Beef prices are rising so fast that some of the most famed BBQ joints in Texas have been forced to shutter or are facing imminent closure, owners warned.
The average retail price for beef – which is used in brisket as a staple at many BBQ restaurants – was a record $9.64 per pound in April, up 13 percent from the previous year, according to figures from the Department of Agriculture.
BBQ joint owners in the Lone Star state told The Washington Post how they have been in “survival mode” for a year now as many fight to stay open amid the sky-high prices.
“This is as bad as it gets,” Russell Roegels, who owns two BBQ restaurants in Houston, told the newspaper. “Everybody’s at risk these days: You’re one bad week from closing.”
Industry experts said that inflation, President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the prices being set by meatpackers—effectively the middlemen who buy cattle from ranchers, process the beef and sell it on to restaurants and grocery stores—are all contributing to the price hike.
The smallest U.S. cattle herd in 75 years is also contributing to the problem, due to drought, and an increase in operating costs since the pandemic.
Shawn Jones of Kirby’s BBQ, famed for its oak-smoked brisket, announced he was closing his restaurant in New Carney, just north of Houston, at the end of 2025 partly because of “absolutely insane” beef prices.
“With brisket being our biggest seller here in Texas, that is really weighing on our profit margins,” Jones told his followers on YouTube. “When brisket costs $36 a pound for the consumer and then you got ribs and sausage and sides and desserts and all that…you can easily be spending $70 to $100 for barbecue.
“That’s just not something that most of middle America can do as often as they would need to to support most barbecue joints.”
Other joints to close their doors recently include Brett’s BBQ Shop, Sabar BBQ and Wright on Taco & BBQ, The Post reports.
Ernest Servantes, whose Burnt Bean Co. has been voted Texas Monthly’s No. 1 barbecue joint, said the relief that has previously followed other price hikes is nowhere in sight.
“It’s going to get scary here,” Servantes told The Post. “We’ve been in survival mode for the past year.”
The owner said he has been forced to raise the price of brisket by $1 to $38 a pound, and is even considering limiting the specialty to one day a week. “Just because we’re making a lot of brisket doesn’t mean we’re making a lot of money. It’s kind of a write-off,” he said.
Servantes and others in the industry have blamed meatpackers for “manipulating prices,” with four companies controlling over 85 percent of the country’s beef processing market.
“The profits from high beef prices aren’t going to the people who raise America’s cattle — they’re being siphoned off by a handful of multinational meatpacking corporations,” Andrew Rechenberg, an economist at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, wrote in an op-ed last year.
State and federal regulators have since launched an investigation into the conduct of the largest meatpacking firms.
“If major meatpackers manipulated the market to underpay ranchers while forcing families to pay higher prices at the grocery store, we will hold them accountable,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a May 15 news release.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly split on how to best tackle rising beef prices, and the White House delayed plans to announce a temporary reduction in import tariffs on the meat to continue discussions, Politico reported last week.
