Bill Miller Bar-B-Q Enterprises

History

William T. 'Bill' Miller and Ila Faye Miller co-founded a poultry and egg delivery business in 1950 using a $500 loan. In 1953 they expanded into a fried chicken take-out restaurant, which later added hamburgers and eventually became a barbecue restaurant. A second location opened in February 1963. The business remained family-run; Faye Miller worked as cashier and hostess while raising four children, who learned operations and worked summers and weekends.

Balous joined the company full-time after graduating in May 1966, and his brothers John and Douglas, along with brother-in-law Louis Vance, later joined. In 1992 Miller purchased the failed Fiesta Plaza mall and donated it to the University of Texas at San Antonio, now its Downtown Campus. The street of the first restaurant was renamed Bill Miller Lane in 1994. Ila Faye died in 2008.

In 2009 the company reduced health care costs by 40% by ending its PPO program and forming partnerships with area providers on a cost-plus basis.

Business model

Bill Miller Bar-B-Q was an early pioneer of fast, quality takeout, offering ready-to-go barbecue meals in five minutes starting in the 1950s. Its model of preparing smoked meats, fresh pies, and breads daily from a single central kitchen was a first for the industry. Miller himself built the original pits in the 1950s and later designed the industrial-sized versions, each capable of cooking 2,500 pounds of brisket over 18 to 20 hours. The company’s main office and production plant were set up in downtown San Antonio in 1971, using converted buildings that once housed a Goodyear tire facility and a leather plant.

These were adapted to meet federal meat-packing standards and were regularly inspected by the city and state. Bill Miller Bar-B-Q owns all of its properties and runs its own distribution center. To grow, the company moved its headquarters, central kitchen, and distribution to a new 335,000-square-foot campus on San Antonio’s West Side, chosen because most employees lived along that route. After closing its original downtown location, plans for redeveloping that prime property are still being worked out.