Back before Christmas, I noted in a couple of Cue Sheet dispatches (including this one from December 15) that amid high beef prices, general inflation, and customers’ wallets getting tapped out, the barbecue restaurant forecast was looking pretty gloomy for 2026.
“It’s too soon to tell whether high menu prices are starting to dampen demand,” I wrote, and whether a few notable closures like Brett’s BBQ Shop in Katy, Texas, and Fette Sau in Brooklyn were “just outliers or part of a larger trend” was “certainly something to keep an eye on as we get out into 2026.”
Well, here we are well out into 2026. I’ve been keeping tabs on all the restaurant openings and closings in recent months, trying to gauge whether some of the more dire predictions would come true (and hoping they wouldn’t.) I held off on writing a follow-up for a while, since the closures were coming in dribs and drabs and not as one big wave. Now that we’re into May, though, there seem to be enough data points to draw a few conclusions. Unfortunately, they are not very sunny.
Drama at Rodney Scott’s BBQ
Perhaps the most dramatic of the recent closings was the abrupt shuttering of all six locations of Rodney Scott’s BBQ, with its two Birmingham-area locations closing at the end of April and the remaining ones, including the original location here in Charleston, shutting down with just hours notice on May 3rd.
We should note that it wasn’t just Rodney Scott’s BBQ that closed but almost the entire portfolio of the Birmingham-based Pihakis Restaurant Group, which includes Little Donkey Mexican Restaurant, Joyland (a burger collaboration with chef Sean Brock), Hero Diner, Tasty Town Greek Restaurant and Lounge, Luca Lagotto (Italian), Magnolia Point, and Psito (Greek).
Pihakis Restaurant Group was founded in 2014 by Nick Pihakis, the Nick in Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q. (Jim was his father.) The younger Pihakis sold that chain to the Atlanta-based private equity firm Roark Capital Group in 2017 to focus on his restaurant group’s growing portfolio of brands, which included the then-new Rodney Scott’s BBQ in Charleston.
Per reporting from the Post & Courier and AL.com, the Pihakis Group is currently facing around $14 million in lawsuits and liens for unpaid rent, overdue loans, and unpaid supplier bills. The picture is complicated by the fact that the Pihakis Group isn’t the sole owner of all its restaurants, which it ran with various investors and operating partners through a web of corporate entities. In the case of the Rodney Scott’s BBQ restaurants, a Delaware-based lender, Itria Ventures, is seeking $364,000 in a breach of contract lawsuit filed in Charleston County against Rodney Scott’s BBQ and RSBBQ Partners as well as the loan guarantors, Nick Pihakis, the Pihakis Restaurant Group, Pihakis Investment Group, and JER Spirits Investments.
Scott himself, we should note, is not personally named in the lawsuit. The original Scott's Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, South Carolina, which is now operated by his uncle and son, has never been affiliated with the Pihakis group and is not involved in any of this mess.
I don’t have any insider information on what went awry with the Pihakis Group, but from the news reports it seems like a classic case of expanding too quickly and getting getting overextended with debt. In just a few years, Rodney Scott’s grew rapidly from the initial Charleston restaurant to a total of six locations in four states. One more was in the works for Miami, but construction had been delayed, and one might reasonably conclude the Pihakis Group’s financial troubles played a role in that.
Parker Milner of the Post & Courier here in Charleston has done some good reporting on the whole meltdown, and on Sunday he published a statement from Rodney Scott and his attorney offering the fullest details yet on what went down, but admittedly it’s all still rather murky. The Pihakis Group leadership apparently did not inform Scott in advance that they were shuttering the Alabama restaurants, though Scott’s attorney says they were contractually required to provide 30 days notice. Despite being assured that the Atlanta and Charleston restaurants would remain open, Scott was working a private event at the Kentucky Derby when he learned that they, too, would be closing on May 3rd.
Scott, for his part, declined to comment on his business partners beyond saying he was “surprised and disappointed” by the turn of events. Per his statement, he is now working to reopen all of his restaurants, with the Charleston original the top priority. Amid all the legal entanglements, how and when that will happen is uncertain.
Scott can draw a little hope from the fact that two other former Pihakis Group restaurants have already managed to reorganize and reopen. In Birmingham, the chefs of Luca Lagotto and Little Donkey (Rita Bernhardt and Joshua Gentry, respectively) and their landlord, developer Mike Mouron, quickly formed an ownership group to reopen the two restaurants, with Luca being renamed Salice in the process.
Assessing the Scope
Rodney Scott’s BBQ may be the most high-profile, but there have been quite a few other notable closures recently. New York’s Dinosaur BBQ, for instance, closed its 15-year-old Brooklyn location in April, reducing the chain’s total number of restaurants to five after growing to a peak of ten.
Also in April, Drew Jackson of the News & Observer reported that Backyard Barbecue Pit in Durham was winding down operations and would likely be closed by the end of the month. Tropical BBQ Market, a spin-off location of Tropical Smokehouse in West Palm Beach, closed March 27th. In February, the iconic Parks Old Style Bar-B-Q in Detroit closed after 60 years. These are just a few of the more prominent establishments, and you can find news stories of dozens of more less-known restaurants going out of business this year, too.
Rising costs, especially those of beef, have gotten a lot of attention lately, but what strikes me about these recent closures is that there isn’t a single primary factor to point to. In the case of Dinosaur BBQ’s Brooklyn location, its lease was ending and the building it occupied — a former tool and die shop — is slated to be demolished and replaced by apartments. Parks Bar-B-Q was struggling with declining traffic, but the decision to close came after the owner, Rod Parks Sr., became ill. In the case of Rodney Scott’s BBQ, the trouble seems a matter of a high-flying restaurant group expanding too quickly and getting upside down in debt.
Indeed, meat prices and labor costs are just one of the many headwinds barbecue restaurateurs face these days. J. C. Reid of the Houston Chronicle devoted one of his April columns to the ins and outs of property leases and the real estate challenges facing barbecue restaurant owners in the Houston area. Its headline reads, “Real estate is putting the squeeze on Houston barbecue.”
The real question in my mind is whether all this news reflects a genuine secular decline in the barbecue restaurant industry or is more a matter of recency bias, where we give too much weight to recent events and don’t take a more long-term view. The restaurant industry, after all, is notoriously volatile and subject to constant churn, with old restaurants closing their doors and new ones springing up to replace them.
An interesting regional take comes from, of all places, Lancaster Farming, an agricultural newspaper out of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Special sections editor Rebecca Schweitzer-Benner reports that in the mid-Atlantic, “Barbecue Losing Popularity With High Prices and New Consumer Preferences.”
“Up here, up North, people are not lining up for barbecue,” restaurateur Chad Rosenthal told Schweitzer-Benner. “We just don’t eat that way, and it’s so hard to make money.” Rosenthal runs Mary Ambler, a farm-to-table restaurant in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and before that he operated a barbecue restaurant called Lucky Well, which opened in 2008 and closed in 2023. “Barbecue’s a losing battle,” he told the newspaper.
Schweitzer-Benner also interviewed Andrew Darneille at Smokecraft Modern Barbecue, in Arlington, Virginia, who revealed that brisket now accounts for 65% of his meat costs. “If I took brisket off my menu,” he told her, “I would be in a much better position.” Joe Rouse, president of the Mid-Atlantic BBQ Association, noted that brisket is taking its toll on barbecue competitions, too. The winning cut is usually Wagyu, and it can cost almost $600 just for brisket for a two-day competition.
Regardless of whether this is a long term trend, the seas definitely look choppy here in 2026.
Big Barbecue Is Not Quite as Big
If it makes anyone feel any better, things aren’t too rosy on the Big Barbecue front, either — that is, with the large national barbecue chains.
That sector got a bit of a jolt at end of April, when Smokey Bones, which once had more than 100 casual-dining barbecue restaurants, abruptly closed all of its remaining locations. The restaurant’s parent company, FAT Brands (yes, I know), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January and is now in the process of selling off its assets.
Meanwhile, back in February, Restaurant Dive reported that Sonny’s BBQ, which once had 140 locations but had shrunk to 90 by the end of 2025, has brought on a new “chief growth officer” and is seeking to expand once again by recruiting new franchisees. Today, more than two-thirds of the company’s locations are in the state of Florida, and George McAllan, the new chief growth officer, told Restaurant Dive that with just a handful of restaurants already established as far west as Mississippi and as far north as Kentucky and North Carolina, there’s plenty of territory left to fill.
Of course, saying you’re laying the foundation for growth is easier than actually doing it. Witness Dickey’s Barbecue Pit. Back in December, I noted in a Cue Sheet dispatch that despite closing more than 200 locations since its peak in 2017, the Texas-based company was still the largest barbecue chain in the country. Its leaders were talking growth, too, declaring in press releases their plans for a “bold expansion” that “signals a pivotal moment for the brand.”
Since then, I’ve been keeping tabs on the store locator on the company’s web site, which tells a somewhat different story. The number of U.S. locations dropped from 314 in December to 296 this February. As of this writing, the total now stands at 278, a net decline of 36 restaurants, or 11%, in the space of six months. Back in December, the company was touting the opening of a new location in Airdrie, Alberta, as “part of its rapidly growing Canadian expansion.” The temperature in Canada seems to have cooled since then, with the 24 restaurants reported at the beginning of the year getting trimmed back to 21 today.
Whatever headwinds are facing independent barbecue restaurateurs, the big chains seem to be facing them, too. In the interest of muddying the waters, I will note that so far in 2026 the two fastest growing national chains, City Barbeque and Mission BBQ, have added two locations each, per their store locators. That brings the total to 77 for City and 155 for Mission — not explosive growth, by any means, but certainly better than their rivals.
So, is the 21st century barbecue boom turning into a barbecue bust? As the Magic 8-Ball would put it, “Reply Hazy. Try Again Later.”
Quick Bites
La Traila Returns: Amid all the gloominess of restaurant closings, there are a few marks on the positive side of the ledger. The Miami Herald reports that La Traila Barbecue, which gained fans as a brewery pop-up in the pandemic days and moved into a short-lived brick-and-mortar in Miami Lakes in 2021, is back with a new location in South Miami, which opened on April 15.
Rolling the Bones in Vegas: Farley Elliott of SFGate reports that “Las Vegas is having a barbecue moment,” with a recent influx of styles from all over the country, mostly at restaurants located well away from the downtown Strip.
Unlimited Ribs: In a recent column for the Houston Chronicle, J.C. Reid explains why all-you-can-eat barbecue ribs disappeared from Houston restaurants. Why they disappeared is kind of obvious, but the interesting part is how many Houston joints had all-you-can-eat rib specials back in the 1990s, at prices ranging from $7.49 to $9.99.
A Memphis in May Repeat: For the first time in the event’s 42 year history, Memphis in May has a back-to-back winner, with Heath Riles BBQ taking home the grand championship, just as they did last year. The team also placed first in ribs.
Burnt Ends
I Have a Bone To Pick
The Pensacola News Journal reports that a local couple is bringing “Georgia-style beef dino ribs” to a new Pensacola restaurant named Big Boned Barbecue. I hear they pair very well with a big, spicy bowl of Texas-style Brunswick stew.
this really captures how many different pressures restaurants are getting squeezed by simultaneously right now: not just food costs, but labor, leases, debt structure, seasonality, insurance, consumer behavior... all of it.
and, in south florida especially, those razor-thin margins become even scarier once summer hits. we’re seeing closures and “temporary pauses” across categories, not because the concepts were bad, but because the economics have become brutal to sustain long enough to weather slower seasons.
really thoughtful reporting and framing here. i’ll definitely be interested to see what patterns continue emerging in BBQ specifically if you keep digging into this.