09/30/2026
Once a year, we load the trailers,
pack the smokers, coolers, tables and chairs,
and head across town.
We come from different towns,
different states,
and different walks of life.
Some of us will drive a few miles.
Some will drive all night.
But when we pull through those gates
at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue,
we all come for the same reason.
We come to cook.
But somewhere along the way,
it became about so much more than barbecue.
For one week,
a parking lot becomes a neighborhood.
Trailers become homes.
Canopies become front porches.
And the people parked beside us
become family.
We shake hands with old friends
we haven’t seen since last season.
We meet new ones
who somehow feel like we’ve known them for years.
There will be stories told around smokers,
drinks shared under the lights,
music playing late into the night,
and more than a few lies told about
who really cooked the best brisket last year.
We’ll laugh.
We’ll eat way too much.
We’ll borrow something from the team next door
that we swore we packed.
And somewhere around two or three in the morning,
when most of Kansas City is asleep,
there will still be smoke rolling from the pits
and friends sitting around talking about life.
Then competition day comes.
The joking gets a little quieter.
The knives come out.
The fires get checked.
The boxes get built.
And suddenly, all those practice cooks,
late nights,
bad scores,
great calls,
new recipes,
and lessons learned
come down to a few pieces of meat
inside a turn-in box.
For a few minutes,
we’re competitors.
We want our number called.
We dream about walking across that stage
at the biggest barbecue contest in the world.
And every one of us wonders…
Could this be our year?
But when the last box is turned in,
we become family again.
Because we know what it took
just to get here.
And when our friend’s number gets called,
we cheer.
When somebody finally gets the walk
they’ve chased for years,
we celebrate with them.
And when things don’t go our way,
someone is usually standing nearby
with a cold drink and the words,
“We’ll get ’em next time.”
That’s barbecue.
It’s competition,
but it’s also friendship.
It’s chasing trophies
while helping the team beside you.
It’s guarding recipes
and giving away everything else.
It’s celebrating the wins,
laughing about the losses,
and knowing we’ll all do it again.
Years from now,
we probably won’t remember every score.
We won’t remember every brisket
that finished 17th instead of 7th.
The trophies will collect dust.
The banners will fade.
But we’ll remember the people.
We’ll remember sitting between the trailers
laughing until our sides hurt.
We’ll remember the midnight fires.
The early mornings.
The hugs after awards.
The friends who became family.
And we’ll remember that for one week every year,
hundreds of teams came together in Kansas City
to chase a championship.
But somewhere between the smoke,
the turn-in boxes,
and the awards…
we found something even better.
We found each other.
So here’s to the cooks.
Here’s to the families who support us.
Here’s to the friends parked beside us.
Here’s to the teams we’ve battled against
and celebrated with.
Here’s to the smoke,
the long nights,
the memories,
and the stories we’ll tell for years.
And here’s to one more week together
at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue
May our fires burn clean,
may our boxes make the table,
may somebody in this family hear their number called…
and no matter what happens at awards,
may we never forget that the best thing we take home
isn’t a trophy.
It’s the memories we made together.
