Meet Phillip and Yvette Helberg of Helberg Barbecue

Today we’d like to introduce you to Phillip and Yvette Helberg

Hi Phillip and Yvette, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We started Helberg Barbecue in April of 2018 in a food truck in Waco, TX after moving back to Texas from being away for a few years. We started outside of a local coffee shop during the weekdays and at the farmers market on the weekends. Some time later, we were invited to serve at a local winery on Saturday evenings outside of Waco Proper, in a community known as Speegleville. We loved and looked forward to our Saturday evenings at the winery.
Between the opening of our food truck and the opening of our original brick and mortar in May 2019, we were named as a Top 25 New BBQ Joint by Texas Monthly Magazine, a list that comes out every four years in between their famous Texas Monthly Top 50 BBQ Joints list.
Many thought we were crazy for moving our business outside of city limits, but something felt right to us out in Speegleville. So in May of 2019, we opened up at 8532 N HWY 6, Woodway, TX 76712.
We served at this location for about four and half years. We had our ups and our downs. We received a handful of accolades both local and statewide. One of our biggest was being named in Texas Monthly’s prestigious Top 50 BBQ Joints list in 2021. We are so thankful for the recognition and support from Texas Monthly. More recently, we were named among Yelp’s top 100 BBQ Restaurants in the country. We have loved getting to know our community and dive in to find the best ways to support them as they’ve supported us. We were able to serve countless people through our doors and be a part of so many wonderful occasions. But like I said, we also had our downs and low points.
On November 26, 2023, our restaurant suffered a fire that took out our entire kitchen and more. Receiving a call and then showing up to your restaurant in flames is something I would never wish upon anyone. But in this moment, we felt and witness a love and comfort unlike anything before. We had people pulling up alongside the road to hug us and even pray for us. We texted everyone we could think of from our church to just pray. We felt the comfort of the Lord even through our tears. The following days were tough, and filled with lots of uncertainty. But thanks to our bbq community, our local community and ultimately our God, pushed through and found a way to open back up. We were forced to close our doors for about three weeks but were able to open up at the location again, but in the form of a drive thru. We managed to open up a few days before Christmas. We had to reduce our staff down from 28 people to 11 people, which was really hard for us. We are thankful for those we got to keep and move forward with.
We adapted and made our drive thru situation work until the middle of May 2024. It was in May that we moved to our new location, a piece of land we’ve owned for a few years now, just right down the road. We have had plans to build on that location for the last couple of years – this situation definitely sped up the process. We had an informal “groundbreaking” ceremony where we gathered those who have come alongside us since the fire to thank them but also pray over the land, that the Lord will be present and known by those who come in and share a meal with us. In the meantime, we moved our “drive thru” trailers over and built a walk-up style temporary site. Now, you can walk up and order your food at the window, sit down in our covered outdoor seating area, and watch our new building come up. We love getting to share this journey with our customers. Our new address is 7809 N Hwy 6, Woodway, TX 76712. We are just down the road from our old location, just slightly closer to Waco. If there’s anything these last 8 months have taught me, it’s that things don’t always go according to plan and that sometimes, you need to get back to the “why” behind what we’re doing. We have spent a lot of time asking ourselves just that. “Why” are we doing this? Why do we keep going? The answer is found in a verse we’ve had at the forefront of our restaurant from the beginning. 1 Peter 4:10 reads,” As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” We have been given this opportunity, this gift, to show hospitality and serve others, bringing people together around a table to share a meal.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. We’ve had employees steal from us and customers. We’ve had slow seasons where we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. As stated previously, we had a fire last year that put the future of Helberg Barbecue in jeopardy. But all of this to say, it has made us stronger and wiser. It has taught us that so much is out of our control and power, but that through these difficulties, we can find our strength and perseverance.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Helberg Barbecue?
We are a husband and wife-owned barbecue restaurant. We specialize in Central Texas Style barbecue but have a more “chef driven” approach to the things we do. While we are known for our classics such as brisket and sausage, some crowd favorites on our day to day menu are the smoked then fried chicken and our pork steak, which is a more classic and old school way of preparing the pork butt.
Every Saturday, we have a rotating special, which typically consists of different special sandwiches. Outside of our food, we hope that the overall experience at Helberg is memorable – and most of all, that you walk away feeling like family.
I am proud of how we try to do things within the community and try to be a part of it. I am proud of the name we’ve built in knowing that schools know they can come to us to help sponsor or gift teachers.
We love to cater as well. There is no event too small or too big that we can’t do, We have served events of more than 1000 people and as small as 6 people. We love getting to serve others and create new memories for them that hopefully they will carry with them.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Being able to adapt and be flexible is crucial, especially in the hospitality/food service industry. We feel like the covid-19 temporary changes we had to make set us up for success after our fire in that we had limited time to adapt and change our processes but still had to just to keep our doors open. We’ve also learned there’s a lot of grace to be had in times like that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.helbergbarbecue.com
• Instagram: @helbergbarbecue
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helbergranch
• Yelp: Helberg Barbecue
• Other: https://www.helbergbbqwholesale.com