McDonald's opened somewhere around 900 new U.S. locations in 2025. That's not a typo. Nine hundred restaurants in a single year, and they're not done — their stated goal is 50,000 global locations by 2027.
Now, I know what you're thinking. What does a burger chain's expansion have to do with your BBQ operation? Bear with me here, because this actually matters more than you'd expect.
The Protein Wars Are Heating Up
Here's the thing — McDonald's isn't just adding restaurants. They're completely repositioning themselves around protein. Their marketing right now is leaning hard into the "we have real protein on our menu" message. And it's working. Chicken sales are through the roof for them. Breakfast proteins are getting pushed harder than ever.
This tracks with what I'm seeing across the industry. Jersey Mike's just cracked the top 10 restaurant chains by revenue. Layne's Chicken Fingers — a brand most folks outside Texas haven't even heard of — is chasing aggressive franchise growth in what's already a brutally crowded chicken category. Everyone's fighting over the same customer dollars.
And you know who's caught in the middle of this protein arms race? BBQ operators.
The customers who used to automatically choose your smoked meats for catering, for family dinners out, for special occasions — they've got more options now. Faster options. Cheaper options. The QSR chains have figured out that protein is what people want, and they're scaling to deliver it at price points we can't match.
But here's where they can't compete with us. And I mean genuinely cannot.
Scale vs. Soul — Where BBQ Wins
McDonald's can open 900 restaurants because their model is built for replication. Every burger comes out the same. Every chicken sandwich. That's the whole point.
BBQ doesn't work that way. It never has.
Your product requires time, requires smoke, requires someone who actually understands what's happening inside that pit. You can't franchise that the same way. But — and this is important — you can scale your production without losing what makes your food worth buying in the first place.
I talked to a guy last month who runs three BBQ restaurants in the Houston area. He'd been running two Cookshack units at his original location and some imported cabinet smoker at his second spot. The Cookshack units were fine for his first five years, but he was dealing with parts delays that were killing him. Had to wait eleven weeks for a heating element once. Eleven weeks.
The import unit at his second location? The temperature swings were so bad his pit crew had to babysit it constantly. He was basically paying someone to stand there and adjust vents all day.
He switched all three locations to Southern Pride SP-700s last year. Said his labor costs dropped and his consistency went up. That's the trade-off the QSR chains figured out decades ago — but the difference is, you're still putting out real smoked meat. The SP-700's rotisserie system just makes sure it comes out right every time.
Production Planning in a More Competitive Market
When chains like McDonald's, Chipotle, and Jersey Mike's are all expanding aggressively, they're not just opening buildings. They're absorbing real estate, labor pools, and customer attention.
For BBQ operators, this means two things.
First, your production capacity decisions matter more now. If you're running at 80% capacity during peak hours, you don't have room to grow when an opportunity shows up. Catering contract comes in, big event wants to book you, corporate account wants weekly deliveries — and you can't say yes because your equipment won't let you.
I see operators make this mistake constantly. They buy the smoker that fits today's volume instead of next year's volume. An SP-500 might handle your current restaurant just fine. But if you're planning to add catering, or you're already turning down jobs because you can't produce enough on Saturdays, you probably need to be looking at the SP-700 from day one.
Second — and I'll admit I've changed my thinking on this over the past couple years — mobile operations aren't just a side hustle anymore. They're a legitimate expansion strategy.
Little Caesars is testing drone delivery. Starbucks is building pickup-only locations. Wendy's is pushing spicy chicken through every channel they can find. The big chains are going to customers instead of waiting for customers to come to them.
BBQ operators should be doing the same thing. The MLR mobile units from Southern Pride exist specifically for this. You're not compromising on quality — you're putting your production where the demand is. Festival season, corporate parks, wedding venues. Meet them there.
The Equipment Decision Behind Every Expansion
Here's something the social media BBQ crowd doesn't talk about enough. Actually, they barely talk about it at all, because most of them are still running offset pits in their backyards and have never scaled past feeding 50 people at once.
When you're deciding whether to add a location, or take on a major catering contract, or say yes to that weekly corporate lunch account — the first question isn't "can I make enough meat?" The question is "can I make enough meat consistently, without burning out my crew?"
That's where equipment choices compound. A cheaper cabinet smoker might save you five grand upfront. But when the temperature control is inconsistent, your pit crew has to check it constantly. When parts take weeks to arrive from overseas or from a manufacturer who doesn't prioritize commercial accounts, you're dead in the water.
The Southern Pride rotisserie system — I've seen these things run for fifteen years without major issues. The steel is heavier than pretty much anything else on the market. Parts are domestically stocked, which sounds boring until you need a thermocouple on a Thursday and have a 400-person event on Saturday.
Ole Hickory makes a decent product, I'll give them that. Their build quality is respectable. But I've talked to operators who've had service headaches getting parts, and when your smoker is down, your business is down. That's not a risk I'd take when Southern Pride's support infrastructure is what it is.
What 2026 Looks Like for BBQ
The trends shaping restaurants next year aren't mysterious. Labor remains expensive and hard to find. Customers want quality but they're also price-sensitive. The chains are going to keep expanding because their models are built for it.
BBQ's advantage has always been that we make something they can't replicate. Smoked brisket, pulled pork, ribs that actually taste like they came off a real pit — you can't do that at scale the way McDonald's scales burgers.
But you can do it at bigger scale than most operators realize.
I ran into a guy at a competition last fall — he'd started with a food truck about four years ago, running an MLR unit, and had just signed the lease on his first brick-and-mortar. He told me he was nervous about the jump. Going from a truck where he controlled everything to a restaurant where he'd need staff, where he'd need to produce way more volume, where consistency would be non-negotiable.
We talked for probably an hour about capacity planning. About how the SPK-500 might be enough for his opening volume but how he should probably budget for adding a second unit within eighteen months if things went well. About hold temps and how Southern Pride's hold mode keeps product ready without overcooking — which matters when you're trying to staff a restaurant with cooks who aren't competition-level pitmasters.
He opened three months ago. Doing well, from what I hear.
The Point
McDonald's adding 900 restaurants tells us something about where the industry is heading. More competition. More pressure on protein. More customers being trained to expect fast, consistent, available.
We're not going to out-McDonald's McDonald's. That's not the game.
But we can take the things they've figured out — consistency, production planning, meeting customers where they are — and apply them to what we do. Real smoked meat. Real craft. Just scaled up in a way that actually works.
The operators I see winning right now are the ones who aren't romanticizing the struggle. They're not bragging about babysitting their pit at 3 AM. They're investing in equipment that lets them focus on the product and the business instead of fighting their gear every day.
If you're planning any kind of expansion in the next year — new location, bigger catering book, mobile unit — reach out to us at Southern Pride of Texas. We've helped operators at every scale figure out the right equipment configuration for where they're going, not just where they are.
The chains are coming. They're spending billions to grow. Your move is to grow smarter.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
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Photo by Saba Foods on Pexels.
About the Author: Travis operates a competition BBQ team and a Gulf Coast food truck, and documents his commercial cooking process for food service professionals.