Short YouTube video/transcript (Chris Koerner) that draws a business lesson from Texas barbecue: buy raw materials cheaply and add value by refining them. The speakers compare pork/wood/metal examples and price-per-pound differences (e.g., cheap bulk cuts vs. trimmed portions) to illustrate margin opportunities ("buy by the acre and sell by the foot").
You can learn a lot about business from authentic Texas barbecue. Here's my favorite lesson, and then I'll show you how my pork chops are doing.
This guy shakes out to 23 cents a pound because I buy them by the cord. It's kind of like the old boomer that just doesn't care anymore. These are uniform 11 inch splits that I pay about dollar a pound for. That's kind of like my hipster millennial. And then these cute little guys serve a little purpose. They're 3 inch cubes. They cost $1.50 a pound. That's your high maintenance Gen Z that dresses well, but it's actually poor.
And Traeger pellets.
Those are basically hot dogs. And we don't compare hot dogs to steaks.
So what's the lesson? Buy by the acre and sell by the foot. There's much more money to be made in buying raw materials and spending a little time or money to refine them down into something that adds more value. A piece of rebar is a dollar a pound. A box of paper clips is $20 a pound.
And these pork chops are looking just fine.
