Creekside Cookers to open new restaurant
The owners of the popular Creekside Cookers BBQ food trailer have purchased San Angel Mexican Restaurant and the property at 500 River Road. They plan to have a new restaurant open by the end of the summer.
Kelly and Melody Evers will have the same barbecue menu at their new restaurant that people enjoy at their trailer — with a few variations. Over the next few months, they will be busy refurbishing San Angel, training a new staff, installing a barbecue pit and keeping the food trailer running as usual.
“Logistically, it has been kind of a nightmare,” says Kelly, “but we’ll get through it.” The food trailer will remain open and there may be a new concept for that in the future.
The current Creekside Cookers BBQ has a loyal customer base. There’s always a line of customers and, typically, they sell out in an hour or two. The menu of brisket, turkey, pork sausage, sandwiches and sides will be duplicated at the new location. For dinner, the Evers are planning to add steaks and, on the weekends, a whole-hog roast.
“We’ll have the same food, the same everything,” says Kelly. “The only thing different will be the steaks in the evenings. Good wood-fired steaks are hard to beat.”
Also called Creekside
The new restaurant — which will also be called Creekside Cookers BBQ — will feature a counter where customers will get their drinks and order their food. The food will then be delivered to the table. “It reduces your overhead to get rid of the waiter model,” explains Kelly.
“We will focus on high-quality barbecue and high-quality steaks. My business model is, when you come in to Creekside, it’s gonna be big, it’s gonna be high quality and it’s gonna be a good value. It will be the same thing every time you come. You are going to get a good bang for your buck.”
They have not figured out the pricing for the steaks yet, but the barbecue business is based on commodity prices. The prices change often which is why many of the top barbecue restaurants have their menus written on chalkboard — so prices can rise and fall with beef and pork prices. Because of recent storms and flooding in the Midwest, brisket prices are “astronomical.” Sausage prices are holding steady. Pork prices fluctuate a little. Turkey prices have actually fallen. Beef is another matter. He’s planning on offering three cuts of steak: ribeye, strip and maybe a porterhouse or fillet.
“Ideally, I want to make money and you (the customer) come back 27 times. I want to make it as inexpensive as I can. I want people to come back over and over and over.”
Getting a license to sell wine and beer is sometimes challenging so to start, the new Creekside restaurant will be BYOB. “Eventually, we’ll sell wine and beer,” says Kelly. “We want folks to be able to have a beer with their barbecue.”
Because the location was already a restaurant, the process is less complicated. Kelly now uses an 18-foot barbecue pit at his food trailer at the Y Center on Ranch Road 12. He plans to have another one up and running at the new location.
At his trailer, Kelly goes through about a ton of meat each week and the trailer is only open a couple hours a day. “We simply can’t cook anymore than that,” he says.
Whole hogs on Sunday
Kelly’s trailer is now open four days a week — Wednesday through Saturday. The new restaurant will be open on Sunday and feature a a whole-hog roast that day. “That’s a lot of fun. People enjoy the whole hog,” says Kelly.
These days, friends and family are busy cleaning and painting inside and out. The new Creekside will have more of a Southern barbecue feel to it and “have a lot of stuff about Texas barbecue.”
It seats about 70 people. The outside area will be improved and there will be games for the kids. “I am relying on Melody and her friends to handle the interior,” says Kelly. “I cook barbecue.”
Kelly began his barbecue career on a competitive cooking team in 2009. He opened the food trailer in 2015 and now serves 100-130 customers a day before he runs out of food.
“The briskets I cook are not the same that someone else cooks. I believe in the simplicity of it. Everything I do is with pecan wood. My rubs are simple. I call it Central Texas barbecue with other influences.”
Before his career as barbecue cook, he was a sixthgrade teacher and coach. Melody is a teacher at Jacob’s Well Elementary.
It was a smooth transition into the world of barbecue — the line of customers at the Creekside trailer attests to that.
“In my opinion barbecue is a community thing,” says Kelly. “A family of four should be able to get barbecue or a good steak and not have to take out a second mortgage on their house.”
What should you expect at the new Creekside Cooker BBQ? High-quality food, a clean, family-friendly atmosphere and reasonable prices.