Raising prices is an option but that is very market dependant. BBQ customers in general are more price sensitive than lobster customers and I would lose sales at a higher price point.
There is a certain price (which I have generally found is $4.50 - $4.99/lb, that is when my food cost for a brisket sandwich hits 50%. Target food cost should be somewhere around 30%) where it just isn't worth it to sell brisket. BBQ is somewhat unique in that you have to estimate your demand ahead of time - you can't just throw on another brisket if you run out and I don't reheat/re-use leftovers. So even if I raise my prices $2/sandwich to cover the increased cost my risk is still higher because any unsold product is now a higher loss.
I'm sure you know your business and market, but I'd just through out an example from my back yard.
Matt's BBQ is the best Texas style bbq in Portland by a considerable margin. I've been a customer and friendly with him since he started out in a pawn shop parking lot with zero foot traffic and almost no road visibility. He charges $13.50 for a 1/2 lb of brisket, similar prices for other meats. Sides are typically around $3.50.
He's up to multiple locations and his own commissary kitchen that's like 2000 sq feet.
He sells out every single day.
It's been really fun to watch his business blow up. It's all been from the strength of his product, and his personal hustle to get the momentum. His customer base is loyal and willing to pay a premium.
He even has a side hustle selling smoker rigs, via a partnership.
I'm enjoying this discussion and I'm glad you brought up your example, but keep in mind the sort of folks ordering BBQ in Portland are a very specific class of customers :)
No doubt, but the reason people do or don't get it vary widely be region. In Portland I expect it's more likely to be a novelty or cultural experience, and therefore the clientele to be less price sensitive than Texas.
Do you have any awareness how obnoxious it is to assert you know my neighborhood better than me? When it's clear you've never been to any of these places, talked with fellow customers, etc?
It's a mixed race neighborhood. For the first couple years his neighbor in the pawn shop parking lot was a soul food cart. The clientele at both looked basically the same in terms of demographics.
While you won't find as much good BBQ in Portland as say central Texas, the Carolinas, etc, it's not some sort of exotic novelty.
I don't know why you are so determined to stereotype this stuff, but it is not helpful.
You living someplace, eating at a restaurant, and having a general gestalt of the local experience does not make you (or any of us) an expert on statements about population-level demographics or the economic implication. There's no reason to get upset that someone on the internet doesn't believe your analysis, or to call them names.
It is a statistical impossibility that any given group in Portland is the same as any given group in Texas on the metrics I mentioned, so your claim is really that these metrics don't influence price sensitivity.
It's statements like this that are revealing:
> People do value authenticity in my town. The big corporate chain restaurants are a lot more sparse here, exactly because the local places are just as cheap, far higher quality, locally owned, and using local ingrediants, etc.
There's no trade-off between chain restaurants and locally owned? The latter is just an unalloyed good and other regions of the country are just making mistakes for no reason? So no, I don't find your analysis convincing, but as I already said I appreciate your input in the discussion.
Dude, it's literally my neighborhood, which I've been in for over a decade. These people are mostly my neighbors. They're who I talk to at the corner store, at the cart pods, at the bar when we're watching the Blazers games.
Just. Stop.
I never made any claim about blanket superiority, just described factually what this place is like. You'll find plenty of people and even data supporting that characterization if you want.
Likewise I did not claim anything about equality with Texas, just that your utterly naive assertion that the customer base for the food cart I mentioned must be slanted a particular way, based on literally nothing. It is not.
You don't understand what I've already written if you think that any of this hinges on how many years you've lived in the neighborhood, or high integrated into the community you are.
I do I simply disagree strongly, just as strongly as you would had I tried to bulldoze you with a naive stereotyped view about something you personally are highly familiar with.
In any case, it's clear continuing this line of discussion is pointless.
> He charges $13.50 for a 1/2 lb of brisket, similar prices for other meats. Sides are typically around $3.50.
People in Portland and other liberal cities will paradoxically pay a premium for "poor people" food. When you are wealthy enough to consume whatever you want, the rarest commodity is something that feels like an authentic, meaningful experience. Cuisines that come from poor areas carry that sense of authenticity with them and can charge appropriately.
I don't think you can assume that pricing model will work well outside of a few places like Portland, SF, NYC, Seattle, LA. People that aren't wealthy enough such that they do care about food prices aren't going to pay extra because a brisket is served on a just-so-cute-and-"real" metal tray.
Food carts in Portland are extremely informal and very much a thing for everyday people, including people with low incomes by local standards. In fact it's one of the main drivers of their popularity here.
It's not a matter of wealthy people adopting "poor people's food" as a novelty. It's just good food no matter your situation in life. Matt is charging on the higher end, and a complete meal is still under $20. The best burger in my area is a double bacon cheese for $4.50 that uses really quality ingredients.
I've talked with customers at Matt's that live out in the country and make an hour plus drive to come by every once in a while.
People do value authenticity in my town. The big corporate chain restaurants are a lot more sparse here, exactly because the local places are just as cheap, far higher quality, locally owned, and using local ingrediants, etc.
The genesis of the food cart scene here was the city has some smart policies about making it affordable to start these businesses. Many people who dream of someday having a restaurant start out this way. You can make a serious shot at it with just $50k or so, which is tiny even by small business capital standards. They price their food accordingly.
It's true this place is getting more expensive, but I assure you, if you go out to any of the pods, you'll see a roughly even mix of people who are middle class, and young people that probably make barely enough to cover rent at a service industry job. Everyone will be hanging out, friendly and chatting.
Please don't project your own assumptions onto this scene if you've not been there. This town is pretty grossly misrepresented by a wide swath of media.
That price point is not outlandish. That foodtruck would probably be just as successful setting up outside of bars in Cleveland even. What I've noticed as an adult now visiting friends in various places, high cost of living low cost of living, is food and drink are basically the same exact price. Pints of beer from $6-9 or so. Entrees $12-16 or so. Everywhere in the country has settled at this median pricepoint, no matter what the cuisine.
Is it possible to purchase the cuts in advance and store them frozen or does that noticeably effect the quality? Seems straightforward to through some cuts in a deep freezer to smooth out supply costs. I do that on the small scale at home though obviously the capital costs would be proportionally larger at scale.
That's exactly what I did starting about a month ago - I've got enough on hand to last about a month (most of that is committed to catering jobs that already have a set price - so my forecasting is much easier but if I didn't lock in the price I would have to eat the difference).
As long as they are safely handled I've found no quality difference at all when freezing stuff that is cryo-vaced. More often than not it has already been frozen at least once before it gets to me.
I don't ever sell anything that has been re-heated after cooking though. You can also do that with little to no quality loss but I try to position myself as a premium brand so everything is 'cooked to order'. There are also a lot more food safety concerns (cooing it fast enough, re-heating it fast enough, etc.) that I don't want to worry about. I vacuum seal cooked BBQ at home and it's just as good as fresh but you can't do that in a commercial setting without special permits that aren't available to food trucks (at least not in my area).
> I don't reheat/re-use leftovers. ... any unsold product is now a higher loss.
Perfect yesterday BBQ meat! Coming from USSR/Russia with its food shortages in 198x-first half of 199x i still kind of mentally shudder reading such things even after 21 years of living here.
It’s not waste in that it goes into the trash - it’s just a sink cost that I’ll never recoup. Anything left over I keep for myself, give to friends/family, or donate (which is actually more difficult than you would expect since it is perishable)
I’m only open once or twice a week so secondary uses (beans, chili, etc) unfortunately don’t work for me.
That's because lobster roll customers are rich yuppies. BBQ is for poor people who cannot afford good cuts of meat so they resort to pulverizing bad cuts of meat with smoke heat and sauce.
Yup, there is craft everything now. For example, macaroni and cheese. To me, that will always be the poor folk food of my youth, even though my friends rave about eating it at fine dining establishments. I'm sure soon we'll have artisinal sloppy joes as well -- why not, with high quality ingredients and a creative chef, you can make any dish interesting.
You're exactly right that BBQ is popular and that's why BBQ is getting worse. I know I sound like a salty hipster but bear with me for a moment. There's some "show me the incentives I'll show you the outcome" reasoning behind my opinion.
When a thing becomes trendy among moneyed demographics there is now stupid money to be made selling a caricature of that thing to people with too much money. BBQ is one of those thigns becoming just another experience for yuppies to talk about in the break room on Mondays. When you're running a BBQ joint you're not selling meat cooked in a particular style, you're selling an experience. People don't care about whether your BBQ is a career long refinement of what grandma made. They care about whether it's something they can brag about. They're looking for an experience and if you want to stay in business you're gonna sell it to them. It's not about doing your thing well, it's about presentation and show. Many of the people running these restaurants hate bastardizing their craft and leaning into an image/stereotype like this but it's what pays the bills.
Maybe I'm just jaded from growing up in a tourism economy but money uncritically thrown at something tends to ruin it.
When I go looking for a restaurant I go for <censored>, <censored> and <censored>, because those three genres aren't trendy right now and any business specializing in them has to succeed on its own merits, it can't just print money by looking the part.
Fortunately, BBQ in particular is one of those cuisines that with close attention to detail and some hours spent researching on the Net, you as an individual can turn out a brisket that, if not as good as say Snow's or Franklin, is more than Good Enough for an extremely satisfying experience when done with some friends and family as a group effort. One of the glories of our current age is this outcome can be reproduced with many if not all other cuisines and dishes.
No less a pit master than Aaron Franklin will tell anyone who cares to listen that they individually can absolutely turn out a brisket that is equal to or better than what he serves up at his eponymous restaurant. He takes pains to point out it only takes caring attention to detail to that single brisket, which is why I think I run into a greater proportion of BBQ enthusiasts in hacker circles compared to my other communities when categorized by interests. He freely admits his and other pit masters' "secret sauce" lays in how they scale it up and keeps it close to what they produce when they are making only one brisket at home for family and friends.
I generally consider BBQ competitions overblown affairs that are arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. To me, after a certain point it is quite good enough, and any further optimization for "better" doesn't pass my personal cost-benefit filter, and I'd rather spend the cognitive effort on my dining companions.
It is either that, or I possess a philistine palate. The latter is quite possible because I hold a similar opinion of many of the fine dining establishments I've eaten at, from quite fine kaiseki, omakase, Chinese, Michelin-starred French, various fusions, steak, and other restaurants, some with pretty eye-popping per-diner prices. That's mostly because I believe that we're at the nascent, fragile stages of achieving post-scarcity (by no means assured, and still many generations away), and part of that journey involves the elevation of increasingly finer experiences (perhaps some requiring ever-greater cognitive effort to appreciate that I'm not aware of) to a mass market.
