An inside look at la Barbecue, one of the few Austin, Tx., women-owned BBQ restaurants in the city.
It’s hard to say exactly why most BBQ eateries are owned by men. Maybe it stems from the image of macho men smoking beef over the grill or tailgating at football games, but women-owned BBQ eateries are few and far between.
But that hasn’t stopped Alison Clem from making la Barbecue, an Austin, Tx. BBQ eatery, a success since it debuted in 2012 as a food truck. Clem opened la Barbecue with her wife and business partner LeAnn Mueller who unfortunately died suddenly about 9 months ago. In fact, its name, la Barbecue, signifies it’s female-owned since la in French and Spanish refers to women.
Clem explains that there really are few obstacles that prevent women from operating a BBQ restaurant, and she and her partner proved that it can be done. She acknowledged, however, that BBQ entails a “lot of manual labor from splitting wood to tending fire and lifting heavy smoker doors. A lot of people consider that men’s work.”
The women owners didn’t face explicit discrimination when they opened but Clem said “we had to prove ourself by the consistency of our product.”
The woman-owned bbq spot la Barbecue in Austin shows that women can run barbecue joints and prepare tasty bbq items, just as well, if not better, than men.
LeAnn Mueller grew up in the barbecue business working at her family’s eatery Louie Mueller BBQ in Taylor, Tx. so she knew the ins and outs of how to BBQ and how to run an eatery. LeAnn started bussing tables but worked her way up in her early twenties to running the restaurant in partnership with her dad Bobby Mueller. And Clem also worked at Mueller’s BBQ alongside LeAnn’s brother John, learning the ropes from him as her mentor.
But the business went through several progressions. It started as a food truck, then after three years or so, moved into a bodega The Quickie Pickle, and finally opened their brick ‘n mortar eatery in 2021. That allowed them to save money and have enough funds to buy one smoker (they now have 5 smokers).
When the duo of Clem and Mueller opened la Barbecue restaurant in 2021, they self-funded it, with no partners, no SBA or bank loans. The restaurant accommodates about 100 people, inside and outside. It’s open five days a week, from Wednesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Why close at 6 p.m. nightly and relinquish the extra revenue from serving dinner? Clem replies that in Austin “barbecue is more of a lunch situation.” Keeping her staffing to one shift, rather than bringing in a second one, enables her employees to work four days and 40 hours a week, and helps retain staff and reduces turnover, a rarity in the restaurant business.
Clem says its three top sellers include brisket, pork ribs and jalapeno sausage. It also has some specialty items such as el sancho, which consists of sausage, pulled pork or chopped beef (or all three of them), topped with pickled red onions on a potato bun. At the bar, it sells Zilker Brewing‘s special beer, a German-style Pilsner.
Clem has put her energy into keeping the restaurant thriving after the unexpected death of Mueller. Clem focused in on running it, serving as general manager/owner and Mueller devised the creative recipes
The partners once explored opening a second la Barbecue in Los Angeles, but that didn’t materialize.
It is also known, as are several Austin BBQ eateries, for extended waiting on line to get a table. Clem has an app that tracks the number of tickets sold in an hour, which helps regulate it, and it has servers offering alcoholics, cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks on line to ease the waiting.
On Yelp, Annie from Dallas expected a long wait at la Barbecue, did indeed stand on line for over an hour, but said it went by quickly because of the “live music.” She also praised the brisket but found the sausage “dry.”
And Anthony from Austin called la Barbecue “his favorite brisket spot” in town, despite some other eateries getting more recognition. Service was great and the atmosphere relaxed and well worth the hour wait, he says.
And Clem marches to her own drummer when it comes to third-party deliverers like DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats, which have become close to ubiquitous at most eateries, but not at la Barbecue. She doesn’t use any of them because “we like for people to have the freshest product possible and want to control that.”
Asked the target audience, Clem replies that during the week for lunch and at happy hour, it draws locals as regulars, but on weekends, especially during the festival season, tourists prevail. It relies on word-of-mouth and social media for its marketing and attracting its customer base.
To boost revenue, la Barbecue offers special events at night that are catered in-house, and also highlights happy hour specials that includes $4 brisket sliders made with trimmings of the meat.
Why do customers keep coming back to la Barbecue? “Ultimately our products speak for themselves. People in Austin travel over miles to find the best brisket, ribs or sausage. And they know that it will always be consistent,” Clem says.
