There’s a stretch of U.S. Highway 377 that bleeds Texas from the cracks in its pavement. Head southwest out of Fort Worth and you’ll pass rolling pastureland, bait shops, cattle gates, and — if you’re lucky — smoke curling above a low-slung building just outside Stephenville. That’s where Hard Eight Barbecue began, in a converted gas station that never quite made it out of the asbestos era.
These days, the family behind the wood-fired empire wants to clear something up.
“We’re not a franchise,” says co-owner Vicki Nivens, the force behind the flower shop–turned–barbecue queen. “People say that all the time, but each restaurant is its own. Same menu, same process — but every one is a stand-alone.”…