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Key Takeaways
- Their business started as a side gig and slowly grew into a full-time business.
- Black Cactus combines Texas barbecue techniques with global flavors.
- The brisket brings customers in. The rest of the tray shows them why Black Cactus is worth coming back for.
Before running Black Cactus Barbecue in London, Matt Kears and Josh Alcock worked on building sites. They had to run their first professional kitchen themselves.
Kears worked in construction and rail while building a coffee business with friends. After tasting a brisket roll at Meatopia, he wanted to bring that experience closer to home.
“There’s nothing around here for that,” he says.
He began smoking meat alongside selling coffee. Four weeks after moving into a new coffee location in Shoreditch, London, COVID hit.
“I literally had come back and just started smoking meat, vacuum packing it, and selling it on a WhatsApp group to my mates,” Kears says.
The customers came from his rugby group. So did his future business partner.
Alcock, an electrician working in the Netherlands, was posting photos of his cooking on Instagram. While friends teased him for sharing pictures of his dinner, Kears asked if he wanted to help build a barbecue business.
The two began discussing a menu of takeaway barbecue rolls, each with flavors drawn from a different culture. When they finally cooked together, Alcock realized he enjoyed it far more than his regular job.
“After that I was hooked,” he says.
They spent years developing the business through markets and food festivals, using Kears’ parents’ bungalow as their prep kitchen. But working their trades during the week and selling food on weekends left little time for friends or partners, and the business still wasn’t making money.
They contacted London breweries about a permanent opportunity. When one accepted, they quit their jobs.
“It was like, ‘Oh, shit. We’re in it now,’” Alcock says.
Making barbecue had become their livelihood. Now they had to learn to run the kitchen that served it.
Barbecue without boundaries
Texas influences the cooking at Black Cactus Barbecue. The flavors come from much farther afield.
For Alcock and Kears, building their own restaurant meant making food they wanted to eat. Their early idea for takeaway barbecue rolls gave each meat its own identity, with flavors drawn from different cultures.
“It’s Texas-influenced,” Alcock says. “And it’s world flavors.”
That approach comes with a responsibility to understand the cuisines they draw from. When developing a Caribbean brisket, for example, Alcock wanted the flavors to be as authentic as possible.
“You got to give it its respect and search its history and do it properly,” he says.
Neither partner came from a professional culinary background. Kears believes that has given them room to experiment without feeling bound by rules about which flavors belong together.
“If you’ve got an idea, if it works, it works. If it don’t, it don’t,” Kears says.
Not every customer embraces that freedom. Alcock says they still receive reviews criticizing their sides for being nontraditional. Even their Saturday Texas barbecue tray, featuring beans, mac and cheese, and slaw, carries their own interpretations.
Their seasonal menu takes the experimentation further. One version reimagined a British Sunday roast as a barbecue tray, with tri-tip, maple garlic turkey, roast potatoes and smoked gravy. Another brought together French-inspired tri-tip, Portuguese piri piri turkey and Polish kielbasa.
The menus also encourage customers to explore beyond brisket, which Alcock says has become a buzzword in the United Kingdom. Some guests use the name even when they’re eating another cut.
“We’ve had people come to the pass and tell us our brisket’s amazing,” Alcock says. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, they just had tri-tip.’”
By serving set trays, Black Cactus introduces customers to other meats, house-made sausage and sides.
The brisket brings customers in. The rest of the tray shows them why Black Cactus is worth coming back for.
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