16 April 6–12, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents sistently great. It’s no surprise that Hutchins was an inaugural member of our Top 100 Restaurants in 2018 and has yet to relinquish its spot. We recently caught up with Hutchins co- owner Trey Hutchins at the Frisco location to talk some shop and find out if the food is as great as we remember. Good news: Hutchins’ smoking prowess is still top-notch, and Trey Hutchins is a gem to spend time with. High- lights from our conversation (and some drool-inducing photos) are below, which has been edited for length and clarity. DO: So, what’s new? TH: Well, we’re doing a 4,500-square-foot add-on to this building, probably six more pits, cold storage and office space, which we’ve needed for a while. You had just done a lot of work in McKinney a few years ago? Yeah, in 2017, we did a huge thing in McKin- ney. Then you had a fire. Yes sir. New Year’s Eve 2020. It was a little electrical fire, we thought we’d be down maybe a week or two. You know, something small. But the sprinklers went off and flooded the whole kitchen. It was right at $1.7 million in damages. We had to gut the whole kitchen and bring everything back up to code. It was kind of a weird period for us; we were just coming out of COVID, but we had actually grown our business during COVID. Yeah, barbecue was one of those businesses that seemed well-suited for doing to-go orders. Exactly. And people were sitting out here for hours, wrapped around the building. It was really great, and we were able to grow. We were just glad we could take care of the cus- tomers, and they were supporting us. It was tough on everybody. So we get out through that hurdle, then McKinney catches fire. But we didn’t let any employees go; we brought all the McKinney employees over here. It was a challenge. We’ve got 180 or 190 employees. But it really unified our company. So you really got a lot stronger out of it. Exactly. But that’s a challenge, yes? With two restaurants, doing lunch and dinner for seven days, that’s got to be hard to be consistent all the time. Oh, it is. That’s the reason for so many pits. We’re adding four more pits in McKinney, too. But that’s so we can keep that product coming off the pits; we’ll do two loads of ribs, which are about five hours. We can do sausage every two hours. It’s all about pit space. But we don’t crowd our pits. These rotisseries here can hold about 60 briskets, and we never put more than 48 on there, no matter what. We could actu- ally use more pits. That’s a good problem to have. Is the growth being driven by catering, or is it traffic in the restaurants? It’s both, really. We’ve just grown tremen- dously over the years. It really started with Texas Monthly putting us on the list in 2013. But I had seen this trend in craft barbecue. Tim (Trey’s brother) was making trips to Aus- tin, and he had tried Aaron Franklin’s barbe- cue. He came back and said “I ate the best brisket” and I was like “There’s no way, we have the best brisket!” But Tim said “No, this was next level.” So we started doing research to get better. And after Daniel Vaughn came in and we got in Texas Monthly, it just took off. It’s insane. Insane is a great word. And you and Tim are some of the OGs, who have done this for a long time. Do you see this stopping? Tim and I were just talking about this last week. Business is off the charts. Texas bar- becue is hotter than it’s ever been. Guys are opening up everywhere. For me and Tim, growing up in barbecue, you did it to make a living. Yeah, because you started with your dad’s place in Princeton. Yes sir, Roy’s Barbecue, in 1978. And you know, when John Mueller came on with us in 2021, he really just needed a place to smoke some meats, but we’d spend Fridays and Sat- urdays out there just cooking barbecue, and we also spent a lot of time talking about where we came from. It was a blue-collar job. But now in the last three years, you’ve got Heim, you’ve got Panther City, the guys at Goldee’s are amazing, you’ve Cat- Chris Wolfgang Some delicious offerings at Hutchins BBQ City of Ate from p15 >> p18
