HOUSTON — If the Texas barbecue industry had an alarm, it would be the spreadsheet that Russell Roegels uses to track the price of brisket. On a recent morning, sitting at a quiet table in his suburban restaurant, he pointed to the number at the top of the column: $5.56. That’s the price he pays for a pound of the most important item on any barbecue menu in Texas.
Over the past year, that number has risen 28 percent, a reflection of the spiking meat prices that have dented the pocketbooks of average grocery store customers nationwide. Inside the kitchens of Texas’s more than 3,000 barbecue purveyors, whose very existence depends on a plentiful and affordable supply of quality beef, the effect has been close to cataclysmal.
Roegels, 53, grew up working at a barbecue joint and has run his own since 2001, serving some of Houston’s elite and their friends, including former president George H.W. Bush, NFL veteran Gary Kubiak and former Astros pitcher Andy Pettitte. He used to be able to offset the high wholesale cost by selling other meats and side dishes. But this year he realized that wasn’t enough. So Roegels made the risky decision to raise the price he charges customers for brisket by $2, to $35 a pound — a 6 percent increase — and hoped his clientele wouldn’t defect.
“This is as bad as it gets,” he said of escalating beef prices. “Everybody’s at risk these days: You’re one bad week from closing.”
Roegels isn’t exaggerating. The culinary crisis driven by skyrocketing meat prices has contributed to the closures of some of Texas’s beloved barbecue joints: Brett’s BBQ Shop to the west of Houston, known for its barbacoa tacos; Kirby’s BBQ to the north with its signature increasingly expensive oak-smoked brisket; Sabar BBQ, with its Pakistani fusion sausage, in Fort Worth; Wright On Taco & BBQ in East Texas.
Owners and experts predict the closures will worsen this summer and continue for years, potentially reshaping the nature of Texas barbecue, which has drawn acclaim for its distinct regional varieties and craft-style preparation, winning Michelin stars for what was once considered gas-station fare.
The reasons for the spiking prices are various, says Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association. Inflation, tariffs, meatpackers’ pricing, and a national cattle herd at its smallest in 75 years because of drought, labor shortages, high operational costs and dwindling ranch land have all played a part. And with the threat of screwworm looming just across the border, experts warn that the herd could be even further depleted in years to come.
State and federal officials are investigating the meatpackers, but it will probably take years for the cattle herd to rebound, Williams Knight said. In the meantime, the regional barbecue flavors Texas is known for are disappearing, from saucy East Texas styles to the mesquite-grilled flavors of West Texas, South Texas “Mexicue” and the Hill Country’s sauce-less smoked brisket.
“What is at risk now is losing that community and culture. It’s much bigger than just a business closing,” Williams Knight said. She said she had just received a call from the owner of Sweetie Pie’s Ribeyes outside Fort Worth to say it’s closing this month after unsuccessfully consolidating two locations. “We are going to lose some of these special, culturally significant restaurants.”
Daniel Vaughn, Texas Monthly’s barbecue editor since 2013, said part of the problem is that as brisket prices increased, barbecue restaurants kept their prices “artificially low.”
“Now the price of everything has gone up, everything they need to run that restaurant: labor costs, takeout containers, coleslaw and those other meat proteins. You can’t really hide that price anymore,” Vaughn said. Forty dollars for a pound of brisket “is now not a crazy number to see on a menu.”
Roegels owns two restaurants in the Houston area and partnered two years ago with another, Brotherton’s Black Iron Barbecue in the town of Pflugerville, near Austin, after the owner, a close friend, died.
Roegels, an East Texas native whose great-grandparents immigrated from Bavaria, said it’s tougher for small-town barbecue restaurants to cope with increased meat prices, and their business usually drops during the summer, as people with kids out of school stay home to care for them or try to save money for child care.
Brotherton’s was on the brink of closing in January when the owners posted a plea for help on Facebook. “We were hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but we desperately need your help,” they wrote. “The hard truth is that we are on the brink of having to close our doors for good.”
That brought an influx of local customers. But the restaurant had to raise prices anyway and is relying on catering and festival business to stay afloat.
“It’s still very precarious right now. Meat is not getting any cheaper,” said Brenda Brotherton, 52.
Brotherton said she hopes others in the Texas barbecue restaurant community “will take what I did and run with it, to not be afraid to ask for help.”
Perhaps the most at risk are pitmasters just starting out, like Marc Fadel, 19, of Arlington, whose Lebanese American Habibi Barbecue has won awards and televised competitions but is still operating out of a food truck in the city between Dallas and Fort Worth.
“Food costs is one of the biggest issues I have,” Fadel said. Prime grade brisket was $3 a pound when he started two years ago, and now he pays $5.99, higher than others like Roegels because of his supplier, he said.
“If you don’t have a good connection to a ranch, it’s really hard. I don’t,” Fadel said.
He’s seen other barbecue purveyors substitute cheaper cuts of other meat like pork short ribs, but “Texas is a beef-loving state. I’ve had people come and they say, ‘You don’t have brisket?’ and they leave.”
He’s raised the price for his signature dish — brisket rubbed with Lebanese spices — to $18 for a half-pound. Fadel uses the brisket trimmings for his popular tzatziki-seasoned barbecue bowl. The University of Texas at Arlington senior dreams of someday opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant, but he’s majoring in construction management.
“I would definitely like to stay in barbecue, but if meat prices continue to go up and I’m not still loving it, I would always have a degree to fall back on,” he said.
Reputation is no protection. Even Texas Monthly’s No. 1 barbecue joint, Ernest Servantes’s Burnt Bean Co. in the south-central Texas town of Seguin, is struggling. Burnt Bean routinely has a line out the door and a three-hour wait for the barbacoa, beef ribs and brisket that earned it a Michelin Bib Gourmand rating.
“There’s always been price increases, but there’s always been relief and it’s gone down,” said Servantes, 47. But now, he said, “we don’t see any end in sight, and it’s going to get scary here. … We’ve been in survival mode for the past year.”
Servantes recently raised prices for brisket by a dollar, to $38 a pound, and may soon limit brisket to one day a week to keep the restaurant and its 28 employees afloat.
“Just because we’re making a lot of brisket doesn’t mean we’re making a lot of money. It’s kind of a write-off. We make our money off pork, sides. People say ‘brisket’ and I cringe,” he said.
Servantes blames the “big four” meatpackers for setting the price paid to ranchers too low even as feed costs have risen.
“It’s not the rancher. It’s not us. It’s the guys in the middle,” he said.
The price squeeze isn’t all bad, Vaughn said. It’s forcing pitmasters to make use of all of the brisket, using tallow for seasoning and trimmings in sausage and burgers.
Vaughn sees Texas barbecue transforming, becoming “less brisket-focused,” as it was before the advent of pre-butchered boxed brisket in the 1960s. Pitmasters are developing alternatives like beef cheek, he said, traditionally used for barbacoa, “because it mimics the fatty texture of a brisket.”
But what troubles him about the closures is the way Texas barbecue is standardizing as it shifts from primarily rural to urban fare. He worries that regional barbecue specialties like the East Texas Mel-Man sandwich of chopped-together brisket and sausage could soon vanish.
“The styles of BBQ are becoming less and less distinct,” he said. “It’s all pretty much becoming the same across the state.”
Roegels and his wife invested their retirement savings in the barbecue business, where his two grown children work with about two dozen other employees. He’s not planning to retire for another decade. While business has dipped at the Houston and Pflugerville restaurants, he’s relying on the suburban location plus increased catering and online orders to keep them afloat.
Tastes change, Roegels said. Back in 2015, he switched from his native East Texas barbecue to the more popular Hill Country style. Two years later, he made Texas Monthly’s top 50 list of barbecue restaurants. He doesn’t see Texans passing on his signature post-oak-smoked brisket anytime soon, “no matter if you’re charging 20 bucks a pound or $50.”
“They may not buy it as often,” he said, “but they’re still going to come get it.”
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