Reply to Is it just me or do all barbecue joints basically taste the same?

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Reply to "Is it just me or do all barbecue joints basically taste the same?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Literal peasant food marked up 1000%.[/quote]
I don’t even know what that means.[/quote]

Running a (good) barbecue place is a low-margin business. For starters, meat is expensive. Plus, you have to smoke enough meat in advance to last for the day’s service, without smoking too much—which would be wasteful. Don’t smoke enough and you turn customers away. Smoke too much and you throw it away.

Barbecue is a uniquely American delicacy. Lots of cultures grill and roast, but few combine the low roasting of meat with delicate wood smoke. None do it as well as we do. Embrace it. [/quote]

This exactly. I just trimmed a brisket yesterday, it cost $4.50 a pound, so my 15 pound full packer cost me about $68.  After trimming the fat I was left with 10.5 pounds.  After moisture loss in smoking, the final product will likely weigh around 7 pounds.  So already, just to avoid losing money on the meat alone, I'd need to charge nearly $10 a pound if I were to sell it.

But wait, there's more! You need to buy fuel to smoke the meat. As a home chef I go through about a bag of charcoal per cook which adds about $10 to the cost, bringing the cost per pound to $11.15. Commercial outfits usually use long-cured post oak, which is an expensive import in DC.

Now add in paying staff, paying commercial rent, paying utilities, advertising, and it becomes very clear that the markup is minimal. [/quote]
+1[/quote]

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