As a survey question it was probably a gimme, but the response was no less telling.
Just minutes before a ribbon-cutting Thursday morning outside the new Salty’s BBQ & Catering location at 3250 Coffee Road, President and CEO Janelle Capra of the Greater Bakersfield Chamber asked everyone to raise a hand if they’d eaten barbecue from Salty’s and loved it.
Hundreds of hands shot up.
The showing reflected what speaker after speaker told the crowd: Not only is the food at Salty’s good, and its business a local success story, but the restaurant has built up tremendous goodwill within the local community.
Speakers tended to focus on the founder and owner of the chain, Jeff Salters. One recalled how Salters showed up to a freeway pile-up and fed barbecue to every first-responder at the scene. Another said Salters “is there when no one else is.”
Kern County Supervisor Jeff Flores called him a worker and a doer, adding, “You personify the best of Kern County.”
Then Bakersfield Mayor Karen Goh, perhaps forgetting it was almost lunchtime as members of the audience waited to enter the new restaurant, launched into a mouth-watering description of the food they were about to eat.
“A succulent, savory, tender Salty’s barbecue is wonderful, but it only lasts for a little while,” she said. Her point was that the company’s investment — its third restaurant in Bakersfield — will endure long after the appetite of everyone present has been sated.
At 3,600 square feet, the new Salty’s represents more than a local expansion allowing Salters to convert his smaller restaurant on nearby Rosedale Highway into a sandwiches-and-salad place that won’t offer the full menu. The project also stands as a model for what may become a national chain with locations in multiple states.
Salters’ son Justin said the company isn’t ready to move forward with a major expansion, nor has such a move been called off. The idea is to run the new location and stay open to whatever comes next, he said.
The main difference between the new restaurant and the other two, including one on White Lane, is that it has two separate lines in the kitchen. Justin Salters said one serves drive-thru traffic while the other caters to take-out and in-store orders.
Another distinction is that the new kitchen is three times the size of the one on Rosedale. It has indoor air conditioning and misters on the patio, as well as outdoor heaters for when cold weather arrives.
After two years of planning and eight months of construction, Justin said, the new place has come together as the family had hoped for, if not more so.
“The vision really came to life here today,” he said.
Customer Jennifer Garcia, who had driven from southwest Bakersfield with her daughter to order tri-tip, said she likes the restaurant’s meat so much she buys from Salty’s monthly. The family even contracted the company to cater her son’s wedding.
But it wasn’t just the food that made Garcia happy to be trying out the new location.
“We’re really excited to be indoors,” she said, “because their Rosedale (outdoor-only) location was sometimes hot.”