One family.
Two names.
Plenty of beef.

By Anthony DePass · November 13, 2026

In most towns, a restaurant name helps you find lunch. Here, one extra word takes you into a family argument. The Original Black’s Barbecue and Terry Black’s Barbecue are separate businesses with roots in the same Lockhart family. Neither name is shorthand for the other. That distinction matters when you choose a restaurant, place a pickup order or decide whose history you are reading.

Terry Black’s opened its New Braunfels restaurant on September 15, 2026, at 1310 E. Common Street. The Original Black’s already operates nearby at 936 TX-337 Loop. MySA’s opening report describes the two as sharing a parking lot. The family split has acquired a very local geography. [1] [2]

Before the argument, there was a meat market

The Original Black’s traces its beginnings to 1932 in Lockhart, where Edgar Black Sr. established the business as a meat market. Its own history credits Edgar Black Jr. with developing it into a full restaurant. Kent Black later returned from a legal career to operate the business and purchased it from his parents. [3]

Kent and Terry Black are brothers. Terry’s children Christina, Mike and Mark founded Terry Black’s in Austin in 2014, naming it for their father. The new name therefore signals another branch of a real family tradition, rather than an unrelated company borrowing a familiar surname. [4] [5]

For decades, the story belonged as much to Edgar Jr. and Norma Jean as to the surname over the door. In a 2014 interview with Eater, Kent recalled his father returning from Navy service, completing college and intending to take another job before agreeing to help at the store. What began as a short commitment became a working lifetime. Kent also credited Norma Jean with developing the restaurant’s sauce. The family eventually left the grocery trade as the barbecue business grew. [10]

That progression gives the later argument its weight. The inheritance was more than a company name. It was work learned young, family stories repeated at the table, recipes and routines associated with parents and grandparents. A surname could carry all of that into a new restaurant. It could also raise the question of who had permission to speak for the old one.

The name was where the split became public

The rupture emerged in 2013 as Terry’s side prepared an Austin restaurant using the Black’s Barbecue name. Reporting by the Houston Chronicle describes a lawyer’s notice ending Terry’s and Michael’s work for the original business, followed by Kent’s demand that the Austin venture change its name. It opened as Terry Black’s in 2014. [6]

KXAN’s 2025 interviews give conflicting accounts of permission for an Austin expansion. [7]

From family argument to roadside advertising

By the time Terry Black’s expanded into Lockhart in 2022, the rivalry was appearing on signs as well as menus. Austin Monthly documented Black’s asserting its status as the town’s original and Terry Black’s responding with pointed marquee messages. The magazine interviewed Mark Black, who acknowledged approving a sign mocking how a pitmaster earns the title. [8]

The geography was provocative. The new Terry Black’s stood on the approach from Austin, allowing it to meet arriving barbecue pilgrims before they reached the old restaurant downtown. Black’s stressed that there was only one original in Lockhart. Terry Black’s answered with a sign reading Pitmaster: Where the title is earned not because mama said so. Mark told Austin Monthly that someone on his team devised the message and he approved it. [8]

One of the sharpest exchanges involved an exact dollar amount. On September 19, 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor announced the recovery of $230,353 for 274 workers after finding that Black’s businesses had improperly shared employees’ tips with managers. The release named Black’s Barbecue Inc., Kent Black’s Lockhart Barbecue Inc. and New Braunfels Barbecue LLC. It did not name Terry Black’s. [11]

Terry Black’s then turned the amount into a marquee message suggesting there were that many additional reasons to eat at its restaurant, Austin Monthly reported. A family grievance had become an advertising device visible from the road. [8]

Two ways of carrying the same tradition

Behind the spectacle sits a more interesting argument about barbecue itself. In her 2025 New Yorker account, Rachel Monroe described Kent’s commitment to preserving the older restaurant’s style and the younger generation’s embrace of the craft-barbecue market. She also examined the contrast between the original business’s rotisserie cooking and the attention to offset smokers at Terry Black’s. Both sides frame their work through family tradition, even when the equipment and business model differ. [12]

That is the tension in miniature: preserving what a family built can mean keeping familiar methods, or applying inherited knowledge to a different kitchen and a different audience. Customers encounter the argument through signs and smoke, but the underlying question belongs to many family businesses. When does continuity become resistance to change? When does reinvention become a claim to something someone else believes they own?

The Original Black’s emphasizes its 1932 beginnings. Its New Braunfels menu highlights post-oak smoke and hand-stuffed, hand-tied sausage, along with brisket and turkey sandwiches. Terry Black’s places the pit operation prominently in the experience; its local menu includes sliced brisket, beef and pork ribs, turkey, original sausage and jalapeño-cheese sausage. The overlap is substantial. These are competing interpretations of a shared regional vocabulary. [13] [2]

A second battle over a Lockhart office

The conflict also reached the courts over property used by Terry for his accounting office. The May 19, 2023 opinion in KBCB Investments, LLC v. Terry Black describes a 2012 lease signed by Terry both as tenant and as president of the company that owned the premises. It specified zero monthly rent and assigned him certain expenses. A company formed by Kent and his wife later acquired the property and challenged the lease. [4]

The Texas Third Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the company’s request for a temporary injunction. That left Terry’s use of the premises undisturbed at that stage, while the merits of the lease dispute remained a separate question. On August 3, 2023, the same court declined permission for another interlocutory appeal concerning partial summary judgment. [9] The family’s disagreements extended well beyond whose name appeared above a barbecue counter.

A short timeline of the split

The New Braunfels chapter

For visitors based around Gruene, the family story once required a detour to Austin or Lockhart. The Original Black’s has served New Braunfels since 2018. Terry Black’s September 2026 arrival puts the two businesses close enough for a local comparison, with no separate barbecue road trip required. [2] [1]

The new Terry Black’s was designed around a two-story covered outdoor deck and a roughly 1,400-square-foot pithouse. Its opening announcement described multiple meat-cutting stations and a market-style service format. That makes the setting part of the visit as well as a place to sit with a tray. [5]

The proximity does not establish why the company chose the site. What it does establish is a choice for diners: two related names, two separate operations and two doors close together. An order placed with one is not an order placed with the other.

Try the barbecue. Check the address.

For a comparison lunch, order modest amounts of the same cuts and share. A slice of lean brisket, a slice from the fattier end and a sausage link make a more useful comparison than buying completely different meals. Add a side at each stop and leave room for the second counter. Confirm holiday hours directly before traveling.

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