BUSINESS
Texas BBQ Joints Shutter as Brisket Costs Crush the Pit
<p>Brett&#8217;s BBQ Shop in Katy closed after seven years. Kirby&#8217;s BBQ in New Caney followed, then Sabar Barbecue in Fort Worth, then Wright On Taco &; BBQ in East Texas. The Lone Star State is losing the small smokehouses that built its barbecue reputation, and the bill is being written on every wholesale brisket invoice that crosses a pitmaster&#8217;s desk.</p>
<p>Wholesale brisket now lands at roughly $5 to $6 a pound before a single piece of butcher paper is touched, retail prices have crossed $9 a pound for the first time on record, and a family order at most Texas pits runs <strong>$70 to $100</strong>. The closures sit at the visible end of a longer reckoning: a decade of drought, a US cattle herd at its lowest level in roughly 75 years, and a beef processing industry where four firms handle most of the country&#8217;s slaughter.</p>
<h2>The Brisket Bill Comes Due in Katy and Beyond</h2>
<p>Brett&#8217;s BBQ Shop closed late last year after seven seasons in Katy, the Houston suburb that helped fuel its early following. The smokehouse struggled with rising operating costs while customers cut back as menu prices climbed, according to Texas Monthly&#8217;s coverage of the closing.</p>
<p>Up the highway in New Caney, Kirby&#8217;s BBQ shuttered after owner Shawn Jones told his YouTube audience that wholesale brisket prices had become &#8220;absolutely insane.&#8221; A full order with ribs, sausage, sides and dessert, Jones said, could easily run $70 to $100, putting the state&#8217;s signature meal beyond the reach of the working families who built the cuisine.</p>
<p>Other losses have been spread across the map. Fort Worth lost Sabar Barbecue, a metro smokehouse with a national following. East Texas lost Wright On Taco &; BBQ. Tolar lost Hill City Chop House. North Texas lost Sweetie Pie&#8217;s Ribeyes. Each was a small operator with a tight payroll and no central kitchen to absorb the cost shock.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is as bad as it gets,&#8221; Houston-area pitmaster Russell Roegels of Roegels Barbecue Co. told the Washington Post. &#8220;Everybody&#8217;s at risk these days: You&#8217;re one bad week from closing.&#8221;</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter featured-image" style="margin:1.5em auto;text-align:center;"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://budgyapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/texas-bbq-joint-closures-mount-as-brisket-prices-hit-record-highs.webp" alt="Texas BBQ joint closures mount as brisket prices hit record highs." style="width:100%;max-width:800px;height:auto;border-radius:8px;display:block;margin:0 auto;" /><figcaption style="text-align:center;font-size:0.85em;color:#888;margin-top:0.5em;">Texas BBQ joint closures mount as brisket prices hit record highs.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>The Wholesale, Retail and Menu Math Diverge</h2>
<p>A typical wholesale brisket can lose roughly half its weight during trimming and smoking. That means a restaurant paying <strong>$5 to $6 a pound</strong> at the slaughterhouse winds up with a true cooked-meat cost north of $10 a pound before labor, wood, utilities, and rent enter the equation.</p>
<p>Justin Manning, co-owner of C&;J Barbecue in Bryan, told local broadcaster KBTX that the math no longer pencils at any price his customers would accept. &#8220;To have a margin, I would need to be selling beef for $40 a pound, which no one can do,&#8221; Manning said.</p>
<p>The retail picture matches the wholesale strain. The U.S. Department of Agriculture&#8217;s (USDA) <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">latest Food Price Outlook</a> shows beef and veal prices ran 14.8% higher in April 2026 than in April 2025, with the agency forecasting a full-year 2026 jump of 12.1% and a prediction interval that stretches to 18.1% on the high end.</p>
<p>Retail brisket itself hit a record monthly average of <strong>$9.64 a pound</strong> in April, up 13% year over year. That figure does not include the trimming, smoking, plating, or labor that turn a packer brisket into a sliced plate served on butcher paper at a pit counter.</p>
<p>Here is how the math stacks across the supply chain:</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Price stage</th>
<th>Per pound</th>
<th>Context</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Wholesale brisket, pre-trim</td>
<td>$5 to $6</td>
<td>Reported on Texas pitmasters&#8217; invoices</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Effective cooked-meat cost</td>
<td>$10 plus</td>
<td>After roughly 50% loss in trim and smoke</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>April 2026 grocery retail</td>
<td>$9.64</td>
<td>USDA monthly record, up 13% year over year</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sustainable margin menu price</td>
<td>About $40</td>
<td>Per C&;J Barbecue&#8217;s Justin Manning</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Burnt Bean Co. menu</td>
<td>$38</td>
<td>Texas Monthly&#8217;s no. 1 ranked pit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2026 full-year USDA forecast</td>
<td>+12.1%</td>
<td>Beef and veal, range 6.6% to 18.1%</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>A Cattle Herd at a 75-Year Low</h2>
<p>The wholesale pressure starts on pasture. The U.S. cattle inventory sat at 86.2 million head on January 1, slightly below the 86.5 million counted at the start of 2025 and the smallest national herd in roughly <strong>75 years</strong>, according to the USDA&#8217;s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Drought has done most of the cutting: more than 60% of the country&#8217;s cattle herd now sits in territory the federal Drought Monitor classifies as in drought, up from 29% a year earlier. Pasture and hay shortages have pushed ranchers to send cows to slaughter rather than retain them as breeding stock, accelerating a contraction the cattle cycle was already running through.</p>
<p>Imports that might have eased the squeeze have been cut off. Washington halted live cattle imports from Mexico to keep out the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite that had crept north into Mexican states bordering Texas. The block sealed off roughly a million head a year that had previously moved across the border for finishing in U.S. feedlots.</p>
<p>The American Farm Bureau Federation&#8217;s <a href="https://www.fb.org/market-intel/smaller-cattle-herd-creates-market-volatility" target="_blank" rel="noopener">market intelligence on the contracted herd</a> warns that the tightness will persist into 2027 even if rebuilding starts this year, because a heifer retained today does not produce a market-ready steer for at least two years. The supply story sitting under every Texas pit ticket is locked in for the next two summers.</p>
<h2>Why Paxton Is Looking at the Big Four</h2>
<p>Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 15 <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-launches-sweeping-investigation-alongside-trump-doj-meatpacking-industry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opened a sweeping investigation</a> into the country&#8217;s four dominant beef processors. The Attorney General alleges anti-competitive conduct that has held down prices paid to Texas ranchers while pushing retail prices to records.</p>
<p>His office&#8217;s probe runs alongside a parallel Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust review already underway in Washington.</p>
<p>The four firms in the office&#8217;s crosshairs are JBS S.A., Tyson Fresh Meats, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company. Together they handle more than <strong>85%</strong> of U.S. beef slaughter, a share that has climbed from roughly 36% in 1980 through four decades of consolidation.</p>
<p>JBS and National Beef are controlled by Brazilian parent companies; Tyson and Cargill remain U.S. owned. The ownership mix matters politically, with the White House framing the probe in part as a foreign-ownership concern.</p>
<p>The DOJ&#8217;s investigation, confirmed in late 2025, has already pulled more than three million documents from the processors and interviewed industry participants. Federal prosecutors are looking at whether the Big Four&#8217;s pricing power has widened the spread between what a feedlot is paid for a finished steer and what a wholesaler is charged for boxed beef.</p>
<p>Pitmasters say they feel that spread on every invoice. A reckoning that ranchers have been describing for years has reached the consumer plate, and small restaurants are the first link in the chain too thin to absorb it. Legal action moves in months, while the brisket bill arrives every Monday.</p>
<h2>The Middle Class Walks Away From the Pit</h2>
<p>The demand side has been moving for a year. Customers have not stopped wanting brisket; they have stopped buying it as often, and they have been changing what they order when they do walk through the door.</p>
<p>Pitmasters describe a consistent pattern across the closed pits and the surviving ones:</p>
<ul>
<li>Smaller plate orders, with families buying half or quarter pounds where they once ordered a full pound.</li>
<li>Substitutions from brisket to pulled pork, turkey, or sausage, which carry better cost ratios for the kitchen.</li>
<li>Skipped sides and skipped desserts, the items that used to push a single ticket past $20.</li>
<li>More takeout and fewer dine-in trays, with a measurable drop in the after-church Sunday traffic that supports many independents.</li>
</ul>
<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re a barbecue restaurant, you don&#8217;t really have anywhere to move,&#8221; said Emily Williams Knight, chief executive of the Texas Restaurant Association, in comments to KBTX. &#8220;And I think that&#8217;s where you&#8217;re seeing a lot of these smaller barbecue restaurants begin to close, because they just don&#8217;t have any options as the price continues to increase.&#8221;</p>
<p>A taqueria can pivot to chicken. A burger joint can lean on ground beef and french fries. A Texas barbecue restaurant that drops brisket from the menu has stopped being a Texas barbecue restaurant, and its customers know it.</p>
<h2>Survival Mode at Burnt Bean and the Top of the List</h2>
<p>The pressure is not confined to the small smokehouses. Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin, ranked No. 1 on Texas Monthly&#8217;s most recent list of the state&#8217;s best barbecue joints, has raised its brisket menu price to <strong>$38 a pound</strong> and is weighing limits on which days the cut is served.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s always been price increases, but there&#8217;s always been relief and it&#8217;s gone down. Now we don&#8217;t see any end in sight, and it&#8217;s going to get scary here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That assessment came from Ernest Servantes, Burnt Bean&#8217;s owner, in comments to the Washington Post. Servantes said his operation has been in &#8220;survival mode&#8221; for the past year, the same phrase several other pit operators have used to describe the period from mid-2025 forward.</p>
<p>What survival mode looks like on the pit floor is mostly invisible to the customer. Hours are trimmed. Trimmings that once went to the dog at home or the staff family meal now get ground for sausage. Side menus get shorter to cut spoilage. Pitmasters who used to buy whole packer briskets are negotiating split loads with neighboring shops to spread the loss when a single cut cooks badly.</p>
<p>The economics tighten further with every adjacent input. Restaurant operators say butcher paper, foam containers, propane, insurance, and fuel surcharges have all run up sharply over the past two years.</p>
<p>None of those line items is large by itself; together, in a low-margin business, they shave another point or two off the operating line every month.</p>
<h2>Where the Beef Cycle Could Turn</h2>
<p>Three forces could change the picture. None of them is fast.</p>
<p>Rain on the High Plains and across West Texas would let ranchers stop liquidating breeding stock and start retaining heifers. The Drought Monitor&#8217;s spring 2026 readings show conditions getting worse on the Plains, not better, which makes a 2026 turnaround unlikely. The earliest plausible rebuild signal in the U.S. herd shows up in the first quarter 2027 inventory, and even that signal would not produce additional market-ready cattle until late 2028.</p>
<p>The screwworm border block on Mexican cattle is the second variable. The USDA&#8217;s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has been working with Mexican authorities on a treatment and surveillance zone in the affected southern states. A controlled reopening of the border would put roughly a million head a year back into the feedlot pipeline.</p>
<p>Timing on that reopening is the agencies&#8217; call, not the market&#8217;s. Industry analysts have generally penciled a partial reopening into 2027 outlook models, including the agency&#8217;s own <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/market-outlook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cattle and beef market outlook</a>, though no public timeline has been confirmed.</p>
<p>The third variable is the Paxton and DOJ probe. If the investigations confirm anti-competitive conduct and force structural changes on how the four processors set prices, the spread between rancher and consumer would narrow. If they end in fines without structural remedy, the spread holds, and the brisket math at the pit door holds with it.</p>
<p>If summer rain reaches the Plains and the federal review pries open the processors&#8217; pricing, brisket could ease in time for the 2027 barbecue season. If neither lands, the next wave of closures will hit pits with longer trophy shelves than Brett&#8217;s or Kirby&#8217;s, and a $40 menu price will start to look like the floor instead of the ceiling.</p>