John Bates, owner of InterStellar BBQ, said he has been in the food industry for 30 years. After working as a chef, Bates opened Noble Sandwich Co. in 2010 a half-mile down the road from InterStellar BBQ, which is at 12233 N. RM 620, Austin.
Bates and his staff moved Noble Sandwich Co. over to where InterStellar BBQ currently resides in 2013. They later changed the concept in 2019 into what it is today.
Bates said he enjoyed running the sandwich shop but needed something new.
“Frankly I was getting a little bored, and we weren’t really growing in the way we wanted to at that point in time,” Bates said. “Barbecue seemed like a natural progression for me and the restaurant because we served a lot of smoked meats at Noble. It wasn’t like going from serving sandwiches to serving sushi.”
When the restaurant relaunched into InterStellar BBQ, Bates said a goal was to create a positive, wholesome and relational work environment.
“I’m here about 80 hours a week, and other staff are here 50 or 60 hours a week,” Bates said. “I want staff here to be surrounded by positive and happy people because working in a restaurant can be stressful.”
The restaurant has two cooking pits: Its main pit is 1,000 gallons, and the other is 500 gallons, Bates said.
“Ninety percent of our food comes from our main cooking pit and my buddy John Brotherton, who owns Brotherton’s Black Iron Barbecue in Pflugerville, lent me the 500-gallon pit until we get another 1,000-gallon one,” Bates said. “He’s been very supportive of our restaurant since day one.”
After Texas Monthly published its November 2021 article ranking InterStellar BBQ second out of 50 of the best barbecue restaurants in Texas, Bates said he is seeing more than the regulars throughout the week and families on the weekends. Even though more customers are coming in, the restaurant is continuing to focus on quality over quantity.
“We could try to get three more pits and run more registers but then the quality of the goods would suffer because we would be overreaching,” he said. “The goal is to find the sweet spot between being busy enough to stay in business and not be so busy where customer service and food quality starts to derail.”
InterStellar BBQ
12233 N. RM 620, Ste. 105, Austin
512-382-6248 | www.theinterstellarbbq.com
Hours: Wed.-Sun. 11 a.m. until sold out, closed Mon.-Tue.
