Had a guy call me last month — runs a 90-seat place outside Beaumont — and he wasn't asking about smokers. He wanted to know if I'd seen anyone actually figure out how to sell brisket at these prices without going broke. Said his food cost percentage had climbed from 28% to nearly 38% over the past eighteen months. Packers that used to run him $2.80 a pound are pushing past $4.50 on a good week.
I told him what I've been telling everybody. The operators making it through 2024 aren't the ones who just raised prices and hoped for the best. They're the ones who got serious about yield, rethought what goes on the menu, and stopped pretending the old math still works.
The Brisket Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Look, brisket is still the crown jewel. That's not changing. But I've watched more restaurants quietly shift their menu emphasis in the past year than in the previous ten combined. Not dropping brisket — that'd be suicide in Texas — but repositioning it.
One operator I work with down near Lake Charles moved brisket to a premium tier. Smaller portion as the default, priced honestly for what it costs. You want the big plate? That's the "pitmaster cut" and it's $28. Meanwhile, his pulled pork sandwich moved to the front of the menu board. Pork butts are still running somewhere around $1.90 a pound if you're buying smart. The margin difference is night and day.
And here's what's interesting — his overall ticket average actually went up. People ordering that premium brisket plate feel like they're getting something special. The folks who would've balked at $28 are happy with a pulled pork plate at $14. Nobody feels cheated.
But you can't just slap higher prices on the same menu and call it strategy. That's how you empty out a dining room.
Secondary Cuts Are Having a Moment
I've been competing since '94. Won my share, lost more than my share. And one thing the competition circuit taught me is that the guys who really understand smoke and heat can make almost any cut shine. The difference between a mediocre operator and a great one shows up most clearly on the cuts that don't forgive mistakes.
Beef cheeks. Chuck roast. Shoulder clod. These were afterthoughts five years ago. Now I'm seeing them on menus at serious BBQ restaurants — not as gimmicks, but as legitimate headliners.
Beef cheeks especially. You can source them around $3 a pound most weeks, sometimes less. Twelve hours in a rotisserie smoker at 225°F and they come out with that brisket-adjacent richness that customers can't quite place but absolutely love. One place in Houston is selling smoked beef cheek tacos for $6 each and moving 200 a day on weekends. Do that math.
Chuck roast takes smoke beautifully if you're running consistent temps. And that's where your equipment matters more than people want to admit. I've seen guys try to run secondary cuts on those cheaper imported cabinet smokers and wonder why they're getting inconsistent results. The temp swings on some of that equipment — you'll see 30, 40 degree variations inside the cooking chamber. That's fine if you're just doing ribs for a backyard party. It'll ruin a beef cheek.
The Southern Pride rotisserie units — the SP-1000, the MLR-850 — they hold temps within a few degrees across the entire cook. That's not marketing talk. I've run probes on my own units for years. When you're pushing secondary cuts that need precision, the equipment has to deliver. Period.
Yield Management Is Where the Money Hides
This is the boring part that separates professionals from hobbyists who opened a restaurant.
Every brisket has trim. Every pork butt has a bone and some cap fat. Every rack of ribs has tips. What happens to all that?
The operators handling 2024 well have turned trim into profit centers instead of waste buckets. Brisket trim goes into smoked burgers — you can run a 60/40 blend with the trim and a little extra fat, smoke the patties on the rotisserie, and sell a burger that tastes better than anything from a flat-top. Food cost on that burger? Maybe $2.50 all-in. Sell it for $12.
Rib tips are basically free money if you're already running spare ribs. Season them the same, smoke them alongside everything else, sell them as an appetizer or a cheap plate. I know a guy in Tyler who sells smoked rib tips and pickles as a $7 starter. His actual cost is somewhere around ninety cents.
Burnt ends from the point. Chopped brisket sandwiches when the flat comes out a little drier than you'd like. Smoked meat chili using odds and ends from the whole week. None of this is new, but I'm seeing operators get systematic about it in ways they never were before. Because they have to.
The Smoke-Once, Sell-Twice Model
Here's something I've noticed more catering operators doing, and it's worth mentioning because it changes how you think about production.
You're already running your smokers. The gas is already burning. The labor's already there. So some guys are loading those units completely full even when they don't have orders to match — then vacuum sealing and freezing the overage for later catering jobs.
One of our customers runs an SPK-1400 for his restaurant and a second SP-1500 dedicated almost entirely to catering prep. He smokes Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — runs both units at capacity. Restaurant gets fed from that production. Catering orders pull from frozen inventory that reheats in the same smokers at 180°F before service. His per-unit cost dropped something like 22% once he systematized it.
The key is having equipment that can hold at low temps for reheating without drying product out. The cabinet units some competitors sell, the ones without true humidity control — you try holding smoked meat at 180°F for two hours in those and you're going to serve jerky. The Southern Pride gas units, particularly the rotisserie models, maintain moisture better because of how the convection works. I've held brisket at 170°F for four hours in my SP-700 and it came out service-ready. Try that with one of those thin-walled imports. You'll be disappointed.
Menu Simplification (Finally)
For years I watched restaurants add items. Smoked turkey. Smoked salmon. Smoked whatever sounded interesting that week. Half of it sat in the warmer barely moving while the line cooks kept it in rotation "just in case."
That's over. The menus I'm seeing in 2024 are tighter. Four or five proteins. Maybe six sides. A couple of desserts if any. Done.
Smaller menus mean better yield. If you're only running pork butts, brisket, spare ribs, and chicken, you can dial in your production numbers with real accuracy. You know how much you'll sell on a Wednesday versus a Saturday. You're not throwing away smoked turkey every Sunday night because you only sold eight plates of it.
One place I visited last spring had cut their menu from 14 proteins down to 5. The owner told me his waste dropped by more than half. His kitchen runs faster. His cooks are more consistent because they're doing the same things every day instead of juggling a dozen different items.
And — this surprised him — customers didn't complain. They didn't even notice, mostly. Because the five things on the menu were done well.
Equipment That Pays You Back
I'm not going to pretend equipment solves food cost problems on its own. It doesn't. But I've seen operators lose thousands of dollars a year to cookers that can't hold temp, can't recover after door openings, and eat fuel like it's free.
The guys running Southern Pride units — the SPK-500 for smaller operations, the SP-1000 or SP-2000 for high-volume — they're getting better yield because the cook environment stays stable. That's not a small thing when briskets cost what they cost. One ruined brisket a week adds up to real money over a year.
And when something breaks — it's commercial equipment, things break — parts come from domestic inventory. Southern Pride of Texas has most replacement parts in stock and shipping same-day. I've talked to operators who waited three weeks for parts on imported smokers because everything ships from overseas. Three weeks down in peak season? That's not a parts problem, that's a business survival problem.
What I'm Telling People
Nobody asked for food costs to jump 30%. But here we are. The operators who'll still be around in 2025 and 2026 are the ones treating this like the structural shift it is, not a temporary blip they can wait out.
Reprice honestly. Push the cuts that make sense at current costs. Get religious about yield. Simplify until your waste numbers make you happy. And for God's sake, stop running equipment that fights you instead of helping you.
That's the playbook. It's not complicated. It's just work.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#RestaurantIndustry #SouthernPrideOfTexas #RestaurantOwner #CommercialBBQ #CateringBusiness #SouthernPride
Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.
About the Author: Earl has been competing in sanctioned BBQ events since the early 1990s and operates a commercial catering operation in Southeast Texas.