Whitt's Barbecue

In the 50’s and 60’s Floyd Whitt had a unique hobby of building barbecue pits. Floyd, a premier bricklayer in the Tennessee Valley, experimented with several pit designs and sauce recipes until he perfected the way barbecue is cooked in the South. Neighbors passing by and catching the aroma of the hickory-smoked meat, stopped to look, smell, and buy. Instead, Floyd and Laura, his wife, passed out samples and asked only for feedback. Laura dreamed of building a small building in their backyard -- cooking and selling enough barbecue to put their four children through college, an idea that turned into a great tradition. Floyd left his bricklaying profession to open their first store on Labor Day of 1966.