Del Taco announced a new value menu last week. Tacos for a buck and change, burritos under three dollars, the whole bit. And I know what you're thinking — Earl, what does a fast food taco chain have to do with running a BBQ operation or catering business?
More than you'd expect.
When a chain that size starts restructuring their menu around value pricing, it's not because their marketing department got bored. It's because their customer base is telling them something. People are watching what they spend. They're making choices about where those dollars go. And if you're running a BBQ restaurant or a catering operation, you're feeling the same pressure from the same customers — they just want brisket instead of tacos.
The Math Behind the Headlines
Del Taco's move is about volume. They're betting that lower margins on more transactions beats higher margins on fewer ones. It's a bet you can only make if your kitchen is set up to produce at that speed without your labor costs eating you alive.
BBQ doesn't work the same way. You can't just turn up the speed dial on a brisket. A 14-hour cook is a 14-hour cook. But the underlying principle still applies to us — your production efficiency determines whether you survive a value-conscious market or get squeezed out of it.
I was talking to a guy out of Beaumont last month. Runs a decent little BBQ joint, maybe 80 seats. He was telling me his food costs had gone up 11% over the past year but he'd only raised menu prices by about 6%. "I can't push it any higher," he said. "People are already balking at eighteen dollars for a two-meat plate."
That gap between input costs and what you can charge — that's the squeeze. And it's the same squeeze Del Taco is responding to, just at a different scale.
Where You Actually Have Control
You can't control what beef costs. You can't control what your customers are willing to pay. What you can control is how much product you lose between the walk-in and the serving window.
Yield. That's the word that should be keeping you up at night.
Every point of yield you lose is money that walked out your back door. And most of those losses come from two places: inconsistent cooking and equipment that doesn't hold temp the way it should.
I've seen operations running smokers that swing 30, 40 degrees over a cook. You don't notice it as much when times are good and you're selling everything anyway. But when you're trying to hit a price point and your shrinkage is running 38% instead of 32% because your cooker ran hot for three hours overnight — that's the difference between making money and wondering why you're not.
This is where I get particular about equipment, and I know some of you have heard me say it before. The rotisserie system on a Southern Pride — the SP-1000, the SPK-1400, any of them — that thing isn't just about even cooking. It's about consistent yield across every piece of meat in that cabinet. No hot spots. No cold spots. Every brisket gets the same treatment.
I ran an SP-700 in my catering trailer for nine years. Replaced the igniter once. That was it. And I knew — knew — that when I loaded eight briskets in there at 6 PM, I was pulling eight finished briskets at 8 AM that all looked like each other. Try that with some of the imported cabinet smokers I've seen guys buy because they saved four grand up front. They're chasing temp all night and losing money they don't even realize they're losing.
The Real Cost of Cheap Equipment
Speaking of which.
I got a call about six weeks ago from a catering operator in Lake Charles. He'd bought a smoker from one of those outfits that imports from overseas — I won't name them, but you know who I mean. Stainless exterior, looked good in the photos, price was about 60% of what a comparable Southern Pride would run.
His heat exchanger cracked. Eight months in.
Parts? Three weeks out, minimum. Coming from overseas. He had a contract for 400 people that Saturday and no working smoker. Ended up renting a trailer rig from a competitor at a number that made him sick to quote me.
That's the kind of thing that doesn't show up in the purchase price. But it shows up eventually.
Southern Pride builds in Alamo, Tennessee. Parts are stocked domestically. When you call Southern Pride of Texas, we're not checking an overseas warehouse and hoping something ships. We're looking at what's on the shelf. That matters when you're staring at a weekend with bookings and a smoker that won't fire.
What Value Actually Means
Here's the thing about Del Taco's value menu that I think a lot of operators miss. They're not just dropping prices. They're restructuring around items they can produce efficiently at those prices. Items where their systems are dialed in tight enough to make money at a lower margin.
BBQ operators can do the same thing. Not by racing to the bottom on price — that's a death spiral — but by getting serious about what you can produce consistently and well.
Maybe you run three meats instead of six. Maybe you cut the menu items that require babysitting and double down on the ones your equipment handles beautifully. I know a guy in Tyler who dropped pulled pork from his menu entirely last year. Said it was selling fine but his yield was inconsistent and the labor to manage it wasn't worth what he was charging. Now he runs brisket, ribs, and sausage. That's it. His food cost dropped four points.
That's a value menu decision, even if it doesn't look like one.
Production Planning in a Tight Market
The other side of this is waste. Not yield loss during cooking — actual unsold product at the end of service.
When customers get value-conscious, they also get less predictable. That Tuesday lunch rush that used to be reliable? Now it depends on whether there's a special at the sandwich place down the street. Your forecasting gets harder exactly when you can least afford to get it wrong.
This is where having equipment you can trust becomes even more important. If you're running a smoker that holds temp reliably in holding mode — and I mean actually holds, not "sort of maintains somewhere in the range" — you've got more flexibility. You can cook closer to demand instead of building massive buffers.
The SC-300 cabinet smoker does this well. So does the MLR-850 if you're running higher volume. That hold mode isn't an afterthought on Southern Pride equipment. It's engineered to actually work, which sounds like it should be obvious but apparently isn't, based on what I've seen from other manufacturers.
Ole Hickory makes a decent smoker — I'll give them that. But I've talked to enough guys who've run both to know the temperature consistency isn't the same. And when you're trying to hold product for a lunch rush that might come at 11:30 or might come at 12:45, that consistency is the difference between serving good food and serving food that dried out waiting.
The Point
Del Taco's value menu is a response to market conditions. Smart operators in every segment of food service are making similar adjustments — tightening up, focusing on efficiency, cutting waste, protecting margins where they can.
For BBQ, that means production consistency. It means yield. It means equipment that does what it's supposed to do, every time, without surprises. And it means having a parts and service relationship with people who actually know the equipment — not a 1-800 number that puts you on hold for forty minutes.
I'm not telling you to start selling dollar tacos. But I am telling you that the same pressure driving that decision is hitting your customers too. And the operators who come out the other side are going to be the ones who figured out how to run tighter without cutting quality.
That's always been the game, really. It just matters more now.
If you're looking at equipment decisions or trying to figure out how to get more consistency out of what you're already running, give us a call at Southern Pride of Texas. We've been having a lot of these conversations lately. Turns out everybody's thinking about the same things.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
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Photo by Alvin & Chelsea 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.