Barbecue was found on 59.1 percent of restaurant menus in 2018, which is up 1 percent since 2014 and flat from the previous year, according to Chicago-based Datassential’s BBQ, the SNAP Food Profile, created Jan. 23, 2019. Originally used as a sauce to flavor meat at barbecue restaurants, many different varieties of barbecue exist today, ranging from sweet to sour to spicy and appearing on a multitude of proteins. Given barbecue’s prevalence, 97 percent of people know it, 92 percent have tried it and 78 percent love or like it, Datassential reports.
Technomic, a Winsight Co. in Chicago, reports in terms of the number of menu items at chain and independent restaurants, barbecue dishes are largely either stable or showing small declines.