There’s never a dull moment at Pell City Texaco, Wade Reich is apt to say, and that’s especially true the first week of July.

Independence Day is one of the busiest times of the year for the station and its popular barbeque brand, Butts to Go.  Expecting a particularly busy week this year, Reich has ordered 11,000 pounds of pork – 5.5 tons, or the weight equivalent of three average-sized SUVs – to be smoked and served up to customers.

He recently identified what accounts for Butts to Go’s success, recounted how he started in the food industry and explained how a gas station came to be an unlikely destination for barbecue connoisseurs. 

Butts to Go’s beginnings:  Reich began operating Pell City Texaco with this partners Tim and Alyson Jackson in 2008.  “Food World across the street had always set up a smoker outside and cooked on holidays.  When they went out, we started doing it, and people started asking for it more often.  By Memorial Day 2009, we were smoking butts and ribs, and after that July 4, we were doing it every weekend.

The menu grows:  “I was out there on the smoker one day, and a guy pulled up and asked if we had ‘sammiches.’  S-a-m-m-i-c-h-e-s.  ‘Sammiches.’  So I thought, ‘Well, I guess we gotta start selling sandwiches now.”  The barbeque sandwich is now one of Butts to Go’s top-selling items.

The menu now includes:  Whole Boston butts, pulled pork, spare ribs, baby back ribs, wings and a variety of sides, sandwiches and biscuits.

His favorite menu item:  “I don’t know that I have one.  There certainly is a limit on the amount of pork you can eat, but I’d probably say the baby back ribs.”

What makes Butts to Go different:  “For most barbeque places, what’s special is the sauce. Our flavor is in the meat, not the sauce.  Barbeque sauce is not to detract from the meat.”

Why Butts to Go exists:  “We cater to people who don’t have time.  Nobody has time today.  The average workweek is 35 hours, but some of us work 70.  We’re here because of our customers, and we’ve been really lucky.  It’s hard to make it in the convenience store business.”

Why it’s so hard:  “Everything is so competitive.  The gasoline business alone is horrible.  You can’t depend on gas sales any more, so everyone is trying to figure out what they can do to improve their lot in life.”

What are the options?  “It used to be car washes, but I don’t think they’ve done so well the last few years.  If you’ve a guy who’s got 20 or 30 stations, you try to hook up with a franchise or chain.  There’s not a convenience store out there that’s not trying to figure out how to make profits inside the store.”

Reich’s beginnings in the food business:  “I grew up in it, but not necessarily with barbeque,” he said.  His first job was bagging groceries at Piggly Wiggly, and after graduating college, he opened a restaurant in Gadsden in an old hotel his grandfather that bought in 1894.  “What do you do with an old building?  We turned it into a nostalgic restaurant.”

Traveling the world:  Reich eventually began working with supermarket promotions.  “You’ve seen the displays where if you buy so much in groceries you get a porcelain china plate for 59 cents?  That was us.”  Supermarket games and stamps took him to London, Paris and the Middle East before he returned to Alabama.  “The opportunities here have been good, but we’ve done nothing splendiferous.  We’ve just followed our nose and built it up gradually.”

At the end of the day:  “Everybody’s got their favorite barbeque place, and we have really good, loyal customers.  We count our blessings, because we wouldn’t be there without them.”