Going rate for pulled pork/lb?

I agree, my dad would drive 20 miles across town to get something just because it was 5 cents cheaper. There was no way you could change his mind. Darn, my wife has a lot of those tendencies too....

Red Valley BBQ said:

I would have to disagree with this. Whether I sell my BBQ at $12/lb (if the market allows) or $8/lb, the customer gets the same quality product. I don't have to make a living at selling BBQ so selling it for $8/lb is just some extra cash for me and some good BBQ for the customer.

I can see where your theory may apply to a restaurant/caterer, but I don't believe you have to completely sacrifice one of those qualities at the expense of the other two.

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That argument doesn't hold up if you are a legit business with real business expenses. Most of the guys posting here who are selling bbq are doing it as a business. If you are a guy trying to make a little beer money and spending 12 plus hours to cook a pork butt is what you choose to do for fun when you aren't at work making your living, sure, you can sell at cost.

In your example, you might make a certain amount cooking a butt on your ugly drum or whatever cooker in your backyard, but the caterer or restaurant has to play by the rules and use a 8,000-20,000 commercial smoker, pay rent, install a 20,000 hood, blah blah blah so they need to sell for more because of the costs incurred. So faced with the decision to try and compete on price with a backyard guy, his only choice is to drastically cut quality one way or another.

Speaking of restaurant costs, I am in the process of trying to get finances together for a place, and am being told that any place in nyc with capacity for over 75 is considered a place of public assembly and has a bunch of extra crap tied to that, including a crazy fire alarm system that shuts everything in the place down and can cost up to $20,000. For a fire alarm. Bet that is a cost nobody ever thinks about when they think a guy is a ripoff because he sells pork for a few bucks more than someone thinks they could do it for out of their backyard.