This is just so sad. I have to tell you, everytime I come through STL, my wife and I always get a pound of beef brisket and a pound of pulled pork, put it in a cooler, and take it back to Chicago with us. I'm so dissapointed this happened.
Super Smokers BBQ shutters restaurants
By Doug Moore
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/05/2006
Super Smokers BBQ, which started in 1995 as a catering company and grew to seven stores in three counties, went out of business Thursday night.
Co-founder Terry Black said the company never fully recovered after the economy tanked in September 2001. The loss of partner Ron Skinner to a heart attack two years ago, and the spike in gas prices last year also were contributing factors, Black said.
"I've put 10 years of my heart and soul in this business," said Black, 45. "I was living my dream, getting paid every day to barbecue."
But the dream had to end, Black said, as the cost to sell beef brisket and pulled pork outweighed his love for the barbecue he sold in Super Smokers stores in St. Peters, Glendale, Sunset Hills, Brentwood, Chesterfield, O'Fallon, Ill., and Eureka, where the first restaurant opened on May 25, 1996.
Super Smokers also set up shop outside the Edward Jones Dome two hours before the start of every Rams home game.
Customers can still buy the barbecue sauce in supermarkets - at least until supplies run out.
Black initially denied that the stores were closing when interviewed Thursday afternoon. He said he wanted to notify all the employees and issue them paychecks before they found out from the press that their jobs were ending. Super Smokers had 150 full- and part-time workers, Black said.
Black, who was elected to the Francis Howell School Board last year, was at a board workshop Thursday night when he told other board members that he was out of business.
Black said that after seeking legal advice, he and his partners decided to shut down the store on Thursday, the day that paychecks are cut. Typically, employees would get paid every other Friday. He said all employees would get paid what they were owed.
Black, whose company listed its corporate headquarters in O'Fallon, Ill., said he has no immediate plans. The reality that the business he grew for over a decade is now dead had not yet sunk in Thursday night, he said.
"Tell them (the customers) they'll no longer be able to eat world championship barbecue from this point forward," Black said.
The company boasted in promotional materials that it had finished in the Top Ten nine times in the Memphis in May World Barbecue Championship. As Black will tell you, that's pretty high on the hog.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... enDocument
Super Smokers BBQ shutters restaurants
By Doug Moore
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/05/2006
Super Smokers BBQ, which started in 1995 as a catering company and grew to seven stores in three counties, went out of business Thursday night.
Co-founder Terry Black said the company never fully recovered after the economy tanked in September 2001. The loss of partner Ron Skinner to a heart attack two years ago, and the spike in gas prices last year also were contributing factors, Black said.
"I've put 10 years of my heart and soul in this business," said Black, 45. "I was living my dream, getting paid every day to barbecue."
But the dream had to end, Black said, as the cost to sell beef brisket and pulled pork outweighed his love for the barbecue he sold in Super Smokers stores in St. Peters, Glendale, Sunset Hills, Brentwood, Chesterfield, O'Fallon, Ill., and Eureka, where the first restaurant opened on May 25, 1996.
Super Smokers also set up shop outside the Edward Jones Dome two hours before the start of every Rams home game.
Customers can still buy the barbecue sauce in supermarkets - at least until supplies run out.
Black initially denied that the stores were closing when interviewed Thursday afternoon. He said he wanted to notify all the employees and issue them paychecks before they found out from the press that their jobs were ending. Super Smokers had 150 full- and part-time workers, Black said.
Black, who was elected to the Francis Howell School Board last year, was at a board workshop Thursday night when he told other board members that he was out of business.
Black said that after seeking legal advice, he and his partners decided to shut down the store on Thursday, the day that paychecks are cut. Typically, employees would get paid every other Friday. He said all employees would get paid what they were owed.
Black, whose company listed its corporate headquarters in O'Fallon, Ill., said he has no immediate plans. The reality that the business he grew for over a decade is now dead had not yet sunk in Thursday night, he said.
"Tell them (the customers) they'll no longer be able to eat world championship barbecue from this point forward," Black said.
The company boasted in promotional materials that it had finished in the Top Ten nine times in the Memphis in May World Barbecue Championship. As Black will tell you, that's pretty high on the hog.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... enDocument
Hopefully this can become more of a setback than a complete closing. And a store in the city would have been a good idea. But then again, you could say that they probably overexpanded, that's a huge growth from 1995, to where they currently are.