Russell Roegels, owner of Roegels Barbecue Co. in Houston, appeared on Good Morning America this morning with a number that reframes the entire conversation about beef prices and restaurant closures. Of the roughly $100,000 Roegels spends on food costs each month, $45,000 goes to brisket alone. Nearly half of every food dollar spent at one of Houston’s most celebrated barbecue institutions is consumed by a single protein whose price has been climbing for years with no structural relief in sight.
That number is not an outlier. It is the condition.
The U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size since 1951 — a 75-year low produced by decades of compounding drought, rising feed and fuel costs, and land loss that the Texas Restaurant Association describes as a 30-year shortage with no near-term correction. Texas is losing nearly 1,000 acres of ranch land per day to development. The domestic supply is not rebuilding. The beef is not coming back on a timeline that saves the restaurants currently absorbing the cost.
The price data confirms what Roegels’ spreadsheet already shows. The average retail price for beef hit a record $9.64 per pound in April, up 13 percent from the prior year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Beef prices for producers rose 14.2 percent year over year, per the National Restaurant Association. The USDA warns prices could climb an additional 10 to 18 percent before the end of 2026. Justin Manning, co-owner of C&J Barbecue in College Station, told KBTX that to maintain a viable margin, he would need to sell beef at $40 a pound. No customer can absorb that price. No pitmaster can close that gap.
The impact is not confined to restaurant kitchens. Ground beef now costs $6.70 a pound at retail, up more than 15 percent from a year ago. Chuck — one of the most affordable cuts and a staple in working-class households — has seen some of the steepest increases. Economists are not projecting relief on a short timeline. The cattle herd shortage, driven by drought conditions and compounding land loss, is expected to keep beef prices elevated through at least 2028. The families rationing ground beef at the grocery store and the pitmasters rationing brisket on the menu are absorbing the same structural shortage from different ends of the supply chain.
The closures are already documented. Brett’s BBQ in Katy. Kirby’s BBQ in New Caney. Sabar Barbecue in Fort Worth. These are not restaurants that failed to adapt or lost relevance. They are businesses that were structurally priced out of their own product. Brett Jackson, co-founder of Brett’s BBQ, told Texas Monthly that eight months before closing he noticed one in every eight groups splitting a two-meat plate meant for two people. Customers were rationing. Then they stopped coming.
Emily Williams Knight, CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association, named the mechanism directly in a statement to KBTX: “If you’re a barbecue restaurant, you don’t really have anywhere to move. And I think that’s where you’re seeing a lot of these smaller barbecue restaurants begin to close, because they just don’t have any options as the price continues to increase.”
That is the structural argument the food coverage keeps missing. A fast-food chain facing beef price pressure pivots to chicken. McDonald’s is doing exactly that — leaning into chicken innovations to offset beef costs and targeting category growth through 2026. A Texas barbecue restaurant cannot make that pivot. Brisket is not a menu item. It is the business model. When the cost of brisket becomes structurally unsustainable, there is no workaround. There is only closure.
This week SSC reported that the May jobs report showed 172,000 jobs added — with small businesses accounting for 67,000 of those positions. The same week, small business owners in one of Texas’s most storied industries are closing because the input cost of their primary product has outpaced any price they can reasonably charge a customer. The jobs number and the barbecue closures are part of the same economy. The workers being hired into small business positions and the small business owners shutting their doors are not living in the same labor market the headline described.
When $45,000 of every $100,000 in monthly food costs goes to one ingredient — and that ingredient is still getting more expensive — the business is not struggling. It is being eliminated. The cattle herd shortage will take years to reverse. The restaurants closing now will not be there when it does.