecue joint here and it was what we referred to as fast food barbecue and 5 years later now it's just still that fast food barbecue and us probably within a 10 to 15 mile radius. While every storefront must adapt to their neighborhood to succeed, the challenge for Agape is that it just doesn't exist yet. Despite tripling in size, Liberty Hill is a sleepy suburb filled with mostly builder homes and gated communities. The downtown and surrounding commercial areas look and
feel like an abandoned movie set from an old western. Despite using the same top tier ingredients as the market leaders, Jeremy and Lonnie have tried to embed agape into the neighborhood by connecting with local officials and pricing their product 8 to 30% cheaper than the regional average. But 5 years in, the pair can no longer wait for the community to organically materialize. The other thing is just the bones of what they have available here as a downtown. It's been slower to progress than what we had hoped, but we've got a meeting in a couple weeks with the EDC and the city manager to talk about where
they're at with the downtown master plan that they just got approved by the city council. So, we're very hopeful that we can really be a lynch pin. We can do live music as you see behind us with the new stage that's being built. Just a tremendous opportunity to then partner with the community, partner with the city. It's not that Liberty Hill is underdeveloped. By suburban planning benchmarks, the town is performing as expected. There's a $22 million target currently under construction and pending plans for a Costco, but these stores realistically are years away from completion. The target is slated for 2027 and Costco for 2029. There's a bright future on paper
for Liberty Hill, but Agape must survive long enough to reach it. And while they're hanging on, they're not breaking through. If Jeremy and Lonnie are to thrive, they need to go beyond word of mouth and bring in out of town customers. But Texas isn't like California, New York, or Miami, where social media can make or break a restaurant overnight. In this world of Texas barbecue, a single listing from a local publication carries more weight than the Michelin Guide, Google, and Yelp combined. That's Texas Monthly Magazine. In the past decade, it's become the reigning authority, power broker, and kingmaker of Texas barbecue. What started out decades ago as a fun column to help sell more magazines has suddenly turned into the barbecue bible,
guiding tourists and locals who plan trips visiting as many nominated spots as possible. With the stroke of a pen, they blow up obscure spots into acclaimed destinations with lines around the block. The now famous Goldies was barely a year old when it was named number one on their 2021 top 50 list. That recognition catapulted the rural out ofway shack into international fame overnight. 4 years later, their lines haven't let up. For owners that are just holding on, like Jeremy and Lonnie, making the top 50 would be winning the lottery. If you are anywhere on it, your business will double or triple.
Especially if you're in the top 10, it will easily triple. But just by being listed in the top 50 will double. One of the aspects of the Texas monthly list is that it is completely subjective. Basically within like one or two people. I've traveled around Texas. I've haven't visited every top 50 place, but I've visited a bunch of them. And I mean there's some places that you go to and it's like well you know I mean not really sure like how they made that list. The challenging part for the top 50 list is that there's not a set of criteria. You just got to hope that you hit the right buttons.
It's like the Olympics. Barbecue spots only have one shot every four years to make the list. But if you can make the top 50 just once, doesn't matter if you're 49th or 12th. It's a momentum that can carry you for the lifetime of your business. Of the 119 unique spots named in the past 16 years, only 13% have gone out of business since their nomination. It's a substantial improvement over the statewide 38% failure rate and gives brickandmortar independents even better survival odds than caterers. In other words, getting on the list cuts your chances of failure by 2/3. But statistically, you're more likely to get accepted into MIT or Harvard than you are making it into the top 50. What makes the list so powerful
is its ability to activate both locals and outofstate tourists who show up ready to splurge. You hit top 50, you double to triple. It's like, how the heck are you doubling to triple? The same number of people live here, right? And the reason you're doubling and tripling is because Texas Craft Barbecue's become so well known nationally and worldwide that the growth is largely coming from people that are traveling here for the express purpose of going around and hitting as many top 50s on their trip as they can. So you're getting your growth from people that are coming from Australia and coming from the UK and coming from Japan and coming from the East Coast. A lot of top 50s will only be open Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, or maybe Friday, Saturday because they're getting so heavy of an influx of business. That's all they really need, right? And they jack their prices up and they make real good profit. But that's not who we are at our DNA. We want to continue to support the client, our community, partner with the city. So, we're going to have to figure out if God allows us to make that list, we're going to have to figure out how to balance, right? our work hours, our price point, serving those destinationers versus still supporting our community. Agape Barbecue grosses $55,000 a month for an annual run rate of $660,000, higher than the average Dickies, but lower than the fast food franchises
located just blocks away. Agape's restaurant level operating margins sit at 11% in line with cookie shops and steakous and below that of high volume, high turnover, fast casual concepts. And like every other independent in the state, Jeremy and Lonnie are hoping for the good news that they've made the top 50. We're confident that we're putting out a product that would compete to be able to be in the top 50. We'll see if that happens or not, but either way, it is a reality of what we live in Texas. For establishments that predate the craft barbecue boom and Texas Monthly, the world looks very different.
It's 5:00 a.m. in East Texas, and Spencer is already tending the pits. Bodacious is one of Texas's oldest barbecue chains and has been feeding locals since 1968. Spencer got into the industry through his wife Meline, the granddaughter of Texas barbecue legend Roland Lindsay. Roland scaled Bodacious from the single store into a franchise empire with 16 locations across the state. As the third generation owner and heir, Meline knows the business inside and out. Several months ago, we were actually shown your doughnut shop video and one of the shop owners said, "Hey, you know, some restaurant businesses have high labor, low food. Some have high food, low labor. And we're fortunate in the
doughnut business to have low food, low labor." And we kind of chuckled to oursel because we're in the market of high food, high labor. Our market is so unique because if you owned a fine dining restaurant, your subset of customers is so limited. Barbecue in general across the whole country has always been communal. And so in that way, it's never changed. Back in the '60s, the popular meat to smoke was actually beef clots. Brisket was an even cheaper cut of meat that most people just didn't even touch. really the last 5 to 10 years, you're seeing an excitement about barbecue in a way that we've never really seen before and an appreciation for a craft that we've never seen before. While Central Texas is fueled by tech,
healthcare, and hospitality, East Texas is a lower income rural area that's sustained by the legacy industries of energy and agriculture. It features the second fewest barbecue spots in the state. Things move slower here. People stick to what they know and there's not much appetite for craft barbecue or the next big thing. This is why the odds of failure for a barbecue spot in East Texas sit well below the statewide averages at just 26% overall and 28% for single store independence. It's a region where competition is minimal, new players are rare, and the existing players all stay afloat with loyal clientele. Bodacious on Mobberly is the perfect representation of this phenomenon. In this city of Long View,
there's only ever been 13 barbecue restaurants, and only one has closed its doors, setting a local failure rate of just 7%. Meline, like her mother and grandmother, grew up busting tables and washing dishes in this very store. This place is so special to all of our customers. They have either gone to school here or they've lived here their whole lives and they come back and visit with their kids or then they bring their grandkids or even great grandkids and they come in and tell us all of their memories. How you doing? What are we getting for you? I want beef. Sliced beef. All right. The link sandwich with it. Of course.
Spencer works 80 to 90 hours a week. My grandfather did the same. And obviously this business has been passed down generationally. And so sometimes part of the gig is if you want to see them, you have to come up here. Bodacious is a chain, but it's not the bottom of the market barbecue like Dickies. Meline and Spencer run this location. Every other Bodacious in the state is run by a franchisee pitmaster who like Spencer must trim, season, and smoke every cut of meat by hand over wood fire and smokers. There are only nine chains in Texas to have ever reached this scale. And Bodacious remains the seventh largest chain in the state without a single penny from outside investors or venture capital.
But Bodacious wasn't built on the corporate capitalist model of a McDonald's or Subway. While Spencer and Meline have updated Mobly's menu with touches of craft barbecue, some Bodacious traditions remain untouchable and none more so than the relationship with franchises. the typical franchiser franchisee relationship. You hear a lot of negative things, franchisers being pretty predatory honestly or on the flip end sometimes franchises trying to cut corners and so usually those relationships are pretty contentious when greed becomes a part of the question and the goal with our company is to be the exact opposite of that. All of our franchises started in here a lot of them when they were 16 years old.
This has been the only job they've ever had. My grandfather always said, "Who am I to stop another person from feeding their family?" And so, everyone is working towards the same collective mission, which is to provide for your family and to provide for your community. Even in Long View, we have two other bodaciouses. There are many times that Spencer has something pop up. And so, he'll call Shannon Fel on our Sixth Street store and she's the first to answer the phone and say, "Yes, I'm there to help." The goal is not just to keep expanding and keep growing in Texas or outside of Texas. My grandparents have always been very selective about who they bring on as a franchisee and so we've not added one in 15 or 20 years.
Roland didn't look at franchising as a cash grab and generations later Meline sees it the same way. Every franchisee runs off the same contractual agreements from the 80s where they pay just 1% of gross sales and royalties. Such low rates are completely unheard of today where 5% is the baseline even for brand new unproven fast casual concepts. The only requirements for Bodacious franchises are to uphold the standards of what they learned from Roland decades ago and to use the company's proprietary seasonings in the product. But in terms of what goes on the menu, how it's smoked, what type of wood, all that is left up to them to do what they deem best.
You're going to find the same core menu at all of our barbecue places. You're going to find brisket, sausage, hot links, ribs, turkey, so on and so forth. You can drive down I20 and stop in our Kilgore store for their pork sandwiches and continue driving down I20 and stop with Spencer and find a unique special and then keep on driving to Marshall and you're going to hit our what we call our rip shack. You're not able to see the creativity and the mind and the talent of people if you put these really strict limitations on them. In 2017, Bodacious on Mobberly was awarded a top five spot in the Texas monthly top 50. But back then, the
location was run by a different pitm who quit due to burnout. Meline and Spencer didn't take over until 2022, and Spencer brought his own recipes, styles, and techniques. The barbecue that was named the fifth best in the entire state 5 years ago is not the same that's served today. Unlike the Michelin guide where stars can be lost as quickly as they're earned, the Texas monthly top 50 is a lifetime honor. Once you're on it, you're on it even if you don't make future lists. Pit masters can leave, restaurants can change hands, and recipes can be overhauled, but the top 50 still sticks, and so does the prestige, differentiation, and attention that comes with it. The only case where
a prior award wouldn't last would be if the restaurant decided to change its name. But no rational owner would ever self-sabotage like that. We have had the luxury of being in business three decades before the first list ever even came out in the late 90s. For us, it's always been such an honor anytime we're listed in Texas Monthly. And it can propel your business forward, but it can't break your business. There are people that we see who invest their entire life savings into going into business with the hopes of getting onto this big list. It can be really heartbreaking when that doesn't happen
for them. But with so few people being able to make a list, your stock has to be placed in somewhere else. That's our customers. That's this generational business and it's our family. You have to really have a love for this. And your heart for this has to be separate from any list, anyone outside of your praise. It has to solely come from your passion. How you doing? All right. So, what do we get for you? Uh, like a couple of sloppy joe's, please.
Just two of them. Uh-huh. For here? Yes. For All right. Bodacious on Mobberly grosses $70,000 a month on average for an annual run rate of $840,000. They've earned everything a barbecue spot in Texas could ever dream of. local recognition, regional influence, generational loyalty, and a coveted top five ranking from Texas Monthly. Their restaurant level operating margins sit at 12%. They sit comfortably in the top 1% in the industry in both accolades and scale. From one angle, Bodacious would likely have been even bigger if it had been founded in a booming region
like central Texas. But there's another side to it. The conservative, traditional, tight-knit communities of East Texas may be exactly what has sustained their success. This region has acted as a natural buffer, insulating the chain from the disruptions of craft barbecue and ambitious new entrance. At the same time, the loyalty of generational customers who value familiarity over quality has created an invaluable environment for Spencer to grow. As a newer pitm, he gets to focus purely on the craft, refining technique, dialing in recipes, and honing his skills without ever worrying about marketing or needing to build up a customer base.
This is our first time here. Houston. All right. Right on. All right. And this gentleman said that the mailman is his favorite. So, I'm going take Good choice. You're going to like that, Milman. Milman's really good. They always say, "Your piece of the pie is always going to get smaller." And I think from where we're sitting, the pie is big enough to feed all of us. If a barbecue place is popping up and it's doing well, that means our industry is thriving. There are so many privileges that are not lost on me. My grandparents were able to provide for our family my entire life. We were able to go to school. And so the weight for us is one
an honor to be entrusted with this business, to be entrusted with these customers and this community, but also one of wanting to continue on their legacy and grow it when appropriate, but really just protect what protect and preserve what has been built. Emerging pit masters are caught between two extremes. Either settle for slow, steady word of mouth or bank everything on making the top 50 for immediate rocket ship growth. It's 7:00 a.m. in North Texas and Salah Houdin is preparing for the day ahead at his restaurant Cafe Barbecue. He's a first generation pitm who left behind his tech job and Stanford degrees to pursue a second career in the barbecue industry.
North Texas is the wealthiest region in the state, surpassing East Texas and Central Texas by a wide margin. Median household income in the Dallas Fort Worth metropolitan hovers at nearly $90,000, well above the national and state medians. Where there's wealth, there's business. And North and Central Texas each claim 10% of the state's barbecue scene. One out of every three independent brick-and-mortar spots fail in this region. With today's saturation, good brisket alone no longer guarantees good business. Okay. French fries, mac and cheese. Does that piece look good? Salah Houdin has bet his business on not just product, but also on position in catering to Muslims, an overlooked,
underserved market in Texas barbecue. The misconception is I just buy halal meat and I'm good. Uh but it's really not that, right? Because if you've got a pit, for example, the pit that I have that rotates, right? So something's going to drip on it's going to drip on everything else. So I told them if that pit has a single rack or slab of spare ribs or pork in it, that whole thing is not halal. So you have to know that as a pit master and you have to know that as part of the community as well. People know Franklin's cleans their pits on Mondays. So if you go on Tuesday, you're going to get meat that's been cooked on a clean pit, right? That type of nuance is sort of insane to think about. That's
the kind of secondguing and factf finding that you really need to do as a Muslim consumer in the barbecue space. And it's such a piece of mind to be able to know no pork comes in this building at all. Texas is home to the fifth largest Muslim population in the nation behind only New Jersey, Illinois, California, and New York. And the Dallas Fort Worth metropolitan area is home to the second highest number of mosques and Islamic community centers in the state. But Caffy isn't the first mover. There are two spots that also serve halal craft barbecue in North Texas. One is a Pakistani food truck that's a 30inut drive from Dallas, where most Muslims
live. They're only open on weekends and they make so little that everything typically sells out within the hour. The other is a brick and mortar that's 1 hour away. Salah Houdin's ambitions for cafe barbecue exceed that of a religious dietary restriction. The halal angle was born out of personal need and not some planned differentiator. He wants caffe to stand on its own as a great barbecue spot up there with the Franklin's of the world where everything is made inhouse from scratch. Got brisket, got dino ribs right here. You want one of those? Yeah, absolutely. I also have these uh pomegranate beef belly burnins.
I would like to try those. Absolutely. We smoke it for about 5 hours and then over a period of three other steps, we introduce pomegranate into it. Throughout history, Texas pit masters have faithfully followed the old school mantra of build it and they will come. It's the trope that product trumps all. Under this philosophy, good brisket makes up for bad location, poor service, and weak side dishes. And if a pitmaster can achieve that level of product, their success will be guaranteed. Salah Houdin is the opposite. He's part of a new
generation of pit masters who are not bound to tradition and have bet their success on not just working hard, but working smarter. As much as he obsesses over the menu, customer experience, and product, he's not betting on brisket alone to carry his business forward. Salah Houdin started in the minor leagues smoking brisketss in his backyard for friends and family. And as his reputation and following grew, he graduated to catering and then eventually this brick and mortar. His 7-year journey has been a blend of new school business and old school craftsmanship. While catering, he studied neighborhoods and analyze search trends to assess demand. This confirmed his hunch that the center of the Dallas
Fort Worth metro was a barbecue dead zone with plenty of corporate chains, but nothing of quality. The reputable spots that had been named in past Texas monthly top 50s were all at least a 30 to 50inute drive away. It wasn't just about the distance from competition, but also the proximity to customers. Valley Ranch Mosque and the Islamic Center of Irving are the two largest, most famous mosques in the metro, and Cafe Barbecue is only a 5 and 10-minute drive away from each. Yeah, yours is almost as good as mine. Iraqi sausage and jalapeno sausage. How many of them would you like? Uh, both. Both of them. Got you. Do you want me to slice them up?
Yes, please. Thanks to the steady stream of religious events and industry conferences in Dallas, Muslim tourists can make up half of the foot traffic on certain weekends. If Agape or any other conventional non-halal craft barbecue restaurant was placed in his same spot, they'd lose 60 to 70% of his customers overnight. Salah Houdin isn't some hardcore capitalist. He's just applied the same precision that he puts in his barbecue into the other equally important aspects of the business. Despite his engineering roots, he has no interest in automation and systems. Salah Houdin takes the most pride in elevating the status quo by doing things the hard way and by hand.
He uses only American Wagyu beef for higher marbling, which costs at least twice as much per pound than the USDA prime that's standard in craft barbecue. Every week he drives a U-Haul to the only birth to harvest farm in the country that raises cattle from the purebred Japanese Tojima bloodlines to pick out every cut himself. I just want to see the consistency. Yeah, this is good. You see that consistency? Yes. There is a lot of bread now. Yeah, this is good.
None of these details are advertised on the menu, but it's just the lengths that Salah Houdin is willing to go in his own pursuit of perfection. A lot of pit masters, when I talked to them, when I told them I was going to do Wagyu brisketss, they told me it's not worth it. It's so much more expensive than Angus, but I just still felt like something was missing. So, the Wagyu brisketss that I was making at home had a sweetness to the fat and had a richness to them that I just didn't find in any other barbecue. I have a Texas Twinkie, which is Have you heard of that? No. It's a jalapeno pepper stuffed with smoked cream cheese, smoked brisket. We make the beef belly bacon in-house.
Takes us two weeks to make it. Yeah. I can slice them for you if you'd like. You want three and then I slice them in half. Cafe Bbecue's philosophy is that we make everything here. It's not a profit motive. The motive is really strongly around what can we do to make something really, really good and provide that excellent experience to the end consumer rather than what can we make as cheaply as possible for the highest revenue as possible. Got any Memorial Day plans? Need some barbecue? Extra open day this week. Monday, Memorial Day. We're going to be open from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Come on through and enjoy all your favorites at Cafe Barbecue. In this industry, the ones with flashy websites and strong social media presence are usually only the corporate chains or the commercialized Texas monthly top 50 spots hoping to catch the eyeballs of loaded tourists. In a market where most pull, Salah Houdin pushes. His first ever hire was not a kitchen helper, but a videographer. Even during 12 to 14 hour shifts, he still carves out time to film clips, post on Instagram, and engage with viewers online. It's unorthodox in the world of Texas barbecue, but it's just standard practice for any other restaurant that's trying to grow in this day and age. While Cafe Barbecue is steadily
climbing, even Salah Houdin knows that making the Texas monthly top 50 would be the greatest accelerant for growth. While Michelin stars are awarded through a group decision, the Texas Monthly top 50 in comparison is an autotocracy where one person single-handedly decides who does or doesn't make it. That person is Daniel Vaughn, an Ohio native who turned his part-time enthusiasm writing about barbecue into an editorial position at the magazine, where he's progressed from reporting to judging. While Michelin inspectors remain anonymous to eliminate potential bias and exploitation, Daniel relishes the attention and privilege that comes with being the judge, jury, and executioner of the Texas Monthly Top
50. His Instagram handle is barbecue snob. His profile photo is a cartoon of himself as a Christian saint preaching holy gospel with fork in hand, and he regularly participates in media appearances. Even though he's run the list for over a decade, there's still no public criteria or rubric on how Daniel determines who makes the top 50 and what kind of barbecue qualifies. There's no explanation for why the 10th place spot beat the 40 below it or what separates the 30th from the 29 ahead of it. In the simplest terms, the Texas monthly top 50 is just a list of what Daniel personally likes. While Google reviews, Yelp ratings, Michelin stars, James Beard awards, Oscars, college admissions, and
even the local pie contest all share similar issues of subjectivity. Those accolades are still awarded by group decision. With so much power concentrated in the hands of a single public figure, the Texas Monthly Top 50 is inherently vulnerable to abuse. Intentional or not, Daniel's decisions carry enormous influence, shaping the fate of barbecue businesses across the state. Even as a differentiated leader, Salah Houdin still hopes Cafe Barbecue will someday make the list. When I first thought about opening up a barbecue restaurant, that like that big boulder in the room is always Texas Monthly.
How's Daniel Vaughn going to think about my brisket? My thought process early on was that in order to make this financially viable, I needed to be in the top 50. One of the things that I learned over time is that it is my job as a business owner, as someone in this community, to tell people why is my brisket good and to have them come try it. Texas Monthly serves as a vessel for people to be able to explore barbecue, but I would never encourage people to just try the top 50 barbecue joints. I'm not going to say like I'm not hoping to be on that list, but I'm not staking my reputation. And I'm not staking my business on that claim because we have a very strong Muslim community here in
Dallas. Because we're serving that community, because we're providing them with an authentic Texas style barbecue experience, they have shown up in huge numbers to support this business. We need to make sure that we are finding that niche. And at the same time, we want to constantly bring new people through the door, but at the same time, I don't want it to be the case where the only way for me to bring people through the door is through someone else, right? I want to be fully in charge of my own destiny as a business. First time in? Yes, sir. Okay. Awesome. Uh, we have everything on the menu available right now. All of our meat is Wagyu. It's all had. Um, if you is their first time in,
you want to try the brisket, maybe. Business is all about picking the right markets, and Salah Houdin has struck gold by nailing product, location, and market allinone. Cafe Barbecue holds unprecedented pricing power. The price of their Wagu brisket is arguably the highest in the state and is 15% more expensive than that of the industry titans like Franklin's, Interstellar, and Law Barbecue. But pricing at the tip of the market hasn't held back business in any way. Caffeue grosses on average $200,000 a month for an annual run rate of $2.4 million, three times more than Agape and Bodacious.
His restaurant level operating margins sit at 13%. By his own math, if Salah Houdin were to delegate more to his staff, his operating margins would be closer to 10%. And if he hired less and took on more of the work himself, his margins would be 15%. I worked at YouTube for 6 years for the gaming team. And what I noticed, there was this big divide between sort of the gaming creators that were trying to make it and the gaming creators that did make it. And the ones that were trying to make it were always trying to minmax the algorithm. They were like, "This is a big back black box. I'm going to keep trying small minor tweaks. I'm going to keep playing the exact same games over and over again. My audience is
going to revolt against me if I play a different game or if I do a different style. And then the best creators did not care that it was an algorithm. They were just making the best content that they could. That's actually a lot of the philosophy that I take into Cathy Barbecue. I'm not trying to appease a specific black box or anything like that. I'm trying to make the best content that I can make. the best content, meaning tray of barbecue right in front of you. I'm going after the final product rather than going after how it's perceived. There are signs that cracks may be forming in Texas Monthly's hold over the industry. Johnny White, owner of Goldies, the same no-name joint that shot to fame after taking the number one
spot on the top 50, has publicly criticized Daniel Vaughn and questioned the credibility of a system that's driven by a single person's pallet. White's posts were only up for a few days before he allegedly received a cease and desist letter from Texas Monthly and was threatened with further legal action if he continued posting. During the brief window in which his comments were public, other owners and insiders echoed similar frustrations. There were other owners we spoke to off the record who are uncomfortable discussing it on camera out of fear of
repercussions. Even the owners featured in our episode chose their words carefully, each doing multiple takes and preparing scripts ahead of time. While Texas Monthly publishes top 50 lists for everything from burgers and tacos to bars and doctors, it's only barbecue that has achieved this level of cultural authority. In its pursuit of paying subscribers, Texas Monthly has a clear incentive to protect the perceived prestige of its top 50 barbecue list, even if that means suppressing disscent from within the industry. Johnny's not the first pitm to question the system, but his comments carry tremendous weight. As someone who's benefited enormously from the list, he has little reason to speak out without some
legitimate cause. Agape, Caffy, and Bodacious may be at completely different stages in their journeys, but each owner is chasing their own definition of success. Texas barbecue is a grueling business where one out of every three fail. But it's this difficulty that makes the industry so revered. Everyone at the top had to climb to get there. While some may have had it easier with a publicity boost, they still had to work to capitalize on that exposure. In this angle, Texas barbecue remains one of the last expressions of American craftsmanship. Where business runs on perseverance over profit and passion, not dollars are the true lifeblood of every pitmaster.
