JUNE 2019 // CHARLOTTE 61
GENE COURTNEY talks about his 20-year-old barbecue business in terms
of two eras: before the recession and a er. Before 2008, Courtney’s BBQ
won just about every regional competition it entered. Business was good:
Gene and his wife and co-owner, Janice, had the money to travel from
Clover, South Carolina, to Kansas City in 2007 for the American Royal
Invitational, where their ribs placed eighth, and keep Courtney’s open
only three days a week.
A er 2008, regulars who would drive 45 minutes south from Charlotte,
Gene’s hometown, to Clover stopped coming. Courtney’s stayed open
seven days a week instead of three, but Gene struggled to ll the 160-
seat, wood-paneled food hall and its long, community-style tables. Six
months a er the recession hit, he greeted a smiling customer. He turned
to his employees and said, “You see that person smiling? I ain’t seen
anybody smile in six months.”
Gene is old-school in his approach to barbecue. He started mak-
ing ’cue in the 1990s during downtime from his job as a commercial
hardware salesman. He’d cook for friends at St. Paul’s Church in Clover,
smoking the meat with wood in a 55-gallon drum. He doesn’t fuss with
the classics—his Lexington-style sauce is a simple vinegar-ketchup-sugar
combo. But at 62, he’s not reluctant to embrace what’s new, and that, in
part, is why the recession wasn’t the end of Courtney’s.
When his grandchildren bought him a Smart TV for Christmas a couple
of years ago, replacing his box-and-antenna set-up, Gene discovered
YouTube and was sucked in: “I just click on something and just go, go,
go, go.”
Cooking videos inspired him to revamp his hot sauce and create a
“mango bango” sauce (a blend of habanero peppers, mangos, vinegar,
carrots, onions, and tomatoes), and improve his decades-old mari-
nades to include more of the rich molasses £ avor of Kansas City ’cue.
“The ribs we’re cooking today are better than what we were doing
then,” Gene says. “You’re always seeing something you can do di¤ er-
ent, a little better.”
Gene makes his own videos now, too. Wearing a red apron that reads
“The Big Guy,” his nickname with customers, he slices up a smoked pork
tenderloin and posts the clip to Facebook. “Y’all come!” he writes; it’s a
message of welcome and urgency. He needs smiling customers to keep
Courtney’s BBQ open.
“If we fail, we lose everything,” he says. “We were just too hard-headed
to go home, so we stayed here and had to work through it.”
Business is growing again, Gene tells me. He’s able to close on
Mondays and Tuesdays now, so he can spend time with his 30 pigs and
deep-clean the hall with Janice. He hopes to scale back to three days as
he gets older. But he doesn’t plan on closing. “We’ve cooked over two
million pounds of barbecue ... and we nally got it right a few months
ago.” He cracks a smile. “Maybe.” —E.W.Janice and Gene Courtney (above) own
Courtney’s BBQ in Clover, S.C. The restaurant
is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so
Gene can spend time with his pigs (top).
(Right) Ribs and fries.COURTNEY’S
BBQ
1166 STATE HWY. 55 E., CLOVER, S.C.
803«222«5900; COURTNEYSBBQ.COMEST.^1999