About Joe’s Barbeque

In Houston, Texas, in the late 1950’s a very young Joe Saladino remembers going with his father in the early morning hours to join his grandfather in preparing barbeque for the Saladino family restaurant. His dream then, as it was years later, was to own his own barbeque restaurant.

Fifty plus years later, Joe’s Barbeque is one of the most successful barbeque enterprises in the country today.

In 1976 Joe Saladino opened his first restaurant in Manvel, Texas. The "first" Joe’s Barbeque had four tables, one barbeque pit, and three employees. With income an uncertainty, the expense side of the ledger had to be carefully watched. For a while only 8 potatoes were prepared daily; 4 for lunch and 4 for dinner.

At the present day Joe’s Barbeque Restaurant in Alvin, Texas, expenses are still closely watched, but on a slightly different scale. On an average day, the Alvin restaurant goes through 80 briskets, 130 slabs of pork and beef ribs, 100 pounds of sausage, 80 half chickens, and approximately 10 hams. Approximately 1200 people daily visit Joe’s Barbeque to enjoy slow cooked real Texas barbeque at its best. The staff, up from the original 3, totals 75-80 on any given week.

If these numbers seem impressive, Joe’s catering business is equally eye-popping. Son Joey, who heads up the catering operation, averages 300 off site catering jobs a month. The largest catering job was done a few years back for Monsanto Chemical Company where food was prepared for 25,000 people. Southwest Airlines, NASA, Lockheed-Martin, Houston’s Methodist Hospital, and the South Texas Nuclear Power plant in nearby Bay City, Texas are other notable customers that have experienced Joe’s catering operation first-hand.

Joe’s Banquet Center, located next door to Joe’s Barbeque Restaurant, opened in 1999. The ultra modern facility is quite a contrast to the rustic barbeque atmosphere of its next door neighbor. Weddings, anniversaries, and birthday events make up a majority of the monthly calendar. Add monthly civic club meetings along with businesses and schools (Alvin and many neighboring districts), along with chamber of commerce and political events and it’s hard to find an open date for many individuals and groups wanting to book an engagement.