Got a call last month from an operator in Beaumont who was running the numbers on his brisket and couldn't make them work anymore. Prime packer prices had climbed past $5.50 a pound on his last order, and he was still charging what he charged in 2021. "Ray, I either raise prices again or I close," he said. Except he'd already raised prices twice that year.
This is the conversation I'm having with restaurant owners constantly now. Not whether food costs are a problem — everyone knows that part — but what to actually do about it without turning your menu into something your regulars won't recognize.
The Brisket Math Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here's where I'll probably annoy some purists. Brisket has become a loss leader for a lot of operations, and some folks are still pretending otherwise.
When you factor in a 35-40% yield after trimming and cooking, that $5.50 packer is really costing you somewhere around $14-15 per pound of finished, sliceable meat. Add your labor, your fuel costs (which have also jumped), your holding time, and the portions that get too dry to serve — you're looking at a true cost that makes a $24 per pound menu price barely break even. Some weeks, you're losing money on every brisket plate you sell.
The operators who are surviving right now aren't the ones stubbornly holding to a brisket-centric menu. They're the ones who figured out how to feature brisket strategically while building margin elsewhere.
One guy I service in Lake Charles shifted brisket to a weekend-only special. Thursday through Sunday, it's available. Monday through Wednesday, the menu focuses on pork shoulder, chicken, and sausage. His food costs dropped eight percentage points in two months. He was worried regulars would revolt. A few grumbled. Most adjusted.
Pork Shoulder Is Having a Moment (Finally)
I've always thought pulled pork was underrated in Texas. We're so brisket-obsessed that shoulder gets treated like the backup singer, but from a business standpoint, it's your most forgiving protein.
Bone-in shoulder is running about $1.80-2.20 a pound right now, depending on your supplier. Yield is better than brisket — you're getting 55-60% usable meat after cooking. The margin on a pulled pork sandwich can be three times what you're making on sliced brisket.
The smart move I'm seeing is operators elevating their pork game rather than just treating it as the cheap option. Different rubs, regional sauce variations, creative sandwiches. One place in Houston started offering Carolina-style alongside their Texas-style and it's outselling everything else on the menu. People want variety. They just needed permission to order something other than brisket.
And here's the equipment angle nobody thinks about: pork shoulder is more forgiving of temperature fluctuation than brisket. If you're running older equipment that doesn't hold temps as consistently — I'm thinking of some of the import smokers I've serviced where the thermostat is more of a suggestion — you'll get better results with shoulder. Though honestly, that's an argument for upgrading to equipment with proper temperature control rather than just working around bad gear.
The Chicken Math Actually Works
Smoked chicken quarters and halves are showing up on more menus than I've seen in twenty years of servicing commercial kitchens. The reason is simple: you can buy leg quarters for under a dollar a pound when you're ordering in volume.
The challenge with chicken has always been throughput. It doesn't need the cook time of brisket or shoulder, but it takes up rack space that could hold higher-margin items during peak hours. This is where production planning becomes everything.
Operators who are making chicken work are smoking it during off-peak hours — early morning runs before the lunch proteins go on — then holding it. A rotisserie unit like the SP-1000 or SPK-1400 handles this beautifully because you can run a full load of chicken, transfer it to holding, and then load your briskets without any workflow disruption. The consistent heat circulation means your chicken comes out with crispy skin even at lower temps, which has always been the problem with flat-rack smoking.
I talked to a caterer last spring who was doing corporate lunches almost exclusively with smoked chicken thighs over rice. Her food cost on those jobs was running 22%. She told me she felt a little guilty, like she was cheating somehow. I told her profit isn't cheating.
Menu Engineering That Doesn't Feel Like a Bait and Switch
The phrase "menu engineering" makes me roll my eyes a little — it sounds like something a consultant charges $5,000 to explain. But the concept matters. You're guiding customers toward items that make you money without making them feel manipulated.
What works:
- Combo plates where you control the protein ratios — a three-meat plate with brisket as one of three instead of the star
- Sandwiches and tacos that use less meat but feel like a full portion because of the bread and toppings
- Daily specials that rotate your higher-cost proteins into limited availability
- Pricing your sides to actually make money instead of treating them as throwaways
That last one deserves more attention. I see menus where a pint of beans is $3.50 and costs about forty cents to make. That's your margin right there. If your sides are good — and they should be — people will order them. Smoked mac and cheese, jalapeño corn, loaded potato salad. These aren't afterthoughts. They're profit centers.
What Happens When You Actually Track Your Waste
I spent two days with an operator in East Texas last year helping him figure out why his food costs were so much higher than similar-volume restaurants. Turns out he was throwing away about 15% of his cooked brisket because it was drying out in holding.
His holding cabinet was twenty years old. The seals were shot. The temperature was all over the place — I measured a 40-degree variance from top to bottom. He was basically paying to dry out meat.
We got him set up with a proper holding solution and his waste dropped to under 5%. At his volume, that was something like $800 a week in saved product. The equipment paid for itself in three months.
Point is, food cost inflation isn't just about what you're paying for raw ingredients. It's about what percentage of what you buy actually makes it onto a plate that someone pays for. Bad equipment, poor workflow, inconsistent cooking — all of that shows up in your food cost percentage even when commodity prices are stable.
Southern Pride gear holds temps within a few degrees over hours of operation. I've tested it myself, more times than I can count. The SC-300 cabinet smokers especially — I've seen them maintain 225°F plus or minus 3 degrees for 14-hour cooks. That consistency means less waste. Less waste means better margins even when brisket costs what it costs.
The Fuel Side of the Equation
Natural gas prices are up around 30% from two years ago in most markets. Propane is worse in some areas. This matters for your operating costs, but it also matters for how you think about production scheduling.
Running your smoker at half capacity costs almost the same in fuel as running it full. The burners cycle the same way whether you have four briskets on or twelve. So the operators who are winning right now are the ones batching their production — running full loads less frequently rather than partial loads every day.
This takes planning. You need to know your demand well enough to cook ahead. You need holding equipment that actually holds quality for extended periods. But the math is significant. One operator I work with cut his monthly gas bill by $400 just by shifting from daily smoking to four production days per week.
The Parts and Service Reality
Here's something that connects to food costs indirectly but matters: when your smoker goes down, you're either buying emergency product from another restaurant at terrible prices, or you're turning customers away. Either way, you're losing money.
I've seen operators limp along with failing igniters, worn drive motors, deteriorating gaskets — trying to avoid a repair bill. Then something fails during a Friday night service and they're scrambling. The emergency costs ten times what the planned repair would have.
This is where buying quality equipment from a distributor who actually stocks parts matters. When something fails on a Southern Pride unit, I can usually get parts same-day or next-day through Southern Pride of Texas because they actually maintain inventory. Try that with some of the import brands — you're waiting weeks for parts from overseas while your smoker sits dead.
Domestic manufacturing means domestic parts availability. That's not marketing talk. That's just how supply chains work.
Nobody's Going Back to 2019 Prices
I don't have a crystal ball, but I've watched this industry for over two decades. The operators who are adapting now — adjusting their menus, investing in equipment that reduces waste, planning production strategically — they're going to be fine. Maybe better than fine, because their competitors who refuse to adapt are going to close.
The ones still trying to sell brisket at 2019 prices because they're afraid to lose customers are the ones I worry about. You can't lose money on every transaction and make it up on volume. That math has never worked.
Adapt the menu. Manage your waste. Run your equipment efficiently. It's not complicated, but it does require paying attention. And maybe accepting that the way things were isn't the way things are.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
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Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.
About the Author: Ray is a retired authorized Southern Pride service technician with 22 years of field experience on commercial BBQ equipment across the Gulf Coast and Southeast.