Higher Costs and Fewer Customers Are Killing Texas BBQ Joints I talked to seven restaurant owners about why they decided to close in the last few months and two who are desperately trying to hold on to make it through 2026. By Daniel Vaughn Brett Jackson and Jacqueline Herrera wanted to close Brett’s BBQ Shop, in Katy, on their own terms. After opening in a tiny space without parking in 2018, the business went on to earn a nod on Texas Monthly’s Top 50 BBQ list, in 2021, and a spot in the Houston Chronicle’s Top 100 restaurant list, the following year. In January 2023, Brett’s expanded to a much larger space, attracting lines out the door on the first day. After that initial boost in customers, business leveled off. The owners increased the prices as the costs of goods went up, and Jackson said he noticed twice-a-week regulars cutting back to once a month. “Eight months ago, I saw that about one in every eight groups were splitting a two-meat plate for two people,” he said. That’s when it hit him just how much people were cutting back on their spending. The restaurant’s profits were down, and its rent was high. They took out a loan and brought in an investor to stay afloat, but in September, Jackson and Herrera agreed they’d give it until Christmas to see an upswing. It never came. “We didn’t know how long we would be able to hold on, and we didn’t want someone else to make the decision for us,” Herrera said. In early December, struggling to see any bright spots that 2026 might offer, they announced that Brett’s BBQ Shop would close at the end of the year. They were able to pay their staff, vendors, and other obligations. “That mattered way more to us than hanging on for pride,” Herrera said, and it also allowed them to go out with a bang. Customers poured in during the weeks after their announcement, and they turned what could have been a funeral into a last hurrah. “If we could say we’re closing every month, we’d do great,” Jackson joked. (Thankfully, Jackson and Herrera aren’t leaving barbecue behind. Next month they’ll be competing with the Brett’s BBQ Shop team in the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest held during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.) Unfortunately, Brett’s story is not a unique one in Texas barbecue. Toni Moon yearned for some sign of hope going into 2026 for her Blue Moon BBQ, north of Bryan. “Every week I look for the silver lining,” Moon told me. Her family thought the holidays might get them back to being profitable. “It did not transpire at all,” shei said. In September 2020, I had covered its triumphant return after being closed due to COVID-19 and extensive road construction along Texas Highway OSR, but it could not overcome the financial reality of 2025. “Traffic was down, costs were up, and a lot of people just aren’t eating out,” Moon explained. When she and her husband, Rick, opened Blue Moon BBQ in 2007, they were in their fifties. Now they’re past retirement age. They simply don’t have the energy to keep up the hard work required to run a barbecue joint when they don’t see much profit in return. They’ve been able to maintain the business only with significant help from their son, Matt, but he can’t do it alone. “After some hard soul-searching, and with a heavy heart, I felt like I had to pull the plug,” Toni said. Restaurants nationwide are seeing fewer visitors. The National Restaurant Association reported last year that November 2025 was the tenth consecutive month “in which operators reported a net decline in customer traffic.” Barbecue fans have seen the prices rise at their favorite joints all over Texas; Moon also raised hers to keep up with costs. “That’s what’s happening with the barbecue,” she said. “You can’t go in for an inexpensive meal.” The price of brisket—more than any other ingredient—affects the profitability of Texas barbecue joints. Customers demand the meat, and Texas barbecue joints deliver it. But they can only mark up menu items so much before they price out their clientele. According to the USDA, the average cost of a choice-grade brisket is up 14 percent from what were already historically high prices a year ago. The outlook for 2026 isn’t any better, as the number of cattle in feedlots is down 3 percent compared too January 2025. “Beef never went down. Turkey never went down,” Dustin Martin told me of his restaurant’s meat bills last year. His assessment of 2025 at Hill City Chop House, in Tolar, was simple: “It was brutal.” December 28 was Hill City’s last day open after more than three years of operating in the tiny town, during which the restaurant made our list of the 25 best new barbecue joints in Texas in 2023 and was an honorable mention in last year’s Top 50 BBQ list. It wasn’t enough to keep the restaurant open, but Martin and his wife, Nicole, plan to focus on catering; in the past year, the catering portion of the business was more profitable than the restaurant anyway. “I didn’t quit on barbecue; I just quit on that building,” Martin said. The couple plan to have a trailer up and running in Granbury by springtime. Antonio Guevara of Tejas Brisket Co. said he plans to continue catering after shutting the doors to the restaurant he opened with Tifany Swulius less than a year ago in East Dallas. “We’re tired, and we’re out of money,” he said. I praised its throwback barbecue sandwich and taco menu in an article two months ago, and Guevara said it brought in more customers—just not enough. But it’s not all negative. “I don’t feel like we failed,” Guevara told me. He hopes the coverage he and Swulius received during the short time the restaurant was open might help them with their original goal of getting a spot at the State Fair of Texas this year. I asked Trevor Sales if he predicted the fatal challenges many barbecue-joint owners are facing now when he decided to close Brix Barbecue, in Fort Worth, in August. “You have to look at it from a business perspective,” he said. The pricing he saw from vendors and other restaurant closures in the neighborhood were not favorable signs. He didn’t see circumstances improving. “It was a decision that didn’t come lightly,” Sales said. He hasn’t given up on beef, though. Twice a month he prepares a meal for a private dinner party he calls Tallow. “Every course, from first to last, is made with beef tallow, smoke, or is cooked over fire,” he explained. The seats sell out quickly. Brix Barbecue was among several casualties in Fort Worth, including Top 50 spot Sabar BBQ (though pitmaster Zain Shafi closed his trailer to become a partial owner of Goldee’s Barbecue, also in Fort Worth). The other local announcement was more surprising when Will Churchill, owner of Heim BBQ, said he would be closing its original location, on Magnolia Avenue, and turning its Dallas restaurant into a franchise. Churchill will focus on the other Fort Worth location and a newer one in Weatherford. “Sometimes it’s hard to humble yourself and say that you need the help,” Brenda Brotherton told me, explaining that she needed an infusion of customers at Brotherton’s Black Iron Barbecue, in Pflugerville, to stay open. She has kept the restaurant operating with the help of Russell Roegels from Roegels Barbecue Co., in Houston, since her husband and the restaurant’s namesake, John Brotherton, passed away two years ago. “He meant as much to the community as he meant to me,” she said, “and they respect him enough to keep his legacy going.” After the restaurant shared a plea on social media on January 6, customers poured in and turned around the tepid sales. I asked Brotherton if she believed the positive response was sustainable. “I hope it is. I pray that it is,” she said. “It would kill me if I had to close.” Lauran Weiner applauded Brotherton’s cry for help. “I get disappointed when people aren’t honest,” Weiner said. Too many of her fellow restaurant owners are acting like everything is fine. Weiner owns Big Al’s Smokehouse BBQ, in Dallas, a restaurant her late father founded in 1977. “There were a lot of roller coasters in the past, but this rollercoaster, I don’t know that it’s going to come back up,” she told me, adding, “It’s not going back down, the price—it’s just not.” Weiner said her catering business has suffered over the last several years, admitting, “The walk-in traffic is not going to save me at this point.” She is looking for creative ways to get more revenue out of her kitchen and large dining room during off hours. To reflect the rising cost of ingredients, she raised the long-stagnant prices at the restaurant by 25 percent last July and added surcharges to plates and sandwiches with smoked brisket. She hopes the changes keep the restaurant stable. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, being the legacy,” Weiner said. “I don’t want to be the one that kills it.”