The news just keeps getting better for the foodie community in east Parker County.
On the heels of recent announcements by Jake’s Burgers and Press Café coming to Aledo, the city has announced that Dayne’s Craft Barbecue will open in the fall in the space now occupied by Montes Burritos.
This will not be the first time barbecue has been served at that location — it was home to Jerry’s BBQ in the late 1990s.
Dayne’s is a Texas Monthly “Top 50 BBQ Spot.” Its owners, Dayne and Ashley Weaver, currently operate out of a trailer at 9812 Camp Bowie West Boulevard. The new permanent location will give Dayne’s more options and greater capacity to serve its customers.
“We’re extremely excited to have a full kitchen with plenty of accommodations to do a lot of cool, fun dishes that we’ve always wanted to do but never had the space,” Dayne was quoted in the Aledo release. “This bigger space will allow us to cook more food and serve more people at a faster rate.”
In addition to indoor dining space, the new location has 1,000 square feet of patio space and a pit area with room for three 1,000 gallon Centex smokers.
“I’m excited to welcome Dayne’s to Aledo,” Mayor Nick Stanley said. “Their food is outstanding and Dayne’s has a wonderful and far-reaching reputation. Dayne’s is a welcome addition to Aledo and their presence downtown will serve as a catalyst for our growing culinary scene.”
Dayne Weaver started his journey in Texas barbecue as a backyard smoker enthusiast. His father-in-law left a small kettle grill in his back yard in 2017, which Dayne converted into a mini-smoker. He threw a brisket on and was immediately hooked.
He began smoking meat every weekend, which turned into an expensive hobby. Ashley, told him if he was going to continue to cook regularly, he needed to find someone to buy the food — thus “Dayne’s Underground Barbecue” was born.
“It was about five years ago,” Weaver said. “I probably spent about two years in the backyard dreaming about it. And finally, my wife put me on the spot, bought a big smoker for me and said, ‘Hey, that thing that you won't stop talking about? Let's do it!’”
During those five years Weaver posted on social media that he would be selling meats and sides from his front yard, and the response was overwhelming; he sold out in less than an hour. He decided to hold an underground barbecue sale the last Sunday of every month. The crowd continued to grow and bring people from all over the state of Texas who wanted great barbecue — including a reporter and photographer from the Dallas Observer. Once the Observer article was released, Ashley knew that Dayne had to register his business. Encouraged by his wife, he named the brand “Dayne’s Craft Barbecue.”
Real Texas barbecue has always been important in Weaver’s life. He comes from a long-time Fort Worth family. His grandparents taught at Paschal High School, but Weaver saw a bit of travel growing up, as his mother was in the Air Force.
“I moved a lot as a kid. And so I lived overseas, with a lot of my childhood on military bases over in Japan, England, and then I lived in California and Colorado a little bit,” Weaver said. “When you're overseas, the beef just tastes a little different. You can't get good barbecue over there. I remember being 15 and coming back to Fort Worth and getting a whole rack of ribs because I hadn’t had an opportunity to get ribs in forever.”
Dayne’s Craft Barbecue originally intended to move into a permanent location where their trailer is now, but in the end Weaver and the property owners could not come to terms.
“So we started to get a little discouraged with the situation we were in — we were hoping that they were going to be building that building out with a nice restaurant for us and that's what we were sold on. That's why we went over there,” Weaver said. “So we were looking for an opportunity to do something on our own. And I actually got a call from Joe Riscky — he got me involved in this situation because I think he's a realtor on the commercial end. And so he told me about opportunity. I met with them and I just fell in love with the building and the idea of making it our forever home. We've always really wanted to move our family out west. But I always said I wanted to move out to Aledo and so I think God just lined everything up perfectly for us in this situation.”
Weaver feels Dayne’s will fit right in with Aledo’s efforts to bring in unique restaurants. He has become a social media celebrity through YouTube videos he has done with Meat Church Barbecue in Waxahachie, and that may bring fans into Aledo who want some of his barbecue.
“We actually have three videos in the past year that have 1.2 million views on YouTube,” Weaver said. “So we get people from out of state — from all around — that have seen these videos. And they've been dreaming of coming and trying our barbecue. So we've got thousands of people that are planning to travel to Dayne's Craft Barbecue no matter where it is. And so that's a cool thing that's going on.”
Weaver plans additional videos, including instructional information on topics like how to make sausage.
“We’ve got a really good following that appreciates what we do,” Weaver said. “And I'm really proud of that. I don't think you can find a barbecue joint that has better overall ratings on Google and Yelp and Facebook and anything you can rate somebody on. We've done a really good job of holding really good reviews and we try to treat everybody right.”
Dayne’s Custom Barbecue received a boost when it was named a “Top 50 BBQ Spot” by Texas Monthly magazine. Weaver said that honor came about when he was still working full time and serving barbecue every Saturday at a bar in Fort Worth called Lola’s.
“I just committed to, ‘hey, I'm gonna put out this awesome barbecue menu and every single Saturday, no matter what, we're going to be there. And we're going to be doing it.’ And after about a year of doing that, the Texas Monthly barbecue editor came and ate our food — that was early 2020, actually, right before the pandemic. And then it just took off from there, we just kept going after it. And they ended up naming us one of the top 50 in the state,” Weaver said.
Weaver got the food trailer in 2021, and first served three days a week. That expanded to four days, but Weaver is looking forward to serving all wee at the Aledo location.
“We've always been restricted by having a food trailer,” Weaver said. The same spot where we serve all of our food is where we have to cook all the food — we operate out of a commissary kitchen. So what we can do is really limited. If we sell out of something, it's not like we can just whip it up real fast. Because I mean, we basically close the kitchen down of the food truck, and now it's a service line, you know, and so, and there's only so much that we can do in there. So we're really excited to have some more space.”
Dayne’s will continue to operate from its truck until the brick-and-mortar restaurant in Aledo is ready. Weaver anticipates that will be about October.
In addition to building a pit room, there will be extensive work on the outside of the building, including a 1,000-square-foot patio.
The menu will remain the same, with both indoor and covered outdoor seating available. That menu includes traditional Barbecue like Prime Black Angus Brisket and pork spareribs to more specialty items like bacon brisket and homemade sausage.
“Having a restaurant is going to give us the ability to do stuff like breakfast, is going to give us the ability to open into the evening,” Weaver said. “When we start we will be open five days a week for lunch. And then we'll start adding breakfast as we get staff that can keep up with what we're doing.”
But the plans don’t stop there. Weaver envisions later dinner hours, and perhaps a once-a-month elevated dinner where the staff can get more creative (and have more fun).
“This building is going to give us the ability to open more hours, serve more people, serve people faster, serve people better,” Weaver said. “So that's something I definitely want people to understand and know, because the amount of revenue we do out of a food truck is pretty impressive right now, and we're just capped at what we can do. And so we're really excited to be able to spread our wings a bit and have some more room and just do all the things that we've always thought about doing and dreamed about doing.
For more information, visit daynescraftbarbecue.com.
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