Terry Black's BBQ Dallas Is Cashing In on World Cup Fever — $2 Million a Week

The Dallas outpost of Terry Black's Barbecue has shattered its own sales records during the FIFA World Cup, pulling in $2 million in its first full week of the tournament — and then matching that figure in just five and a half days the following week. General manager Nate Werner noted the previous weekly record was $752,000, meaning the restaurant is running roughly 250% above its pre-World Cup baseline. The Fort Worth location, despite sitting three miles closer to AT&T Stadium (temporarily rebranded Dallas Stadium at FIFA's request), has seen only about a 25% sales bump by comparison.

The unlikely star of the whole phenomenon is the beef rib — a bone-in, roughly 1.5-pound behemoth that runs around $60 apiece. International fans have turned the oversized rib bone into a kind of trophy, hoisting it for social media photos across Dallas. A Japanese travel influencer known as @bob_travel__ filmed his first-ever bite of Texas barbecue at Terry Black's on June 17, declaring it amazing on camera. That TikTok video now has 4.1 million views. The restaurant's social media team has leaned in hard, filming guests holding clean rib bones like microphones and asking them to predict a World Cup winner.

Father's Day weekend — June 21 — turned into what pit staffer Craig Crisafi called a perfect storm. A Food Network show named the Terry Black's beef rib the single best barbecue item in the country, the holiday brought extra crowds, and the World Cup was in full swing. The Dallas location normally smokes up to 90 racks of beef ribs on a weekend; that Sunday it smoked 280 racks, borrowing a thousand-gallon offset smoker from the Austin location to manage the load. The Waco location sent 90 pre-smoked briskets, Fort Worth contributed 60 more, and all 435 briskets were consumed that day.

The restaurant has monetized the surge beyond the counter. A Terry Black's BBQ Experience bookable through OpenTable for $150 per person lets guests skip the notorious line and receive a half beef rib, brisket, turkey, a pork rib, sausage, sides, dessert, and a pit-room tour. Werner estimates 60 of those seats are selling per day. The prestige of the operation reached royalty level when King Abdullah II of Jordan, in town for his country's match against Argentina on June 27, wanted barbecue — but the Dallas location was too busy to accommodate him. He was redirected to the Fort Worth location instead.

The Dallas restaurant has only one small TV mounted at the end of its bar, making it an unlikely soccer venue compared to Deep Ellum's dedicated sports pubs. That hasn't stopped fans of Argentina, Brazil, Norway, Japan, and Austria from filling its dining room, chanting and watching pivotal moments on the tiny screen. Meanwhile, Werner has been tracking an internal rivalry: Terry Black's Dallas has historically never beaten the Austin flagship in weekly sales. That changed recently — Werner clinched the win at 9:35 on a Sunday night, by exactly $3,000.