Red’s True brings the ‘barbecue belt’ to the region

But a year ago, the American-inspired restaurant had only just been born out of an idea by its founders, James Douglas and Scott Munro, to bring the barbecue style of the southern states to Britain.

Mr Douglas had just sold his Leeds-based rental property business Nest Lettings to Countrywide, and Mr Munro had worked for American technology company Sierra Wireless.

The pair were introduced by a mutual friend and 10 days later had embarked on a trip to America’s ‘barbecue belt’, as it’s known, to find the best recipes.

They were joined by Mr Munro’s childhood friend, Clint Britz, a chef. The pair had grown up in South Africa together, but have lived in Leeds for around 20 years.

All three had a love for barbecue food – Mr Douglas had created a barbecue sauce that his son was convinced he should sell.

“We hired one of these big motorhomes and we just drove around America,” said Mr Douglas.

“We went all around the southern states, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Orleans, and we just ate five barbecue meals a day for weeks on end,” he recalled.

Mr Douglas and Mr Munro launched the restaurant in Cloth Hall Street, Leeds, at the beginning of September last year – primarily using their own cash.

The pair are the majority owners of the business, with Mr Britz holding five per cent of the shareholding.

The restaurant serves a range of meats which are cooked “low and slow” using hickory and fruit woods in custom-made American smokers imported from the US.

“We do a celebration of barbecue so a collective of all the different regional styles of barbecue,” said Mr Douglas.

“All our meat is slow-cooked, so our brisket takes 23 hours to cook and our pulled pork takes about 14 hours and our ribs take up to about 12 hours,” he added.

The plan now is to open another restaurant in Manchester in February, with negotiations on a lease for an additional site in a different UK city currently taking place.

Red’s True Barbecue has secured funding from Royal Bank of Scotland to roll out the concept beyond Leeds. “We’ve got a deal in place that allows us to fund the next two or three restaurants,” said Mr Douglas.

At 6,050 sq ft, the Manchester site is significantly larger than the Leeds restaurant, which is around 2,600 sq ft.

Red’s True Barbecue also plans to sell its own sauces in its restaurants and online from next year.

This year, Red’s True Barbecue has turned over £3.2m with an Ebitda of around £650,000, which the majority being re-invested in the business.

In its first six months, Red’s True Barbecue attracted the interest of Luke Johnson, the serial entrepreneur behind the growth of Pizza Express. Mr Johnson told the Yorkshire Post that he had a couple of meetings with the company to discuss the possibility of investment in the business, but a deal did not take place.

“We are kind of just two guys who really love barbecue and it’s turned into this massive machine,” said Mr Douglas.

Recalling the early days of the Leeds restaurant, he said: “Me and Scott have never worked in a restaurant before. Clint was a head chef for a big hotel chain but even he hadn’t worked in a customer-facing restaurant, he’d always been in hotels.

“It was like getting hit by a bus.” He added: “It was just crazy. People just kind of went wild for what we were doing.”

The restaurant in Leeds employs 60 people, with the Manchester site expected to employ between 85 and 95 staff.

“It’s been a success. We’ve employed lots of people”, added Mr Douglas.

Red’s True Barbecue’s meat is all locally sourced, he added. “We just like working with the smaller companies if we can and hopefully we can keep money in our region. It’s really important for us.

“As we open up in Manchester it gets more difficult to do that but we’d like to work with the local suppliers down there and try and keep that narrative of ‘buy British’ really.

“We are serving American-style food with British products and they are some of the best products in the world.”

Mr Douglas said the plan is to have around 15 to 18 Red’s True Barbecue restaurants open in total over the next five years. “We’d be happy with 12, but I think if we can really ramp it up and get the right people on board then we could do 15 to 18 in five years”, he said.

“For us, we opened in Leeds because it was our home town and the people of Leeds, we’ve got to thank them really, because although people travel from all over the country to come to the restaurant, we’re happy it’s created jobs in Leeds, and the council took a chance on us in terms of giving us a licence and we’ve exceeded their expectations.”

[email protected]