A small-town Texas barbecue restaurant has made the once-unthinkable call to take brisket off its regular menu, citing beef prices that have risen steadily for years and spiked sharply in recent months.
Andrew Soto, owner of Butter’s BBQ in Sinton, a town about 30 minutes from Corpus Christi in Nueces County, told Fox News Digital that the price of beef and brisket has been a growing burden on his business for roughly five years.
“We’ve been dealing with the price hikes, specifically in beef and briskets, for the better part of, I would say, five years,” Soto said.
Soto said prices had occasionally seemed to level off or even improve, but over the past eight months to a year the cost of beef climbed rapidly and became unsustainable. Attempts to raise menu prices and scale back how much brisket the restaurant cooked each day led to declining foot traffic and sales.
“I guess the straw that broke the camel’s back was last week. I was talking to one of my food reps, and he informed me that brisket had once again gone up in price,” Soto said.
That latest increase amounted to almost $1 per pound — a figure Soto said sounds small but adds up fast when a restaurant is buying hundreds of pounds at a time, especially in a small town where demand is hard to predict.
Federal data backs up what Soto has been experiencing at the counter. According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, beef and veal prices were 5.9% higher in August 2026 than they were in August 2025. The agency projects beef prices will rise 9.4% for all of 2026, with a forecast range of 7.4% to 11.6%.
Faced with what he called a “gamble” on whether he could sell enough brisket to justify the cost of buying it, Soto decided to remove it from the regular menu entirely.
In its place, Butter’s BBQ is experimenting with beef cheek as an alternative and is steering customers toward pork options such as ribs and sausage. Soto said the restaurant is also setting up an online pre-order system so customers can still request and pay for brisket in advance, even though it won’t be part of the day-to-day offerings.
“We’re in Texas. It’s a big deal,” Soto said of brisket’s standing in the state’s barbecue culture.
Community Reaction
Butter’s BBQ explained the change to customers in a Facebook post, writing that brisket had been eating up more than 70% of the restaurant’s total grocery costs and that the business could no longer sustain that model.
Some commenters pushed back, arguing the restaurant should simply raise prices rather than drop the item. “Best move is to raise your prices to match the rising cost of beef. If your brisket is good then people will pay whatever price you set,” one person wrote. Another noted they’d already seen brisket sandwich prices climb from $10 to as high as $20 elsewhere.
Others were more supportive, with one writing “Bring on the pork!!!” and another suggesting the restaurant add smoked pork steaks as an affordable option.
Soto said the decision wasn’t personal, but a matter of keeping the business afloat.
“We’re just trying to protect our business and our livelihood,” Soto said. “Please come and support us. We still have some really good barbecue, despite not having the brisket on our menu.”
