Ole Hickory Pits founder inducted into Barbecue Hall of Fame

While many barbecue aficionados consider themselves masters of the grill, one local lover of smoke-flavored food has cayenne pepper and molasses running through his veins.

The American Royal Association recognized the aforementioned condition in David Knight, president and founder of Ole Hickory Pits in Cape Girardeau, and last week announced his induction into the Barbecue Hall of Fame in the Business and Industry Category.

Knight grew up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and said he developed his love of barbecue through a friendship with the Pruitt family, who owned an eatery for many years.

"When I was growing up, I lived close to, and went to first grade through high school, with Dale Pruitt. His family owned the Pruitt's Barbecue, which was a pretty famous name back in the day for barbecue in Poplar Bluff. So, I was always fascinated with that growing up," Knight said.

Knight left Poplar Bluff and earned his undergraduate degree through Arkansas State University and a master's in business administration through Jacksonville State University. He moved back to Southeast Missouri and in 1974 opened his first restaurant, Port Cape Girardeau.

Knight said back then, "technology" was not a word often heard in the same sentence with "barbecue."

"You either had a brick pit or a barrel. So, since this was a historic building, I built a brick pit inside. The flue went up three stories high and it had a manual damper system, where you pulled the chain and it would open up the flange in the flue ... which worked great, if the cooks remembered to do that," Knight laughed.

Knight said that while the barbecue was delicious, after the fire department responded to the restaurant three times in one week to extinguish the blaze in the pit, it was time to look at safer alternatives. His research and innovations eventually led to the formation of Ole Hickory Pits.

"The third time the firetrucks came to put the pit out, that's when the idea that there should be a better way to barbecue came about," he said.

Knight said the first thing he wanted to do was address the fire issue, as it seemed to be a problem for many barbecue restaurants across the country. To do that, he designed a cooker in which the fire was separated from the meat. The new system prevented flare-ups from dripping fat and cooked food at an even temperature.

"We have a patented system called Convecture Technology that recirculates the heat and smoke inside the cooking chamber. It cooks more evenly and actually conserves energy. It is so much more efficient than the old brick pit -- miles of difference," he said.

Knight said during his 42-year career the biggest change to the industry is more barbecue franchises emerging across the nation, and the subsequent death of more family-owned eateries.

"Now, we are seeing not only regional barbecue chains, but also national and international. It would be similar to the family farm -- 40 years ago a large percentage of the American population was engaged in farming. Today, with the mechanization, there are a lot fewer people in the farming industry," Knight said.

"The beauty of this is the mom and pops will still exist, and they will excel, because people will visit them if they are the best. It will not eliminate the mom and pops; it will just reposition them as a percentage of the total barbecue being sold," he said.

Knight said the future of barbecue may be in overseas markets.

"To draw an analogy, barbecue in some foreign countries is what pizza was to us 40 years ago," he said. "Forty years ago, pizza was a novelty and they were just starting to catch on to it as a franchise concept. The foreign countries are now where we were with pizza, so they are catching on."

"We have pits everywhere in the world from Australia to the U.K. -- I have a dealer in Israel. The former Soviet Union is also coming on," Knight said.

Knight and other inductees will be officially inducted during a ceremony at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue sometime in October in Kansas City. An exact time and date has not been announced.