Barbecue Media, Gatekeeping, and the Stories We Keep Getting Wrong
Tyler said it first, loud and simple: “Fuck brisket.”
On this episode of This Week in Barbecue, we opened the way we always do: joking around, talking food, talking life, trying to keep the energy right. Tyler’s in the squares with us, James is warming up the jokes, and Bryan is quietly waiting to say something that’s going to make the whole room pause. That’s the rhythm. Barbecue Squares. Hot news, even hotter takes, and a few moments that hit harder than you expected.
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Then James said a phrase that feels like it should be on a bumper in today’s economy: “shrinkflation nation.” And he didn’t bring it up because he’s hunting for outrage. He brought it up because he saw Five Guys changing the fries. No more cup. No more greasy bag feeling. Just a smaller fry bag and a new story about why it’s “better.” And that’s the point. Nobody wants to say “we’re giving you less,” so they rewrite the value equation while you’re distracted. Everyone is paying the same or more, but getting far less than before. That little fry cup is a perfect metaphor for where food is right now. You’re either paying more and getting less, or you’re paying more just to stay even. And once you start looking, you see it everywhere. Bryan shouted out Johnny Novo, who literally pulls up with a scale and weighs burgers and fries around New York. The punchline was brutal: McDonald’s had the worst value for price-per-fries by ounces compared to actual restaurants. That’s not even “fast food is cheap” anymore. That’s “fast food is a math problem.”
And once you’re thinking about math, the barbecue conversation gets real… fast.
Because this is the part people don’t want to hear until they’re forced to. The experience is made on the smoker, but the business is made in the margins, in the P&L, in those Excel spreadsheets. That’s where you find out whether you’re building a legacy or burning yourself down for a photo dump and a few comments.
Which is how we ended up where we always end up lately: brisket.
Tyler said it first, loud and simple: “Fuck brisket.” Not because brisket isn’t delicious. Not because it’s not iconic. But because the economics are getting disrespectful. Bryan broke it down in a way every operator understands immediately: the last two brisket cooks accounted for 20 and 30 percent of their food budget. Tyler followed with the other side of the knife: 33 percent of their revenue was basically the brisket cost. That’s not a menu item. That’s a hostage situation. Here’s the twist though. We weren’t just complaining. We were doing what barbecue folks have always done when conditions change. We started talking about adaptation.
Tyler made the case that beef cheek is better, period. Better eating, better chop beef, better sandwich. Bryan dropped the hard number that makes it real for anyone doing inventory: beef cheek utilization somewhere around 55 to 63 percent, while brisket might land around 50 to 55 percent if you’re lucky and you’re maximizing everything. Those little percentage points decide whether you make payroll, whether you can reinvest, whether you can keep the doors open.
And it’s not just “Atlanta problems.” Tyler told a story about meeting Leonard from Truth Barbecue and the first thing Leonard asked him was basically: what are brisket prices like in Atlanta, and how are you managing it? If someone in the cattle belt is asking that question, you already know the ripple is coming.
That’s why we started talking about what’s next. Not “what’s trendy,” but what’s sustainable.
We talked hog. We talked yield. We talked the fact that Texas is anchored to beef and brisket in a way other places aren’t. And that might be the opening for regions like ours to stop chasing somebody else’s identity and start building our own. I said it on the episode and I’ll say it again here: this is a time where hog can shine because of affordability and yield, even if it’s not a skill set everybody has yet. And beyond hog, there’s room for lamb to come back, and even stuff like a skin-on picnic roast if you can get it right. That’s not settling. That’s evolving.
But this episode wasn’t only about meat costs. It was about who gets to tell the story of barbecue in the first place.
I watched a documentary that centered on Carolina hash and barbecue, and it did what a lot of food media still does. It “glazed over slavery” by saying the origin was formed from necessity. Whose necessity? That’s the kind of quiet gatekeeping that shapes what people think is “authentic,” who gets credit, and whose labor gets erased. If we’re going to talk about tradition, we have to talk about the whole tradition, not the sanitized version.
I asked Tyler about the talk around Noma, because fine dining runs on a different hierarchy than most barbecue joints, and I wanted the real breakdown. Tyler traced it back to Escoffier and that military-style structure, where obedience and pressure got normalized. Then he told a story that still makes me confirm he has far more self-restraint than I do: a chef threw a poached egg at his head. The yolk burned into his eye. He worked the rest of the service with one eye closed, and at the time, he thought it was normal. He called it what it is now: trauma.
Tyler didn’t pretend it didn’t shape him. He said the abusive system taught him fast, because humiliation makes you “learn.” But he also said the important part: eventually, he realized it wasn’t right, and he had to break those habits. He pointed to leaders who proved you can do elite work without being abusive. And he said flat out: the abuse needs to stop. That conversation matters in barbecue too, because barbecue is starting to look more and more like “culinary” in the way it gets framed, rewarded, judged, and gatekept. If we don’t pay attention, we’ll copy the worst parts along with the applause.
Which brings me to the part I want to end on, because it’s where the whole episode eventually landed. After all the jokes, the events, the controversies, the economics, the history, the hard stories, James closed with something simple. He said he’d been watching a documentary on Bob Barker and The Price is Right, and how ugly things can get behind the scenes. Then he said he hopes our community doesn’t become that. And he told us what his mother used to say: “if you can’t say nothing nice just shut the fuck up.”
That’s the kind of line that makes you laugh, and then makes you reflect.
Because at the end of the day, barbecue is supposed to bring people together. We even said it out loud: we end the show with “Be Kind to One Another” because the world needs it. We’ve got more in common than we do that separates us. Barbecue may not be the key to world peace, but it’s a hell of a place to start. So here’s my question for you.
What are you willing to let go of to keep barbecue healthy, for the people cooking it and the people eating it? Is brisket still the king, even if the crown is bankrupting the village? What should the next “showpiece” be, and who gets to decide? And how do we protect the soul of this thing while the prices climb, the media machine speeds up, and everybody’s fighting to be heard?
Talk to me. Let’s build it better.
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