For more than 60 years Dozier’s Grocery & Market has been a community hub for Fulshear residents. Ed Dozier founded the shop in 1957 as a grocery store and eventually added a restaurant, butchery and smokehouse. “It’s always been a hoppin’ place,” current co-owner Smedley Evans said. “[Before Fulshear’s growth], it was the only place to go other than two gas stations.” Smedley and his brother, Scott Evans, purchased Dozier’s Grocery & Market in 1985. At the time they were looking for a change from their sales jobs, while Dozier, who was in his mid-70s, wanted to retire. Dozier passed down his barbecue and meat-smoking techniques as well as recipes of his house-made sauces and rubs to the brothers. The restaurant offers a menu of brisket, pulled pork, ribs, chicken, Dozier’s famous barbecue sauce and a variety of sides. Some of the original customers still bring their grandchildren to eat the house-made sausage, Evans said. In fact country singer Kyle Hutton wrote a song about his grandfather taking him to Dozier’s where “he’d buy a pound or two of barbecue.” Dozier’s also sells what Smedley calls “presidential bacon.” In the early 1990s when President George H. W. Bush was in office, the Evans brothers would ship whole slabs of uncut Dozier’s bacon to the White House. The brothers once opened up on a day the business was closed to allow an aide to stop by and pick up about 50 pounds of bacon. The wall of Dozier’s dons thank you cards from Bush along with newspaper clippings, Houston Rodeo barbecue contest awards won by Ed Dozier, and heads of deer and hogs. And the Evans brothers do not plan on changing too much anytime soon. “It’s a profitable, good business and always has been,” Smedley said. “It’s worked well for us.”

Dozier’s Grocery & Market

8222 FM 359, Fulshear 281-346-1411 www.doziersbbq.com Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 9:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m.