Like any industry, there’s always going to be change in the barbecue business.
Innovative smoking techniques, never-before-blended rubs and novelty proteins pop out of the woodwork almost every time Texas Monthly prints an issue. Longtime staples close and are replaced by newer, decidedly-Instagram forward concepts serving platters built for influencers’ cameras. And as any pitmaster will tell you, meat prices are anything but fixed.
But, sometimes, change comes in the form of new blood working the pit.
Scott Collard bought Back Country BBQ in 2016 after spending 40 years working his way first from the dish pit to the register, then from the smoker to the manager’s office at Big Al’s Smokehouse. Over the last decade, he’s introduced new menu items and tampered recipes — a delicate dance at a business that first opened near Ferndale Road and Northwest Highway in 1975 before moving to Vickery Meadow in 1988.
“At first, we didn’t change a whole lot,” Collard says. “But I slowly changed things over the years. Some of my recipes, I think they’re better.”…