Jun 30, 2026
Most people who spend 14 years climbing the tech ladder at companies like Google, Microsoft and Shopify don’t walk away to smoke brisket. Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi did, Business Insider reports.
Abdul-Kafi opened Kafi BBQ in Irving, Texas, in December 2024 — a halal barbecue restaurant that he says generated just under $2.3 million in total revenue in its first year. He’s projecting between $3.6 and $4 million for 2026.
Advertisement
The road there started with YouTube videos and brisket drops from his house. “I was feeling a little bit disillusioned in tech. I wanted a fresh start,” he says. He spent a year doing pop-up sales from home, generating about $60,000 in revenue, then used that foundation to open a brick-and-mortar location.
Thanks for subscribing!
Read the best of Moneywise in 5 minutes or less.
By signing up, you accept Moneywise Terms of Use, Subscription Agreement, and Privacy Policy.
The gap he spotted
Abdul-Kafi identified something the Texas barbecue market had largely ignored: an entire demographic with money to spend and no place to spend it. About 50% of his customers follow a halal diet that prohibits pork and requires specific animal slaughter practices, and 50% don’t.
“For a lot of my customers, this is the very first time in their lives that they’ve been able to walk into a Texas barbecue restaurant and eat absolutely everything on the menu,” he observed.
That market is substantial and growing. According to the Imarc Group, the U.S. halal food market was valued at $733.6 billion in 2025 and is expanding rapidly, driven by a Muslim population of approximately 3.5 million and rising demand from non-Muslim consumers who associate halal certification with ethical sourcing and food quality standards.
But spotting the gap was the easy part. Executing it in Texas — where pork is king — required reinventing nearly everything. “We don’t serve pork at Kafi BBQ. And in Texas, pork is the highest margin item on every menu because it’s really cheap to acquire and it’s really fast to cook,” Abdul-Kafi explains.
Without pork casings for sausage and without pork fat, which he notes is “a much better binding agent than beef fat,” he had to develop workarounds from scratch for virtually every product.
Must Read
- The ultra-rich use these 5 real estate strategies to build wealth while they sleep — you can start with just $100
- Here’s the average income of Americans by age in 2026. Are you keeping up or falling behind?
- Insurance companies profit most from drivers who auto-renew without shopping around. Comparing 100+ quotes takes 2 minutes and costs nothing
Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first — clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.
The numbers behind the business
The restaurant’s revenue figures are impressive. Its cost structure makes them more so.
Abdul-Kafi spends between $12,000 and $18,000 per week on brisket alone. Monthly food costs run $120,000 to $130,000. Labor costs another $50,000. Rent, utilities, disposables, spices, wood and marketing bring the total monthly operating spend to roughly $210,000 to $220,000.
Advertisement
His startup costs were approximately $500,000 to open, and he’s spent an additional $400,000 on equipment since. He hasn’t paid himself anything since opening.
Those margins reflect a structural reality of the barbecue industry. “There’s so little margin to be made on brisket that you basically have to have a very successful sausage program in order to sell the brisket for the price that we sell it while not losing money,” he notes.
Kafi BBQ charges $45 per pound for brisket — above the regional average of around $38 to $39 — justified by the local sourcing, homemade offerings and all-halal certification.
Why the odds were against him and what he did right
The restaurant industry’s first-year failure rate is far lower than the oft-cited 90% myth. According to research by UC Berkeley in collaboration with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 17% of restaurants close within their first year — meaning about 83% survive. But survival and profitability are different metrics, and Abdul-Kafi’s $2.3 million first-year revenue puts him well above the threshold most new restaurants reach.
The discipline he brought from tech — buying a $45,000 German-made sausage linker to eliminate 50 hours per week of manual labor, always seeking better rather than cheaper ingredients and approaching tedious processes with a fix-it mindset — likely explains much of that gap.
Kafi BBQ was named one of D Magazine’s best new restaurants of 2026 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Abdul-Kafi says Eater named it one of the 15 best new restaurants in America — recognition that came within the restaurant’s first weeks of opening.
For Abdul-Kafi, the goal was never simply a business, but a purpose: “My philosophy is that I am in business to make halal barbecue accessible to this community. So, I’m going to do what my purpose in life is, however difficult that is.”
You May Also Like
- JP Morgan sees gold hitting $6,000/oz before 2027 — and a Gold IRA lets you hold the physical metal while deferring the tax bill. Get your free guide from Priority Gold
- Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake — here’s what it is and the simple steps to fix it ASAP
- Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how
- Millionaires under 43 are reshaping investing — just 25% of their portfolios are in stocks. Here’s where their money is going
With a writing and editing career spanning over 15 years, Emma creates and refines content across a broad spectrum of industries, including personal finance, lifestyle, travel, health & wellness, real estate, beauty & fitness and B2B/SaaS/tech.
