The Texas Barbecue Fit for Presidents

During the early 1980s, Terry Wootan earned a comfortable living as a successful real estate broker in a booming market in Llano. But by 1986, the market for Hill Country ranches crept to a halt.

Wootan had a sizable mortgage, a wife, and two children, and he needed another source of income. And other than selling real estate, one of the only other real jobs Wootan had ever had was cooking barbecue.

When he was in high school, he worked at Tommy Cooper’s pit. Cooper came from a Hill Country barbecuing dynasty. His father, George, opened the original Cooper’s in Mason in 1953. Tommy struck out on his own in 1962.

Cowboy Style

Unlike the German-influenced meat smokers in Central Texas, the Coopers cooked their meat “Cowboy style” — directly over the coals, so that the juice from the meat dripped onto the hot mesquite and evaporated into smoke. Wootan had fun running the pits with Tommy’s son Barry.

On Sundays, neighbors would bring their chicken up to the Cooper’s pits and keep track of it by writing the owners’ names on wooden ice cream spoons and sticking them into the meat before throwing it over the coals.

“Ninety percent of the time, you’d get the chicken that you brought,” Wootan says, chuckling.

Tommy Cooper died in an auto accident in 1979. One of his employees ran the restaurant for a few years after his death. But in 1986, it came up for lease. Wootan, out of luck in real estate, decided to cast his fate in smoke. He signed the paperwork and called Barry.

“Guess what I’ve just done?” Wootan told Barry. “I leased Cooper’s.”

Manning the Pits

Today, Cooper’s is one of Texas’ most famous barbecue joints. In addition to the Llano location — which Wootan purchased outright in 1992 — there are now outposts in Austin, Fort Worth, and New Braunfels, and Wootan is expanding the operation to College Station and Katy this year. The company also runs a robust mail-order business, shipping its renowned barbecue sauce and meats across the U.S. Wootan has catered events for the White House, at the Governor’s Mansion, and at President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch.

But business wasn’t always this good. Back when Wootan took over Cooper’s in 1986, it was a small, single-room joint with two pits outside. With scant resources, Wootan borrowed about $5,000 from his father and invested his own hard labor. To get the operation up and running, he enlisted his wife, his two sons (one was in high school, the other in eighth grade), Barry, and two old friends — brothers and Texas Farm Bureau Insurance Agents Kirk and Lynn Winfrey. They worked at the local office, where Wootan had his insurance policies.

“We had to take care of everything,” Wootan says. “They helped me through the weekend. Then they went to their jobs.”

For seven years, Wootan and his wife, Karen, opened and closed every day of the year except for Christmas. Wootan arrived at the shack at 4 a.m. to start the fire boxes and prepare the meat and pits. Karen ran the cash register.

Wootan extended the hours to 7 p.m. He bought a trailer and put it on the lot to serve as his real estate office. This way, if a potential client did come by, Wootan could throw off his apron and hustle over to the office. But there were more people looking for barbecue than real estate. Kirk Winfrey remembers how hard Wootan worked those early years.

“I’ve seen him at 7:30, 8 o’clock [at night] with a mop, mopping floors,” Winfrey says. “Not just one time; for several years.”

Wootan didn’t change too much about the operation. He tweaked the sauce and added a few menu items, like the now-famous “Big Chop” pork chop. But it wasn’t an instant hit.

“When I [doubled the size of] Cooper’s, a lot of local guys said, ‘You’ve ruined it,’” Wootan remembers. “‘You’re gonna go broke, son.’”

A BBQ Renaissance

Texans who know good barbecue have always known their way to Cooper’s. Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson drove his big Lincoln up to Llano to eat at Cooper’s. But Cooper’s didn’t get on the world’s barbecue map until the mid-1990s, when Texas Monthly magazine began compiling its list of the state’s best barbecue restaurants. Cooper’s made the inaugural list — and every list since.

As word got out, people began to flock to Llano to taste Wootan’s meat for themselves. Bluebonnet seekers made sure their weekend road trips wound through Llano. Businessmen eager to impress clients flew private jets from Dallas, Houston, and Austin to Llano’s tiny municipal airport to grab lunch. Wootan sent pickup trucks to the airport to shuttle them to the pits.

In the 2000s, young pitmasters like Aaron Franklin in Austin emerged, heralding in a new generation and a sudden cultural cache; suddenly, Texas barbecue had a heightened esteem in the eyes of urban and coastal foodies. Connoisseurs seeking to explore the true roots of Texas barbecue inevitably had to make a pilgrimage to Cooper’s.

The unique, direct-heat style Wootan inherited from the Cooper family captured the attention of publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Southern Living, as well as television personalities such as Bobby Flay and shows including Good Morning America. Wootan estimates he served around 20,000 customers in 1986. This year, that number is around 300,000.

“It just snowballed,” Wootan says. “You get your meats and you may be sitting next to somebody from Germany, New York … I mean it’s crazy.”

When George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, he wanted to celebrate with a feast for the country’s Republican governors at his Crawford ranch — and he wanted to serve them Cooper’s barbecue. It would be the first of several times Wootan would cook for the president, and ahead of the occasion, various media outlets phoned him to learn more about the pitmaster from little Llano who would feed so many dignitaries.

Wootan arrived early and set up the smokers in the field. He had a Secret Service detail watching him as he cooked. The president-elect walked out into a field wearing a jacket and shorts and swinging a tennis racket. Bush smacked tennis balls out into the field for his dog to fetch. He noticed Wootan.

“Hey, Wootan,” Bush shouted, calling him over. “Who called you?”
“Well, the Washington Post, New York Times,” Wootan said.
“What did they ask you?”
“Well, one of them asked how I thought I’d fit in in Washington,” Wootan said.
“I hope you told them not very … good,” Bush shot back with a chuckle.

True to Llano, Texas

Cooper’s has always been deeply connected to its small Hill Country community. Wootan has regularly donated food to the Llano County Junior Livestock Show. He and Kirk were among a group who started the Llano Crawfish Open, an annual fundraiser for Llano charities, serving mudbugs to a dozen people out of the back of a pickup. Today, the event attracts upward of 10,000 people.

Kirk says that the intimate, familial connection between Cooper’s and the town is simply part of what being from a small, rural Texas community is all about. “It is true in any rural situation — homegrown people helping homegrown people,” Kirk says. “I knew their dads and I knew their momma, and they knew their grandparents. When you get into that situation, everybody looks out for each other. Terry has been that way his whole life.”

Cooper’s continues to be a family affair. Both of Wootan’s sons, Chad and Jason, have followed their dad into the barbecue business, running some of the franchises that are expanding around the state. Jason, a 25-year veteran of the Llano joint, is now general manager and in charge of mail-order. Chad is opening the College Station location.

But remembering how difficult it was to build his business, Wootan wouldn’t let Chad join him until his own children had grown. “I said, ‘Chad, you remember me, when you was playing sports and y’all was in high school, I didn’t miss it all, but it was a big inconvenience?’” Wootan says. “‘And I didn’t get to see everything. I missed a lot of it. I don’t want you doing that till your kids graduate.’”

The pits have also taken a physical toll on Wootan. “I’ve had my right ankle replaced, and both knees,” he says. “And I know it was that concrete that wore ’em out. I mean, you walk a million miles, just back and forth.”

Still, Wootan has few regrets. He feels fortunate his real estate business went into a slump all those years ago, pushing him into the barbecue game. He is proud of all the hard work his family and employees put in to grow his successful business.

“I’d never have dreamed that it’d turn into what it has — from starving to death to being financially secure,” Wootan says. “I’m at the age where I’d like to slow down, but I’m working harder now than I ever have.”

What keeps Wootan going is the happiness of all the people who return again and again to eat at Cooper’s.

“A lot of people come in and say, ‘I finally got back in here,’” he says. “Well, I tell ’em, ‘We’ll take care of you.’”

For more stories from our Texas Farm Bureau Insurance family, check out how this citrus scientist is helping Valley farmers or how Camp Cowboy is helping vets recover from the trauma of war.

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