Wright’s Barbecue is coming to Rogers

Johnson barbecue joint Wright’s Barbecue is expanding its brand of Texas-style brisket in Benton County.

Restaurant entrepreneur Jordan Wright said the popular catering and food company will open a new restaurant in Rogers’ bustling Pinnacle Hills area this fall. He announced the move over the weekend on Twitter and discussed details Monday (July 18) with the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.

The restaurant will be inside the former McClard’s Bar-B-Q space at 5001 W. Pauline Whitaker Parkway. McClard’s, owned by Hunter Thomason and Gus Blass III, opened in April 2021. It closed earlier this month.

Rogers-based Hunt Ventures is the building owner, and Wright’s initial lease term is five years.

“It will be good to serve that area better,” Wright said. “People have been asking us to come to Rogers for a long time, so this makes sense.”

Wright said he hopes to have the restaurant fully open by September. With the capacity to seat more than 100 patrons inside, it will be the largest of three Wright’s locations in Northwest Arkansas. Wright said he would use the building’s large, outdoor covered patio to house the restaurant’s smokers.

Wright opened Wright’s Barbecue inside a small, unassuming white house at 2212 Main Drive in Johnson in October 2017. He left a corporate career with Tyson Foods in the summer of 2017 to give his full attention to the restaurant, which began as a food truck the previous year and still maintains a robust catering division.

With a menu specializing in Texas-style brisket, ribs, sausage, pulled pork and smoked chicken, the restaurant has gained legs as a go-to destination for nationally recognized barbecue.

Wright’s opened a second location in downtown Bentonville in 2020, just across the street from a trailhead for the Slaughter Pen trail system.

Before the Rogers restaurant deal came along, Wright had been working to open a new breakfast concept in the mixed-use Pinnacle Heights development in Rogers, south of Hunt Tower. He said the Junior’s Breakfast Club development is no longer on the table.

Wright’s Barbecue in Rogers will have between 25 and 30 workers. Like the other locations, the restaurant will be open Tuesday through Saturday.

As for future expansion, Wright, a Little Rock native, hinted on Twitter in June that he had plans to open a Little Rock location. He confirmed that speculation but said nothing was imminent.

“We are under contract to buy an existing building,” he said. “It should be late summer or early fall next year [when it opens], depending on the construction. We are working on plans for the build-out of that space.”

Wright did not disclose the Little Rock location.

You can learn more about Wright and his start in the restaurant business in this cover story published in January 2019 in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.