Dickey’s Barbecue CEO Roland Dickey Jr., who’s grown the nation’s biggest barbecue restaurant from 20 stores to 538, is cooking up plans to expand next year into Asia. After opening a projected 72 stores in 2015, the third-generation restaurateur has set his sights on Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, where he says there’s “absolutely” an appetite for the barbecue fare his grandfather began selling in Dallas in 1941.
“If we don’t get it going, somebody else will,” Dickey said of the international move during an interview Wednesday in Palm Springs, California.