In this episode of Barbecue Catering Smarts, Michael Attias welcomes Tracy Carter, owner of JAC's Craft Smokehouse in West Monroe, Louisiana.
What started as a passion for barbecue, competition cooking, and a food truck eventually grew into one of the area's busiest barbecue operations—with catering now accounting for roughly 42% of the business.
Tracy shares the remarkable story behind launching a restaurant during the height of COVID, overcoming years of financial challenges, and learning that great barbecue alone doesn't guarantee a profitable business. He discusses the turning point that forced him to focus on systems, profitability, leadership, and operational discipline—and how those changes transformed both his restaurant and his quality of life.
Michael and Tracy also dive into the realities of barbecue catering, including menu simplification, pricing every detail correctly, building repeat business through word-of-mouth referrals, and why checklists remain one of the most powerful tools in any restaurant operation.
Whether you're trying to grow your catering sales, improve profitability, or build a business that doesn't depend entirely on you, this episode is packed with practical lessons from someone who has lived every stage of the journey.
Barbecue Catering Smarts is sponsored by CaterZen Catering Software.
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✅ Catering Can Become a Major Revenue Stream: Today, catering accounts for approximately 42% of JAC's Craft Smokehouse's business.
✅ Great Food Isn't Enough: Tracy learned that operational and financial systems matter just as much as producing great barbecue.
✅ Know Your Numbers: Understanding profit-and-loss statements, food costs, and financial trends is essential for long-term success.
✅ Word-of-Mouth Still Wins: Most of JAC's catering growth has come from referrals, relationships, and a strong reputation for execution.
✅ Consistency Builds Trust: Delivering hot food hot, cold food cold, and executing events reliably creates repeat customers.
✅ Simplified Menus Improve Profitability: Offering too many one-off catering items can create unnecessary inventory costs and operational complexity.
✅ Checklists Create Scalability: Simple checklists help standardize execution, improve accountability, and reduce mistakes.
✅ Systems Improve Quality of Life: Building a management team and operational structure allowed Tracy to move from constant firefighting to a healthier work-life balance.
✅ Barbecue Has a Catering Advantage: Limited inventory overlap, strong margins, and excellent travel characteristics make barbecue uniquely suited for catering.
✅ Price Every Detail Correctly: Successful catering programs account for every cost—including pans, utensils, serving equipment, labor, and disposables.
🔹 "Catering is where you make your money."
🔹 "I knew how to cook. I didn't know how to run a restaurant."
🔹 "The first two and a half years, we were busier than we knew what to do with—but I was losing money hand over fist."
🔹 "Doors have not stopped being open."
🔹 "The number one thing that helped me from the beginning was a simple checklist."
🔹 "Systems don't work unless you're willing to put in the time to build them."
🔹 "Our catering is impeccable. People get hot food hot and cold food cold."
🔹 "On our bad day, our brisket is better than most people's good day."
🔹 "You have to make sure you're making money on every piece of the puzzle."
🔹 "A lot of people know how to cook barbecue. Not everybody knows how to build a business."
