Today we’d like to introduce you to Kendon Greene.
Kendon, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
In 2012, my wonderful wife Davetta Greene was diagnosed with aggressive stage 3 breast cancer which of course took our family on a ruff ride. We were already dealing with a lot as a young family having a son with sickle cell and another with Downs and congestive heart failure we had to really adjust a lot of things in our lives. We just planted a church in Arlington, TX and I was about to look at going into bass fishing tournaments, but of course, everything had to be pushed to the side and my total focus needed to be on my family. On fathers day of 2012, I came home to a Walmart Char-Grill smoker as a gift and that is where this BBQ journey began. I clearly remember the first brisket I cooked was so nasty that my American Bulldog would not eat it. It quickly became an obsession which had me both studying and cooking every single day trying to get it right and then all of a sudden I came across a YouTube video of one Mr. Aaron Franklin!
I sat and watched him for days and nights on end on how to accurately smoke meat and between him and my big brother of Que Megill Stewart of Big Daddy’s BBQ I had finally gotten it down. We would frequently have people over to come hang out and eat BBQ because that was the only food that my wife could taste while going through the chemo process and a good friend of mine looked at me and said “you ought to start selling this stuff”! So that’s what we did my wife and I bought a small trailer and went out and started selling bbq around the neighborhood which quickly expanded fast than we anticipated. We knew we had to get something different to keep up with the demand so we had a larger trailer built, had to buy a second one, and from there moved into a storefront.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Once we got things finally going in our first storefront things took off! Within our first year, we were awarded 8th best bbq in DFW by D-Magazine, best in Dallas by the Dallas Observer, and TOP 50 BBQ in the state of Texas by Texas Monthly. We catered for some of the countries best tours Beyonce, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Selena Gomez, Timbaland, Fred Hammond, David and Tamela Mannn, and others. While we had a couple of struggles along the way like equipment failure, a flood, but none like the ones that hit home the hardest. On July 27th of 2018, we were moving our restaurant from a 1288 sq ft storefront to a 4000 sq ft when one of our owner and my father Dr. Kenneth Greene had a massive stroke and brain hemorrhaging. For us, it was a complete shock because he is a healthy man on no medications so this really rocked us to the core.
Furthermore, my wife and her family are going through a major storm with her father Donnie Aldridge being terminally ill and being informed that there was nothing else that could be done. A little under a month we lose her father and my father begins his recovery journey all while we are getting construction done in the new place, get everything out of the old one, and train new employees. Talk about being an emotional wreck! This pushed our original open date which was August 5th back two months and we finally opened our doors October 5th, 2019. By then we were drowning in debt, things started off very slow, and we eventually had to close our doors.
Please tell us about TOP 5 BBQ # Nextsemester.
We are a restaurant that specializes in BBQ. The thing that I am most proud of is being a part of the TOP 50 BBQ spots in the state of Texas and secondly, while we had to close our doors I didn’t give up instead bought a trailer and went back to my roots. What sets us apart from others is our “Universal Rub”.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory is graduating from Carter High School in 1999! Many thought I would not make it because of my troubled past, but to walk across that stage and receive my diploma was the highlight of my childhood.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.top5bbq.com
- Phone: 214-883-5382
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/top5bbq/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Top5BBQ/
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
