The USDA\u2019s latest cattle inventory report saw just over a 1% drop in the number of beef cattle, a sharper decline than expected in the industry. David Anderson, an AgriLife Extension economist in the Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Economics, says in a press release that this is \u201ca clear signal that the U.S. beef herd has yet to turn the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declining herd numbers are a bad sign and will take years to rebuild.<\/p>\n
\u201cA slower rebuild and tighter cattle supplies will continue to ripple from cow-calf operations to feedlots and packers, all the way to grocery stores,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n
These high prices,\u00a0coupled with an emerging drought, meaning it\u2019s going to cost more to raise a herd,\u00a0are causing some ranchers to cash in instead of building for the long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cBred\u2011heifer values reaching $4,000\u2013$5,000 have created an incentive for producers to sell rather than hold on to calves,\u201d AgriLife Extension beef cattle specialist Jason Cleere says. \u201cThere\u2019s pressure to just sell them and take advantage of the market and then worry about rebuilding next year.\u201d <\/p>\n
Make sense, right? Because when the prices come back down, well, then they won\u2019t get as much for their cattle. And maybe they want to put in a pool. Or, more likely, pay down the debt that perennially dogs farmers and ranchers.<\/p>\n
Local BBQ<\/p>\n
Restaurants are dealing with higher costs across the board, including labor. Barbecue restaurants that rely on smoked brisket are having an especially hard time now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s creating an existential crisis in the barbecue industry,\u201d says Justin Fourton of Pecan Lodge in Deep Ellum. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just a problem for restaurants; consumers are seeing exorbitant prices in the grocery store as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pecan Lodge started as a stand at the Dallas Farmers Market and has grown into one of the most popular restaurants in Deep Ellum, often with lines snaking out the front door. The business is built on beef.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeef is at an all-time high, yet both ranchers and the four largest beef packers in the United States say they\u2019re\u00a0losing money. Something doesn\u2019t add up, and it\u2019s all starting to come to a head,\u201d he says, then references a podcast he\u2019s part of, Smokeless (available on Spotify), where they try to tackle this issue.<\/p>\n
In late January, Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn published an article<\/a> titled \u201cWhy So Many Texas BBQ Joints Are Closing,\u201d chronicling several family-run spots around Texas trying, often in vain, to make it work. They can only \u201cmark up a menu item so much before they price out their clientele,\u201d Vaughn writes. <\/p>\n Chris Manning owns Smokey Joe\u2019s BBQ<\/a> along Interstate 35 in southern Dallas. He says his customers have been shocked this week when asking for a brisket for Super Bowl Sunday. \u201cA brisket is $200, $225, and people are looking at us like, \u2018Huh?’\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s going to get to a point where brisket is like filet mignon,\u201d Manning says about the rising price. \u201cAnd that is scary because I think a lot of people don\u2019t understand how much brisket really costs.\u201d <\/p>\n Manning stretches cuts of beef as far as he can, wasting nothing, whether pieces go in the beans or the sausage. <\/p>\n Beef Cheek, Anyone? \u201cBut aside from that, a lot of places I\u2019ve been seeing have scaled back on brisket, I think, which is smart, just utilizing other meats. So, instead of doing a Frito Pie with brisket, we\u2019ll switch it to pulled pork. The same with brisket taco specials. We\u2019ll have to switch those just to keep our cost of goods down because it\u2019s not survivable at this point to try to keep using brisket the way we used to. It\u2019s become a delicacy,\u201d Manning says.<\/p>\n He refers to the Michelin one-star restaurant LeRoy and Lewis in Austin, where beef cheek<\/a> is a menu highlight; the Michelin Guide notes<\/a> that brisket isn\u2019t the focus at this spot and is only a special at the end of the week. At H-E-B this week, beef cheek is $4.76 a pound, whereas the cheapest slab of brisket was $5.99 a pound (market-trimmed USDA Prime is $8.99 a pound). Scaling back on brisket might be the path forward for barbecue restaurants.<\/p>\n Either way, a lot of things are stacking up against your next chopped beef sandwich. In the AgriLife report, beef cattle specialist Cleere said that Texas long-term cattle capacity has been thinned by \u201crapid urban expansion, land fragmentation and the conversion of quality pasture into solar and other non-agricultural uses.\u201d He says those losses contribute to fewer cows.<\/p>\n Add to that an emerging drought in Texas. <\/p>\n Anderson and Cleere both expect calf prices to go \u201ceven higher in 2026 and 2027\u201d due to tightened supplies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 1991, I loved going to Zimmerhanzel\u2019s Barbecue in Smithville, Texas, at lunch for a chopped beef…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1960,102,104,103,918],"class_list":["post-152509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-bbq","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/LeRoy-and-Lewis-Beef-Cheek-Lauren-Drewes-Daniels.png\")
Beef cheek has earned a place in the Michelin Guide and might be coming to a barbecue shop near you. <\/p>\n