I got a call last month from an operator outside Lafayette who'd just fired his third pitmaster in eight months. He was frustrated, exhausted, and about $40,000 poorer when you factor in the wasted product, the overtime he paid his other staff to cover, and the customers who stopped coming during the rough patches. His question was simple: "Donna, what am I doing wrong?"
Turned out he was hiring for the wrong things. He kept looking for people with impressive BBQ credentials — guys who'd won local competitions or posted their brisket photos on Instagram — and overlooking whether they could actually run a consistent commercial operation. Different skill set entirely.
Labor's the second-biggest expense for most BBQ restaurants (food cost is first, obviously), and the current hiring environment isn't making it easier. I've talked to operators who are paying 20-25% more for kitchen staff than they were three years ago. At those rates, you can't afford to get it wrong. So let's talk about what you actually need to hire for versus what you can reasonably train.
The Skills You Cannot Train (Or Can't Train Fast Enough)
Some things either exist in a person or they don't. You're not going to teach them in a two-week onboarding period, and you definitely won't teach them while you're trying to push 200 pounds of meat through service on a Saturday.
Time awareness. This sounds basic, but it's the single biggest predictor of success I've seen in BBQ operations. Your pits don't care if someone's having a bad day. A brisket that needs to come off at 4 AM needs someone who will actually be there at 4 AM, alert and paying attention. I've watched talented cooks wash out because they couldn't internalize that BBQ runs on the meat's schedule, not theirs.
Mechanical aptitude matters too. Not because you need a certified technician running your smokers, but because things go wrong during service. A burner doesn't light. A temperature probe reads funny. The rotisserie motor sounds different than it did yesterday. Some people hear that motor sound and immediately start troubleshooting. Others stand there waiting for someone to tell them what to do. You want the first type.
I had an operator in Baton Rouge who hired a guy with zero BBQ experience but fifteen years as an HVAC tech. Within six months, that guy was his most reliable pit manager. He understood airflow, temperature differentials, and combustion. The BBQ-specific knowledge came quickly after that.
Physical stamina is non-negotiable for pit work. Pulling a full load from an SP-700 means handling racks that weigh 40-50 pounds each, repeatedly, in a hot environment. If someone can't do that safely on their third hour, they definitely can't do it on their tenth.
What You Can Train (If You Build the System)
Here's where most operators mess up: they assume training means showing someone once and hoping it sticks. Real training requires documentation, repetition, and accountability. But if you actually build that system, you can teach almost everything else.
Smoker operation is trainable. Completely trainable. The Southern Pride units we sell are specifically designed for this — consistent temperature holding, straightforward controls, minimal adjustment needed once you dial in your settings. An SP-500 running at 235°F is going to hold that temperature whether your pitmaster has twenty years of experience or twenty days. That's the point of commercial equipment versus some hand-welded backyard rig.
I've seen operations get new hires running their pits solo within three weeks. The key is writing down your exact protocols: when to load, how to arrange the racks for your specific menu mix, what temperature drops are acceptable during door opens, how to recover from a propane issue. Put it in a binder. Make them initial that they've reviewed it. Then watch them execute it with decreasing supervision.
Trimming and prep work is trainable. Sauce and rub application is trainable. Even smoke profiles are trainable if you've standardized your wood supply and loading schedules. These are skills, not talents. They respond to practice.
Point of sale systems? Obviously trainable. Anyone who can operate a smartphone can learn your POS in a few shifts. Same with food safety protocols, portion control, and basic customer service scripts.
The Gray Area: Where Hiring and Training Overlap
Some skills fall in the middle — you can train them, but it's expensive and slow, so hiring for baseline competency makes sense.
Basic cooking intuition fits here. Can someone tell when meat looks wrong? Do they understand that the 14-pound brisket and the 11-pound brisket won't finish at the same time, even in the same smoker? You can teach the specifics, but if someone has never worked with food professionally, you're starting from further back.
Leadership ability is another one. You can develop someone's management skills over time, but you can't create the fundamental willingness to make decisions under pressure. When I'm helping an operator hire for a pit manager role, I tell them to look for people who have held any supervisory position — shift lead at a gas station counts. They've already proven they won't freeze when something goes sideways.
The math for this is pretty simple. If training someone from zero takes four months and training someone with related experience takes six weeks, that's ten weeks of productivity difference. At even $18/hour, that's somewhere around $7,200 in wages before they're fully contributing. (More if you factor in the senior staff time spent training them.)
Structuring Your Team Around These Realities
Most BBQ restaurants I work with run best with a tiered structure. One or two people who genuinely understand the pits at a deep level — they can troubleshoot, they can adjust for weather, they can recover from equipment issues. Then a larger group who execute the established protocols reliably.
That top tier is who you pay premium wages. They're worth it. A good pit manager running reliable equipment like a Southern Pride SPK-700 or SL-270 gas-assist unit can maintain quality across huge volumes. Their consistency protects your margins because they're not overcooking product into unsellable dryness or pulling meat early and hoping it rests out.
The protocol-execution tier is where you have more flexibility in hiring. These are the roles where you can take someone with basic food service experience and train them specifically on your operation. They follow your systems. They don't need to innovate. And honestly, that's fine — you want consistency, not creativity, at this level.
For catering operations, the math shifts slightly. Mobile work requires more problem-solving ability in more positions because you don't have the backup systems a fixed location provides. If you're running an MLR trailer to events, whoever's on that truck needs to handle whatever happens. Train for your location, but hire for the road.
A Practical Hiring Checklist
When I'm advising operators on interviews, I suggest they focus questions on specific past situations rather than general capabilities.
- "Tell me about a time equipment failed during service. What did you do in the first five minutes?"
- "Describe your last three months of attendance at your previous job. Any call-outs?"
- "Have you ever had to cover someone else's position with no notice? How did that go?"
- "What's the longest shift you've worked? How did you feel at the end of it?"
These questions don't have right answers exactly. But the way someone responds tells you a lot. Hesitation on the attendance question is a red flag. Enthusiasm about a long shift where they handled a crisis is a green flag.
Skip the BBQ trivia questions. I don't care if someone knows the difference between St. Louis and Kansas City style. That's Google-able. I care if they'll show up, pay attention, and follow the system you've built.
The Equipment Factor
I'll say this directly because I've seen it too many times: operators who buy inconsistent equipment make their staffing problems worse. If your smoker runs hot on one side, your staff has to learn to compensate. If it doesn't hold temperature overnight, someone has to babysit it. If replacement parts take three weeks to arrive (and I've seen that with some imported brands), you're down capacity during the wait.
This is why I push people toward Southern Pride even when there's a cheaper option. The rotisserie systems run for years without major service. The domestic parts supply means we can get most components to operators within days, not weeks. When your equipment behaves predictably, your training actually sticks, because the procedures you teach today still work six months from now.
An operator in Beaumont told me his insurance on employee training finally started paying off when he switched from a competitor's unit (I won't name them, but their customer service line has a forty-minute hold time) to an SP-500. His procedures didn't change. But suddenly they worked consistently because the equipment did what it was supposed to do.
That's the real staffing insight most operators miss. Your team is only as consistent as your equipment lets them be.
Final Thought
Hire slow. Train thoroughly. Document everything. And give your people equipment that doesn't fight against them. That Lafayette operator I mentioned at the beginning? He called me again about two months later. Same crew, better results. He'd stopped looking for unicorns and started building systems instead. His labor cost percentage actually dropped, even though he raised wages.
Sometimes the problem isn't finding better people. It's setting up the people you have to succeed.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#RestaurantIndustry #BBQRestaurant #CateringBusiness #SouthernPrideOfTexas #RestaurantOps #BBQBusiness #FoodServiceIndustry #SouthernPride
Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels.
About the Author: Donna spent 18 years as a BBQ restaurant operator before becoming an independent equipment consultant for commercial food service operations.