Rollin’ Smoke is located inside Chalmers in East Austin at 1700 E. Cesar Chavez St.
Kyle Stallings/Provided by Rollin’ Smoke
The numbers were not what Kyle Stallings wanted to see.
It was a Sunday, and for once, the owner, manager and pitmaster of Rollin’ Smoke BBQ was trying to take the day off. But he checked the restaurant’s sales anyway. The first hour was already in the red.
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A refund for a forgotten sausage had put the day at negative $5, and Stallings decided there was little reason left to soften the reality. He posted the numbers to Instagram alongside a plea to Austin.
“We are not ‘killing it’ as some assume,” he wrote. “We are dying. Wake up Austin and come get some while you can.”
The message was unusually blunt for a barbecue joint that has spent more than a decade building a following around smoked meats. But the pressures facing Rollin’ Smoke are familiar across the restaurant industry: beef prices have climbed, customers are spending less on dining out, summer has been slow and the economics of running a meat-heavy barbecue operation have become increasingly difficult.
Now, the longtime Austin barbecue spot is asking customers to come through the doors at its Chalmers location at 1700 E. Cesar Chavez St. before the numbers force a decision about what comes next.
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“If things continue this way, for sure,” Stallings said when asked whether the restaurant is in danger of closing.
Rising costs, changing dining habits are squeezing Rollin’ Smoke
A mural at Rollin’ Smoke inside Chalmers.
Kyle Stallings/Provided by Rollin’ Smoke
Rollin’ Smoke began around 2012, when a couple of friends started the operation as a late-night weekend food truck in Austin’s Warehouse District. Stallings had recently moved back to town and began working there part time.
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Eventually, the barbecue operation landed at Chalmers. It first operated there as a food truck before taking over the bar’s kitchen about a year and a half ago. The move initially seemed like the right one. For the first year, Stallings said, business was good.
“I think probably a lot of it’s just the economy,” he said. “Beef prices are through the roof and briskets are big sellers, so that kind of puts a damper on profits.”
Brisket is the backbone of Texas barbecue, but it is also one of the ingredients most capable of eating into a pitmaster’s margins. Rollin’ Smoke is not selling one inexpensive dish that can be scaled easily. The menu includes several different proteins, along with sides and other items, all of which require labor, preparation and hours around the pit.
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Stallings said he first noticed business slowing around February, when he and the Chalmers owners began talking about ways to bring customers back through the door. By summer, the slowdown had become harder to ignore.
Summer is traditionally a difficult season for restaurants, Stallings said, with people traveling and children out of school. But this year felt particularly slow.
“I just don’t think a lot of people this year have the money they had in the past to go out to eat and spend a bunch of it on food,” he said.
That shift matters in a city where dining out has become both increasingly competitive and increasingly driven by novelty. Austin diners have no shortage of new restaurants to try, and Stallings said customers often seem willing to wait in line for the newest place in town rather than walk into a restaurant where they know they can get a good meal without the wait.
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“Some reason, that doesn’t pay at all,” he said.
A top 50 barbecue spot without the lines to match
The brisket at Rollin’ Smoke.
Kyle Stallings/Provided by Rollin’ Smoke
Rollin’ Smoke is hardly an unknown quantity. In 2025, Texas Monthly included the restaurant on its list of the Top 50 Barbecue Joints in Texas.
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But recognition does not necessarily translate into sustained lines. Stallings said that without major accolades or the kind of buzz that sends customers lining up around the block, the economics of the barbecue business can be difficult to sustain.
The Chalmers location presents another challenge.
The restaurant operates inside the bar’s kitchen, meaning its overhead is considerably higher than it was when Rollin’ Smoke operated from a trailer. The bar, meanwhile, has evolved into a sports-focused business after plans for more live music were curtailed by neighborhood restrictions.
That makes the restaurant particularly dependent on the rhythms of the sports calendar.
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The Spurs helped. The World Cup helped even more. Football season, particularly University of Texas games, offers another potential lifeline.
But Stallings is already thinking beyond the fall.
The restaurant needs to find other ways to generate revenue. Stallings said Rollin’ Smoke is working on catering, online delivery and other avenues to bring in business beyond its regular walk-in customers.
Fighting to keep its people and doors open
At the same time, he has had to make decisions that hit closer to home.
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Rollin’ Smoke offers several types of proteins and sides inside Chalmers.
Kyle Stallings/Provided by Rollin’ Smoke
After a stronger year in 2025, Stallings tried to invest some of that success back into his staff by providing health insurance. The goal was simple: take care of his employees and build loyalty among a crew he considers close-knit.
But the sales did not hold.
Last week, Rollin’ Smoke had to cut the benefit.
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“That hurts me a lot because I want to take care of my people,” Stallings said. “We’re all pretty close.”
It is the kind of decision that illustrates how quickly a restaurant’s margins can disappear. A good year can make an investment seem sustainable; a bad one can turn that same investment into an expense a small business can no longer carry.
And Rollin’ Smoke is not alone.
John Brotherton, right, with former Brotherton’s Black Iron Barbecue pitmaster Dominic Colbert in 2018.
Austin Sanders, Pflugerville Pflag
Stallings said he has talked with people across the Texas barbecue industry and sees a broad struggle among restaurants, including those that have managed to generate the lines and attention that Rollin Smoke has not.
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Brotherton’s Barbecue in Pflugerville is closing at the end of August after nearly 10 years in the Central Texas barbecue scene.
“Everybody’s struggling,” Stallings said.
For Rollin’ Smoke, the question is whether customers will come back before the restaurant runs out of room to maneuver.
Stallings said relocating is on the table if the Chalmers arrangement ultimately stops making financial sense. He does not want to criticize the bar or the people there — the move made sense when the decision was made, he said — but hindsight has a way of changing the shape of a business decision.
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For now, the answer is to come eat.
“Just come check us out and just come get some food,” Stallings said. “We have a really good product.”
For now, that is the pitch: just smoked meat from a barbecue operation that has been here for more than a decade — and is asking Austin to show up while it still can.