End of an era: Tom Jenkins’ Bar-B-Q in Fort Lauderdale to close after 36 years

Harry Harrell and Gary Torrence’s mighty Southern pit-stop Tom Jenkins’ Bar-B-Q survived for 36 years on Federal Highway in the shadow of Fort Lauderdale’s ever-rising skyline.

But on Dec. 21, the longtime friends and pitmasters will permanently close their barbecue house at 1236 S. Federal Highway, known for heaping portions of St. Louis-style ribs, juicy chopped pork and smoky chicken, collard greens and mac and cheese, Harrell told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Thursday. He said they plan to sell the building and land.

Calling their retirement “bittersweet,” Harrell, 65, said the tension of “skyrocketing” food prices, catering orders eroded by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the higher costs of labor and insurance convinced them to retire.

“Things have just gotten so much tougher,” he said. “Two years ago, me and [my partner] Gary looked at each other and realized, ‘We’re about to turn 65 — how long do we keep doing this?’ We got to a point where we wanted to step aside.”

This week, the barbecue duo posted their Dec. 21 closing date in goodbye messages taped to Tom Jenkins’ front door and cash register, which Harrell said triggered a flurry of “shocked phone calls” from longtime customers.

The message states: “After two years of careful planning … we have decided to retire and close the doors of Tom Jenkins Bar-B-Q. We want to thank all our customers for all these years of loyal support. … This has been a journey full of love blessed by God and we are certainly grateful.”

Harrell and Torrence, Omega Psi Phi fraternity roommates at Florida A&M University, at first picked careers that bore no resemblance to barbecuing. Harrell majored in computer science and worked at IBM for 13 years as a computer programmer and systems engineer, while Torrence majored in electrical engineering, designing computer chips for eight years before becoming a middle-school math teacher in Broward County.

Together, they created a barbecue sauce — a palate-pleasing blend of sweetness and vinegar — that friends and family clamored for at every gathering. This convinced them to start a business.

However, banks kept rejecting their loan applications because “restaurants then and still do have a risky 90% failure rate,” Harrell said.

“We weren’t into climbing the corporate ladder,” he said. “We’re just kind of entrepreneurs at heart, so we started small, building up a clientele, and thankfully our plan worked.”

In 1989, while still working their 9-to-5 jobs, they opened an 8-by-12-foot barbecue trailer on Federal Highway, in the parking lot of the Inn N Out Oil Change. In 1995, they crossed the street and transformed The Straw Hat, a country and western bar, into the 40-seat Tom Jenkins, named after one of Torrence’s favorite uncles. The restaurant opened for business in 1996.

“That was always the inside joke between us,” Harrell recalled with a laugh. “We had these STEM degrees working with electricity, and here we are now cooking with wood. Go figure.”

Through the years, Tom Jenkins became a massive fan favorite for its three top-sellers — ribs, chopped pork and smoky chicken — slow-cooked over red oak in the restaurant’s 6-by-10-foot pit. And they became just as noteworthy for their sides, including potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, corn on the cob, french fries and onion rings.

Tom Jenkins’ shack has earned decades of praise in local publications, most recently from the Sun Sentinel, whose readers named it the Best Barbecue in 2011 and made it a finalist in the Best of South Florida Dining series last year.

However, the restaurant’s fortunes turned sour when the pandemic obliterated its office catering business, which accounted for 35% of sales, Harrell said. Then, just as their catering business rebounded in recent years, the cost of food, labor and liability insurance soared.

“In-person dining didn’t make up for the loss in catering,” he said. “Restaurants don’t work like gas stations. When oil goes up, gas goes up, and people are used to it. But you can only charge so much for a pork sandwich. If pork prices go up, the menu price stays the same, and we just ate the difference.”

Harrell insists that the recent rise of nearby barbecue competitors — Fat Boyz Barbecue a half-mile north, Ukiah Japanese Smokehouse downtown and all-you-can-eat Gen Korean BBQ on Las Olas Boulevard — did not factor into the decision to retire.

“We were never concerned about competition, not to sound arrogant,” he said. “That’s our IBM training: Never disparage anybody else. We just want to present the best product we can, and we knew it could stand up to anyone else’s product.”

Tom Jenkins’ Bar-B-Q, at 1236 S. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale, is scheduled to close on Dec. 21. Call 954-522-5046.

Sun Sentinel writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com or Twitter/X @philvalys.