Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que is turning 50, and the Reaves family is marking the milestone with a free block party at its Mockingbird Lane restaurant on Saturday, capping off a Customer Appreciation Week that runs through the day of the event. Dallas-area residents are invited to celebrate five decades of a barbecue business that started as a backyard hobby and grew into one of the city’s most recognizable culinary institutions.
The story behind that transformation began long before the restaurant existed. According to craveDFW, founder “Smokey” John Reaves originally ran a roofing and construction business and smoked meats in his backyard as thank-you gifts for clients. Demand grew so strong that he reportedly stored excess smoked turkeys in his mother-in-law’s bathtub, and eventually the food side of his operation eclipsed the roofing work entirely.
That backyard hustle turned into a storefront in 1976, when Reaves opened his first restaurant at Lemmon Avenue and Mockingbird Lane alongside his wife Gloria and cousin Douglas “Rent” Spraglin. As WFAA reports, the restaurant was originally called Big John’s, but after pit smoke filled the dining room during an early kitchen mishap, the name Smokey John’s stuck. Gloria Reaves ran the front-of-house operations and books, while Spraglin worked as head pitmaster.
Cowboys Connections and a Pioneering Vendor
The restaurant’s early growth got an unexpected boost from professional football. Dallas Cowboys stars Drew Pearson and Harvey Martin became investors in the business in the late 1970s, and the Oak Cliff Advocate notes that Martin’s on-air praise of Smokey John’s during ABC’s Superteams broadcast following Super Bowl XII gave the business a jump in national visibility. Martin later partnered on a second location in Oak Cliff called Harvey Martin’s Smokey John’s…