Bryan Furman
B's Cracklin' BBQ | Atlanta and Savannah, GA
FEBRUARY 2018
Growing up, Bryan Furman learned to raise pigs on his grandparents’ farm in Cassatt, South Carolina. But it wasn’t until his daughter’s first birthday party that Furman got the barbecue bug while preparing a whole hog for the celebration. Fast forward two years to Savannah: Furman brought pulled pork to a co-worker who shared his interest in barbecue. Encouraged by the response, Furman started catering on the weekends, and, by 2014, he was able to quit his job cutting metal.
He was an industry neophyte but knew that most restaurants lasted less than a year. A simple Google search of “why restaurants fail” helped him determine what he would do to stand out: raising his own heritage breed pigs in South Georgia and putting his diners and community first.
B’s Cracklin’ BBQ opened in Savannah in 2014 to fast praise. He was featured in Garden & Gun, Southern Living, and other national publications. Furman’s business model of owning the means of production (aka the hogs) was a success. In 2015, faulty equipment sparked a fire that burned the restaurant to the ground, and the community Furman worked so hard to build rallied to restore the space.
Humbled by the experience and confident they could do more, Furman and his wife Nikki moved to Atlanta to debut their second location in late in 2016. Like its Savannah flagship, the Atlanta smokehouse specializes in whole hog barbecue, chicken, and ribs slathered with vinegar-based and peach-mustard sauces. In less than a year, it earned Eater Atlanta’s 2017 “Restaurant of the Year” and “Chef of the Year Readers’ Choice.” Expansion is never far from Furman’s thoughts as he trains pitmasters to run future locations, refines hog breeding practices, and scours the South for smokehouse-ready real estate.
