Hall of Fame Pitmaster Roy Perez retiring after 39 years
By Anthony Collins
LPR Editor
After 39 years of tending the pits, managing the smoke and helping preserve one of Central Texas’ most celebrated barbecue traditions, longtime Kreuz Market pitmaster Roy Perez is preparing to hang up his apron. Perez will retire Sept. 5, ending a career that began with little knowledge of barbecue and ultimately earned him a place among the legends of the craft. Kreuz Market will honor Perez with a retirement celebration at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 5, at the historic Lockhart barbecue restaurant. His retirement comes during a particularly meaningful chapter in his life. Perez was recently inducted into the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame, earning national recognition for a lifetime spent tending fires, preserving tradition and helping shape the flavor and identity of Central Texas barbecue.
Perez’s story at Kreuz Market began on March 25, 1987. A lifelong Lockhart resident, Perez had worked as a carpenter for about four years after graduating from high school. When the housing market crashed and he needed work, the 24-year-old walked into Kreuz Market hoping to find a job. Owner Rick Schmidt hired him on the spot as a sausage cook. Perez knew virtually nothing about the barbecue business. It was hardly the beginning one might expect for someone who would eventually become one of the most recognizable pitmasters in Texas.
Perez has recalled that he took the sausage-pit job partly because he was shy and wouldn’t have to talk much to customers. His responsibilities were straightforward: cook sausage and tend the fires. There was just one problem. The smoke. It irritated Perez’s eyes so badly that he wondered whether he would last. At one point, he even considered wearing goggles. He stayed. Eventually, the young man who struggled with smoke in his eyes learned to understand it better than most. Years later, Perez said he could be driving down a highway, smell a distant fire and distinguish different types of burning wood by the aroma of the smoke. He joked that although other people could smell smoke on him when he walked into a store, he could no longer smell it himself. “The smoke is on me forever,” Perez once said. Over the years, Perez learned every aspect of the operation, from customer service and slicing meat to cooking brisket, shoulder clod, ribs and other meats over Kreuz Market’s post oak fires. When Schmidt retired in 2011, Perez took over as head pitmaster.
Perhaps no story better illustrates Perez’s place in Kreuz Market history than what happened in 1999, when the restaurant left the building, it had occupied at 208 S. Commerce St. for 99 years and moved roughly half a mile north to its current home at 619 N. Colorado St. The building was changing, but the Kreuz fire wasn’t going to start over. Hot coals from the original pits were placed into a metal container, and Perez transported them from the old smokehouse to the new Kreuz Market, where they were used to ignite the new pits. Kreuz Market’s official history commemorates the moment with a photograph of Perez carrying the original coals between the two locations.
The tradition behind that gesture runs even deeper. Perez has explained that Kreuz fires are started using hot coals saved from the previous day rather than paper. He recalled Schmidt warning employees that anyone caught using paper to start the fires would lose their job. In that sense, the Kreuz fire has continued from one day to the next and, when the restaurant moved, from one building to another. For a man whose career would ultimately become defined by preserving tradition, the image of Perez carrying those coals through Lockhart has become particularly fitting. He wasn’t simply tending the Kreuz fire. He was entrusted with carrying it forward.
That respect for tradition remained at the center of Perez’s philosophy throughout his career. As barbecue became increasingly technical, Perez continued to emphasize simplicity. He has said people sometimes make barbecue sound overly scientific when the fundamentals are straightforward: season the meat, put it on the pit, understand the fire and know when it is ready.
Kreuz doesn’t wrap its meats during cooking, and Perez’s approach relied heavily on experience rather than technology. The restaurant describes him as cooking with “Texas intuition” rather than thermometers or automated smokers. His ability to read the pits came from decades of watching the flames, smelling the smoke and understanding how meat responded to the heat. It was old-school barbecue in its purest form.
Perez also quietly documented the changing tastes of Texas barbecue. Texas Monthly Barbecue Editor Daniel Vaughn has recalled receiving a calendar from Perez on which the pitmaster recorded the cuts of meat Kreuz cooked each day. Perez could then look back at the previous year to determine how much meat would be needed. Those records became an unexpected snapshot of how Texas barbecue changed.
In 1999, the first year at Kreuz Market’s current location, Perez’s records showed the restaurant cooking about 100 shoulder clods for every 15 briskets. Years later, that ratio had essentially reversed, with Perez recalling a one weekend when Kreuz cooked about 70 briskets compared with 20 shoulder clods. The calendar wasn’t intended to become a historical document. Perez was simply keeping track of what he needed to cook. But decades later, those handwritten numbers helped illustrate a major shift in Texas barbecue, as brisket rose to become the meat most closely associated with the craft.
During his 39 years at Kreuz Market, Perez became more than the man responsible for tending the pits. With his familiar presence in the smoke room and unmistakable Elvis Presley-style sideburns, he became one of the most recognizable figures in Texas barbecue. His love of Elvis runs deeper than his appearance. According to his Barbecue Hall of Fame biography, Perez admired Presley and embraced a similar philosophy: humble beginnings do not determine where a person can go if they are willing to work hard at something they love.
For Perez, a job taken because he needed to pay the bills became something he loved enough that he once said he would do it for free if he could. Vaughn said Perez’s longevity and dedication have made him an important part of Lockhart’s barbecue identity. “After nearly forty years working the Kreuz Market pits, Roy Perez became so recognizable that his image is synonymous with barbecue,” Vaughn said. “Thanks to his dedication, consistency, longevity, and those signature sideburns, Roy is a symbol of not only Kreuz, but also the barbecue heritage of Lockhart. Roy is a living legend, and we’re so lucky to be able to celebrate that with him.” Perez’s connection to the restaurant went well beyond simply cooking meat. In an interview recorded after 37 years at Kreuz, Perez estimated that he had taken perhaps only a week of vacation during that entire span. His explanation was simple: he loved working there. Kent Black, owner of The Original Black’s BBQ in Lockhart, also reflected on Perez’s impact, saying, “Roy has been a positive influence in the BBQ community here and he will be missed, but we wish him the best in his retirement.”
The final years of Perez’s career also brought one of the greatest challenges of his life. Perez suffered a stroke in 2024 that left him using a wheelchair, but it did not immediately end his career. He continued working. Looking back on his return to Kreuz, Perez expressed amazement that even a stroke had not kept him from doing the job he had performed for decades. The experience also changed his perspective on life and made his induction into the Barbecue Hall of Fame especially meaningful. “I just want to say thank you for being elected to the Hall of Fame,” Perez said. “I’ll take anything I can get in my life now. Since my stroke, it has woken me up to a lot of things, and I thought I could live forever, but I know that’s not the case.”
Perez added that the honor belongs not only to him, but also to the Kreuz Market team and the generations of pitmasters who came before him, those who established the traditions he inherited and spent nearly four decades preserving. For Perez, barbecue was never simply about what came off the pit. His Hall of Fame biography describes his career as being equally about making customers feel welcome, respecting tradition and appreciating the people who supported Kreuz Market through the years.
For many Texans, Perez represents the living history of Kreuz Market, a connection between generations of pitmasters and the continued tradition of cooking barbecue over post oak fires. His induction into the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame adds another chapter to Lockhart’s long history as the Barbecue Capital of Texas, while his retirement marks the end of an era inside the Kreuz pit room. A fan summed up that appreciation in a social media tribute: “Here’s to you, Roy. Thanks for showing up for the fire, for the people, and for the tradition. Your induction is well earned. Keep burning the wood, brother.”
The Sept. 5 retirement celebration will give longtime customers, friends, fellow pitmasters and members of the community an opportunity to recognize Perez and his contributions during his 39 years at Kreuz Market. There may be no better image with which to remember his career than the one created on the streets of Lockhart in 1999. A new Kreuz Market stood ready to open. The old smokehouse was being left behind. And between them was Roy Perez, carrying hot coals from pits that had been burning for generations to the restaurant’s new home. Those coals helped ignite the new pits. Twenty-seven years later, those fires are still burning. It is an appropriate bookend for a career that began with a shy 24-year-old sausage cook who wasn’t sure he could handle the smoke.
Eventually, Perez learned the smoke so well that it became part of him. From cooking sausage and tending fires to carrying the Kreuz coals across Lockhart and ultimately earning a place in the Barbecue Hall of Fame, Roy Perez built his legacy through hard work, consistency and respect for the craft.
After 39 years, Perez may be stepping away from the pits, but the fire he helped carry forward will continue to burn.
