Colter's Bar-B-Q

Colter's Bar-B-Q was founded in Dallas in 1980 by Peter McGuire, a veteran restaurateur who had previously developed more than one hundred Burger King locations in Texas and the Northeast and dozens of Church's Fried Chicken restaurants in California. McGuire converted an existing Dallas barbecue restaurant into the first Colter's and built a business system around hickory-smoked Texas pit barbecue — brisket, spare ribs, sausage, and onion rings — with attentive service touches that made Colter's a household name across the Dallas–Fort Worth area. At its peak the franchised chain had locations throughout the Metroplex.

The system has since contracted to a small family operation: Colter's today runs two locations, in Arlington and southwest Dallas, still smoking every brisket and rack of ribs over real hickory the way it has for more than four decades. The company no longer operates as a franchise system and is not accepting franchise inquiries.

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