When you walk into Goldee’s Bar-B-Q, you’d probably expect to see older people cooking over barbecue pits, or maybe a few high schoolers running orders to the tables. Instead, you’ll find a group of twenty-somethings running the entire operation, from the barbecue pits to the serving line, taking orders and serving customers.
Lane Milne, Jalen Heard, Dylan Taylor, Jonny White, and brothers P.J. and Nupohn Inthanousay have known each other since elementary school. After graduating high school, they moved to Austin, got an apartment together, and learned the barbecue business.
“We tried different barbecue restaurants for the first time,” recalls Nupohn.
“I like [to call it] Central Texas-style barbecue. It is kind of like craft barbecue in a sense. We tried [Aaron] Franklin style barbecue and other well-known Austin spots, which got us into the barbecue world. It was a religious experience for us,” Nupohn shared.
“We fell in love with it so much that we decided to pursue barbecue as a career. A few of us started working at different barbecue restaurants around Austin, and we worked in the barbecue community for a couple of years. Once we felt like we were ready, we decided [to move] back home to open up Goldee’s.”
It would have been easy for the Goldee’s team to stay in Austin, since they had built up quite a following from their catering events and barbecue classes.
But since Austin was already a hub for barbecue, the guys decided to come back to Dallas-Fort Worth so they could share what they had learned with the community where they grew up.
“The reason why we decided to pick that location [near Kennedale] was for a couple of reasons. One, rent was pretty cheap, two, it had the right vibe that we wanted out of a Texas barbecue restaurant. We wanted it to be like a destination spot,” said Nupohn.
With the help of a number one barbecue spot designation in Texas Monthly’s 2021 “Fifty Best BBQ Joints” list, Goldee’s became just that — a destination. People flocked from all over to sample what Goldee’s had to offer.
“For a long time, DFW [was] looked over in terms of barbecue,” Nupohn said. “No one took the city seriously. It has always [been] about Austin, Lockhart, or some location. But now, [DFW] has Goldee’s and other top ten barbecue restaurants like Panther City and Dayne’s Craft Barbecue. We see people from Canada, Japan, and the UK come to Goldee’s to try us out.”
So what are people ordering when they come to Goldee’s? P.J. says, “brisket,” but his brother, Nupohn, says his favorite menu items are the pork ribs and the smoked turkey, which he calls a “sleeper.”
While many people in their early twenties might hang out at a local bar, Nuphon says he and the rest of the Goldee’s team love tasting food from new restaurants around Texas.
“Goldee’s is our main focus [but] sometimes, if we can, we take day trips to Austin to hang out and try different restaurants and barbecue.”
It’s not always fun and games and barbecue hangs for Nupohn and his partners, however. Making it to number one on one of the most coveted barbecue lists is no easy feat.
The brothers admit luck has been on their side. However, like most start-ups — especially ones that “started up” just before 2020 — Goldee’s has met its fair share of obstacles.
“Right when we opened up in February 2020, the pandemic hit. We had to close right back up after only ten service days. When we were able to open back up, we ran curbside service, and with our style of service, it [was] hard. We went from car to car taking orders and handing out orders, we had a small staff, and we were barely scraping by with the restaurant. There were times when we were thinking to ourselves like, ‘Man, are we going to survive this?’ There were times when we could only pay ourselves fifty to $100 bucks a week,” says Nupohn.
Indeed a relatable story for most restaurateurs. Still, Goldee’s managed to stay afloat during the shutdowns, and has more than made up for the struggle since.
Nupohn shared some of the business savvy that contributed to their survival and success for entrepreneurs who want to follow Goldee’s mold.
“My advice potentially would be to minimize investors and loans…try to keep everything in-house and based on your capital as much as possible. I think that’s one of the big reasons why we have survived too, because we don’t owe any money to anyone.”
While Nupohn and P.J. feel they are still learning, they’ve definitely learned one thing. The Goldee’s business motto is, “You can plan as much as you want. Still, when it comes down to it, you are not going to know what you are doing until you do it; you will learn along the way.”
As for what Goldee’s future looks like, Nupohn says the restaurant will be a stand-alone, as they are not looking to open multiple locations.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t considering branching out.
“We have ideas in terms of different concepts that we might open up, like a burger restaurant, pizza joint or a Lao barbecue restaurant, or something like that,” Nupohn said.
However, P.J. and Nupohn say their biggest goal is to catch lightning in a bottle.
“We want to make number one again [on the Texas Monthly Fifty Best BBQ List]. The list drops every four years, and no one has had a back-to-back number one. We want to be the first one to do that.”
With each Goldee’s owner bringing something unique to the table and the consistent “sold out” sign posted most afternoons on the restaurant’s door, the young men appear to be well-positioned to make barbecue history.
