Butter's BBQ pulled brisket off the everyday menu, and its pitmaster says serving it would mean nearly $50 a pound
Butter's BBQ in Sinton, Texas pulled brisket from its everyday menu, and owner and pitmaster Andrew Soto told KRIS 6 News he would have to charge somewhere near $50 a pound to keep serving it. Brisket on its own had come to over 70 percent of the restaurant's total grocery costs.
A restaurant on Texas Monthly's list of the top 50 barbecue joints in Texas has stopped selling brisket off its everyday menu. Butter's BBQ in Sinton pulled the cut, and Andrew Soto, the owner and pitmaster, told KRIS 6 News in Corpus Christi in September 2026 that keeping brisket on the board would mean charging somewhere near $50 a pound.
Both KRIS 6 and MySA put that top 50 on Texas Monthly. The number that pushed brisket off the board, though, was not the one printed on the menu. Soto told the station that brisket on its own had come to "over 70 percent of our total grocery costs."
That share counts what the kitchen buys and not what the kitchen sells. One cut was taking more than seven of every ten dollars Butter's spent on groceries, and every other meat on the pit, along with everything that goes beside it, divided up what was left. A share over 70 percent means brisket was costing Butter's more than everything else the kitchen buys put together.
A restaurant with a cut that expensive has two moves, and Soto named both of them to KRIS 6. Raise the price and keep serving brisket every day, or take brisket off the everyday menu. Butter's took the second one. The nearly $50 is worth being exact about, because the figure is not a price anybody has paid at Butter's and it is not a worked out menu price either. Somewhere near $50 a pound is an estimate, said out loud by the man who buys the brisket and cooks it, of what he would have to charge to keep the cut on the board.
The wholesale side of the story came from a second pitmaster in the same KRIS 6 report. Alex Arredondo of El Vago told the station that wholesale brisket had gone up another $1.40 a pound, to almost $6 a pound. That $1.40 came on top of where the wholesale price already sat. Wholesale is the number a restaurant pays for raw briskets, not the number on a tray at a grocery store, and Arredondo's figure is the part of this story that travels past one kitchen in Sinton. Two pitmasters at two restaurants, inside one local news report, were watching the same line move.
Almost $6 and nearly $50 read like numbers out of two different stories, and the distance between them is the brisket itself. The almost $6 buys a raw brisket by the pound, the way the brisket comes off the truck, and those are not the pounds that get sold. A brisket gets trimmed before it ever goes near smoke, and fat and water keep leaving across the long hours on the pit, so what comes off the fire weighs less than what went on. Every pound a kitchen sells has to carry the pounds that cooked away.
A raw price moves one way and a plate price moves further, because fewer pounds are left to carry it. Anybody who has bought a whole brisket to cook at home has met the same two numbers from the other side: the price per pound going in, and the smaller pile coming off the fire hours later.
What went on the menu in brisket's place is still beef, at least in part. The daily beef at Butter's is beef cheek now, the cheek muscle off the animal, and KRIS 6 reports that chicken halves and pork belly went on the menu as well. Two of those three are not beef at all. The pits did not go quiet and the smoke did not stop. The cut changed.
Everyday menu is the phrase to hold onto, because brisket never left Butter's completely. The restaurant will still cook the cut to order. KRIS 6 reports brisket is available by pre order with a two pound minimum, so the smallest brisket order Butter's takes is two pounds, and the asking has to happen before the eating. Two pounds is not one sandwich, and the order comes first.
Three numbers carry this story and all three come out of the same September report. Wholesale brisket at almost $6 a pound, up another $1.40. One cut running over 70 percent of one restaurant's grocery spending. And somewhere near $50 a pound, the price Butter's would have to ask to keep that cut on the everyday menu. The first number is the market. The second is what the market did to one kitchen's buying. The third is what it would have done to the person standing at the counter, if the menu had not changed first.
Brisket is not gone at Butter's BBQ. Order two pounds ahead of time and the pit will still cook it for you.
