Is there a easier way without giving up quality?

Southern Pride and Old Hickory units can create excellent BBQ, as can the Oyler E units. The thing is, in order to create that quality of BBQ, you still need to be there, feeding wood in to the fire chamber. The reason you hear of poor quality BBQ coming off of gas assist and electric element smokers is that the guys who buy then skimp on the wood, in order to get away from the cooker. It won't be the same as an offset cooker, but, you can create BBQ that most folks will never be able to tell the difference.
 
Paul,
A while back I posted on here about our experience with holding brisket for up to 12 hours in our hot hold oven. This is a huge part of what makes Franklin's brisket as moist and tender as it is. If you have been there or notice in the videos that people make at his place, his briskets always look very wet when the paper comes off. They are being held at 140-150 with very high humidity.
 
Smoke & Bark Barbecue said:
Paul,
A while back I posted on here about our experience with holding brisket for up to 12 hours in our hot hold oven. This is a huge part of what makes Franklin's brisket as moist and tender as it is. If you have been there or notice in the videos that people make at his place, his briskets always look very wet when the paper comes off. They are being held at 140-150 with very high humidity.
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Thanks! I'll see if I can find your post.
 
yes, we all strive to serve the best dam bbq around and it is lots of work. I will challenge any one about the quality of meat coming off an old hickory or southern pride and others with log burning capabilities. I cook with out propane assist and load up the fire box 4 or 5 hours. If I use the propane, then I load up the box at 8 pm and unload at 8 am WITHOUT ever tending again. I do not wrap or screw around with brisket or pork butts when you are cooking 25 butts and 15 briskets. NO LOSS of moisture ...It is toooo long of a day serving from 11 am to 8 pm and then the clean up. and prep for the next day.. If you do not want to upgrade your equipment, then you must hire people. What you will pay for workmans comp, unemployment insurance and the other costs of employees you will find that the cost of good equipment is cheaper with no loss of a good product.
I started with your way then I smartened up to a S/P 500, now I use a S/P 700 5 years ago and what I paid for that(20,000) is far less than what it would have cost me in wages. And if I closed I can re-sell it to recover my in vestment, Dont want to get caught selling an old employee.....Do the math...and get some sleep...
 
Well, you obviously see something has to change. Why not double your cooking and only stay open 1 day? If you're selling out in 2 hours, cook enough to stay open 4-6 hours for 1 day. You'd keep your sales the same as staying open 2 days, but concentrate your efforts down to 1 day. That way you don't burn out...customers would be more happy with the option of buying from you just 1 day per week than 0 days per week.
 
Smoke & Bark Barbecue said:
We go thru a distributor (if that matters). We buy the Creekstone Prime 14-16 pound packers for $3.75-$4.80 a pound. Ive seen it vary in this price range over the months based on the beef prices. We sell our cooked brisket for $17/LB and they line up for it once they get a taste of it. We've have people come up to the window and want whole brisktets.
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I would line up for it too. Your giving it away.
 
The way I'm doing the math, my brisket cost for 1855Beef.com choice plus briskets is cost of the meat, $3.75-$4, divided by my net, cooked yeild, which is about half of the original weight, bringing the cost per pound to $8, plus the rub and wood, add another $1, plus labor, which depends some on how many you are cooking at a time. So if you start with $4 meat, and you trim any before the cook, I'm at $10-12 a pound food cost.

Right?
 
PaulstheRibList said:
The way I'm doing the math, my brisket cost for 1855Beef.com choice plus briskets is cost of the meat, $3.75-$4, divided by my net, cooked yeild, which is about half of the original weight, bringing the cost per pound to $8, plus the rub and wood, add another $1, plus labor, which depends some on how many you are cooking at a time. So if you start with $4 meat, and you trim any before the cook, I'm at $10-12 a pound food cost.

Right?
Click to expand...

Your math is for meat cost. Food cost is the price you HAVE to sell it for to cover your meat cost and all the other aspects of the cook (rub, fuel, labor) and still show a profit.

Your meat cost after cooking is $8/lb. If you sell it for $16/lb your food cost is 50%, meaning for every dollar you bring in, $.50 is profit.
Now out of that $.50, you have to pay for rub, fuel, labor, blah, blah, blah.
Doesn't leave much which is why I aim for a 30% food cost. Caterers can get away with less because they have less overhead than a brick n mortar.
 
We use Backwoods Smokers (specifically two Competitor models) with a BBQ Guru DigiQ on each one. We get the same quality as a stick burner with constant temps throughout the cook and don't need to monitor a "fire-box". This allows for SLEEP!! :-D

One Competitor can hold 16 - 8.5 lb butts OR 8 - 14 lb briskets in one run. We cook for approx 9 hours at 300F and then pull. (4 hrs with smoke and 5 hrs wrapped in foil)

So we end up with approx 68 lb of cooked pulled pork and approx 56 lbs of pulled brisket in one 8-9 hr run with the two cookers.

The full 8-9 hr run takes approx 10 lbs of charcoal and 1 lb of smoking wood PER cooker.

YMMV
 
Smoke & Bark Barbecue said:
I apologize in advance if this is a long read.

Id like to get some advice/opinions on how we have been doing our business and see if there are easier options or if Im just being a cry baby and need to suck it up.

Preface: We have a small food trailer we sell from and a 250 gallon RF offset stick burner on a separate trailer for our cooker. We only cook Prime Grade Creekstone beef brisket and the best fresh pork products we can source. This is not cheap.
We have only been serving on Saturday and Sunday. Open at 11am till sold out. We both have full time jobs during the week.

We started serving food to the public last August. We were an instant hit in the town we live in. The first day we opened we sold every bit of food we had in less than 2hrs. This consisted of brisket, pulled pork, ribs, sausage, homemade beans, and homemade slaw. People raved about our food on social media. The next weekend the line was 12-15 deep before we ever opened the window to sell. Food was gone again in a couple of hours.

Ok so here is where Id like some advice. Our goal was to serve the best Barbecue in our area. Period. We wanted to serve "Franklin" quality brisket and we do. We wanted every product that we sold to be the very best...not just "good". We achieved this. But......producing this kind of food is killing me. Depending on the shift Im working, I will prep meat on Thursday night or mid day Friday. Meat goes on the cooker by 4-5PM Friday evening. The first load is all brisket and pork butts. We cook at 275-300. I start pulling butts and brisket anywhere from 1-3 AM Saturday morn. As soon as they are off the cooker is loaded up with ribs. They come off around 6-7:30 AM Saturday morn. All the meat is kept in a Alto Sham hot hold oven in the food trailer. At 8-9Am we start hooking up the trailer and getting ready to leave to go set up to sell. We open at 11 and sell till its gone. Then haul ass back home to prep meat and load the cooker back up again and start all over for Sunday.

We cook on a stick burner. I made the choice to buy this cooker because I felt to produce the quality of food that we wanted, this was the only way to do it. NONE of the big Texas places (the popular ones) use gas or electric. Most of them also use offset stick burners. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I just don't believe that you can produce the type of food that we do on an electric or gas "set it and forget it" cooker. Yes, you can make good food no doubt, but not the type of Q that people are standing in line for hours for at Franklins, La Barbecue, Muellers, etc..... There is a reason these guys don't use "easy" cookers.

So, Im getting up early Friday morn.....I get ZERO sleep from Friday morn till I go to bed Sunday night. The cooker needs wood every 30-40 min. Yes I may doze off for a few in between logs, but I keep an alarm set on my phone. Im going 3 days with zero sleep. I can make it thru Saturday just fine, however Saturday night and sunday is rough.

So tell me, what am I doing wrong here? Is everyone that sells barbecue running on no sleep 24/7? Do I have to sacrifice food quality for sleep by moving to a modern style cooker which will make us no different than any other run of the mill BBQ joint? We are a small operation and with the cost of the higher quality meat we are buying, profit margins are not great. I have a passion for this and its what drives me to keep going. I sure as hell cant afford to hire any help and I would have a hard time trusting any aspect of the prep/cooking process to anyone else.

I visited with a guy yesterday that has owned a very large catering business for over 20yrs. His bright idea solution was to precook and freeze all my meat then just reheat it for service. I politely told him he was insane. Nobody wants to eat reheated brisket, much less pay $18/lb for it. His response was "hell they will never know". This attitude is the difference in just wanting to dump a plate of "ok food" in front of a customer, versus having a passion for what you are doing and wanting to give the customer the very best barbecue they have ever ate in their life.

Guys give me some advice here please.
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The timeline is the timeline. If you want to use a stickburner like that, it has to be monitored. The amount of hours won't change so you need to hire more people. Only real way around it if this is how you want to cook.

I will say though, I think your timeline should shift maybe 3 hours later.
 
PaulstheRibList said:
The way I'm doing the math, my brisket cost for 1855Beef.com choice plus briskets is cost of the meat, $3.75-$4, divided by my net, cooked yeild, which is about half of the original weight, bringing the cost per pound to $8, plus the rub and wood, add another $1, plus labor, which depends some on how many you are cooking at a time. So if you start with $4 meat, and you trim any before the cook, I'm at $10-12 a pound food cost.

Right?
Click to expand...

Labor is not factored into food cost. Food cost is all of the ingredients used in making the menu item. Labor is a separate cost, like overhead. I would say wood is an overhead cost, like gas or electric used to run the ovens is.

Also, $1 for rub per lb of brisket as you suggest there is wrong. Maybe $1 per whole packer, at most unless you are going crazy. So a 15lb brisket at $4 per lb and $1 in rub per packer gets you to 8.13 a lb.

Of course labor and other costs, like disposables, all need to be monitored, but according to common accounting practices, this is how you get to food cost, which leads to correct menu pricing.
 
Bbq Bubba said:
Your math is for meat cost. Food cost is the price you HAVE to sell it for to cover your meat cost and all the other aspects of the cook (rub, fuel, labor) and still show a profit.

Your meat cost after cooking is $8/lb. If you sell it for $16/lb your food cost is 50%, meaning for every dollar you bring in, $.50 is profit.
Now out of that $.50, you have to pay for rub, fuel, labor, blah, blah, blah.
Doesn't leave much which is why I aim for a 30% food cost. Caterers can get away with less because they have less overhead than a brick n mortar.
Click to expand...

Actually, you are describing "food cost %," where "food cost" is how much a plate of food costs to produce in terms of the what the total cost of ingredients in that dish cost.
 
Just a suggestion, I was filming something in Houston a few months ago and was hanging with the Pitmaker boys. They had some new pits they developed that were vertical offset stick burners. They were insulated and looked kind of like their vaults, but with offset fireboxes. Some of them even had bbq gurus attached to them. They looked really slick and I know some big names in the comp circuit were going for them. I think they had 2 sizes, a comp size and a caterer size. George said they were super fuel efficient with the insulation and gave the performance of the vault but in an offset stick burner cooker. They don't have much in the way of info up on the site, but maybe give them a call. It may be a little easier to run yet still give you the quality you are looking for.
 
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