Lost in the Sauce: Gates Bar-B-Q is the past, present, and future of KC barbecue

Bottling at Gates Commissary // Photo by Sarah Sipple

Gates is synonymous with barbecue around here. From the sauce to the ribs to the man in the tuxedo, Gates is an icon. Ten Gates family members remain active in the business, blending Kansas City history with personal history.

George W. Gates II has his grandfather’s namesake and remains a primary storykeeper for the Gates legacy.

At age 7, he was redeveloping sauces in a washing machine. In his 20s, he was opening a Gates in Las Vegas after his time at UNLV. Now, he is the COO of Gates Bar-B-Q and running a tight ship as the Gates name expands city by city.

At the Gates Commissary, east of downtown Kansas City, we sat down for a chat with George in the Visitor’s Center. Between a factory tour and frequent redirection of guests thinking they were walking into the restaurant, he reminisced, shared the deep connections of local barbecue culture, and divulged what’s on the horizon for Gates Bar-B-Q.

The Pitch: Tell us about your journey with Gates. Were you always part of the family business, or did you join in later in life?

George W. Gates II: I had no choice. You are kind of born into it. As long as I can remember, I’ve worked. I really started working when I was around five or six years old.

I started out cleaning up the parking lots and sweeping off the front. We had a restaurant and a nightclub called OG’s. We had half of the block, so every day, I had to make sure that it was clean—wash down the sidewalk, sweep, and make sure that it was presentable so people wouldn’t feel intimidated by coming in. That’s where I started. Then, when I was seven years old, I started reformulating the barbecue sauce.

Oh! I thought you were going to say started helping customers or bussing tables.

It was in the basement, in a washing machine—a Maytag agitator washing machine. So it didn’t start out like this [gesturing to the Gates Commissary]. If I ran out of something, I would leave it out of the recipe. My dad did not like that. I would bring my friends down, give them some french fries, and they would help me do the work. From there, I evolved to making the sauce in a 100-gallon tub. That was huge to me. It would take me all day to make 100 gallons of sauce. Later, we evolved to a plant simulation.

My dad is a contractor by trade—a bricklayer. So he built the buildings we had. And I always helped, doing what I could to lay or carry bricks, digging trenches for the lines, whatever we needed to be doing.

What did you learn from working in restaurants so young? 

On Sundays, we go to church. Then we would meet my siblings (I have three sisters and one younger brother, Ollie Jr.) I knew if I went to church, I didn’t have to go to work afterward. I can go to the movie, amusement park, or penny arcade downtown. 

I came to work one Monday after I got out of school and my dad said, “Hey, how you doing today?” I said, “I’m still fine.” He said, “Let me ask you a question. Did you eat yesterday? Did you sleep yesterday?” My answer is “Yes, sir.” 

“Okay. Now, you eat on Sundays, you sleep on Sundays, and you work on Sundays.”

So, since then, I’ve been working seven days a week. It’s not what I do, it’s who I am. And it’s not just a way of making a living, but it’s my way of life. 

I believe that he instilled a good work ethic. That’s what I really am proud of. 

[Guests come to the commissary door, thinking it is the restaurant. George directs them across the street, pointing out the smoke stacks: “By the way, if you are headed to a barbecue restaurant that doesn’t have smoke coming out of those stacks—don’t go in.”]

People get mad at us for not having a microwave. No, we don’t have microwaves. Do you want a hot one? We’ll get one out of the pit. But we won’t microwave it.

Tell us about Gates’ time in Vegas.

I stayed in Las Vegas for 10 years. It’s like my second home. We had a spot just less than a mile off the strip. We were there trying to see how we could expand with barbecue that is very regional. Memphis got a taste. Carolina got a taste. Texas got a taste, and Kansas City got a taste.

We knew that the restaurant would be hard to expand. But the barbecue sauce has no barriers, no boundaries. You can make different flavors and different seasonings. And once it’s packed, it’s gone.

That’s why I really feel our future is the restaurant that will complement the sauces. It’s like being at Disneyland. Normally, I can see Mickey Mouse on the screen. But at Disneyland, I can actually participate in it. You know, that’s how it is with this. I can have the sauce at home and in a few different cities. But then I can eat in the actual restaurant. So it is the combination. We’re here. But we’re trying to expand that, you know, nationally and internationally. It takes a while.

What came next?

I came back from Vegas, trying to see what we do. How can we expand? How can we do more things? How can we be about the community and, at the same time, grow our business, you know? That’s sort of a hard mix—to be community-minded. My dad did an excellent job with it.

Bottling at Gates Commissary // Photo by Sarah Sipple

Is community-minded a guiding principle?

He had a saying, and we’re gonna try to install it somewhere on 18th Street with a beautiful fountain that says, “My cup runneth over, so you can partake out the saucer.” And that’s how we feel about the community and about putting back in it.

We started one restaurant, and over the years, we built and built. So then we had an area that we think is an asset to the community—to the city. But it was an area that few people would go into at the time and develop.

When my dad had just gotten out of college and the army, he returned to this spot here at 12th and Brooklyn, and he told his dad, “Hey, we gotta go south. Everyone is going south.”

He brought my dad to stand on that corner and told him to look west. “What do you see,” my grandfather asked. “Downtown. And it ain’t going nowhere.” And to that day, it ain’t went nowhere. It got better.

My grandfather saw things that my dad didn’t see. And my dad sees things that I haven’t seen yet. It’s a lineage that goes on and on.

How have you used that generational wisdom?

We worked on cleaning up the barbecue business. See, at one time, everybody thought barbecue would mean dirty and greasy. That’s why we put the “Struttin Man” in a tuxedo to let you know that you can eat barbecue in jeans or in a suit. Prom nights, graduation nights, ROTC balls, boom, we were busy.

We’ve been asked to go to the Legends, but we wouldn’t be doing anything special out there. We would just be making a living, and we prefer to make the statement that, hey, we’re part of the community. We’re here to help. That’s our motto.

That’s one reason why we opened over in Kansas City, Kansas, though it burned down six years ago. We have occupational hazards in the way we cook because we don’t have no thermostats. We don’t have no regulators. And every now and then, the fire would catch that grease and boom, if you ain’t careful.

We haven’t reopened there because we want to make it bigger and better than what it was, you know, because that’s right downtown KCK, an area that needs a lot of growth and a lot of urban redevelopment. So, in order for us to get going there, we have to make it something special.

Speaking of special, can you speak to Gates’ sports connections?

If you’ve always wondered, “How did sports and Kansas City come together with barbecue?” It’s because the Royals and the Chiefs were at Municipal Stadium until the early 1970s, and there were two well-known barbecue joints within walking distance.

You would smell all these aromas from Gates Bar-B-Q and Arthur Bryant’s from the stadium then. We started taking food to the press box, and soon enough, they started relating. It’s like Pavlov with the dog, you know. The operations manager over the old Municipal Stadium would give us a heads-up on who was going to be there.

Now, for the last four or five years, we have served every opposing team that comes into Kansas City to play the Chiefs. We’ve got a lot of good rapport with the NFL. When they come to town, they look for us. The Raiders, Eagles, and Bills are all some of our best.

What is the future of Gates?

The products (sauce and seasoning) are the current growth area that could be international. The next expansion would be diversification like we already are in real estate. We own a lot of the apartments right here to help invest in the area and support the businesses.

The restaurant phase will be the hardest because it’s hard to maintain the product we have without somebody watching it every day. Because, again, we don’t have thermostats. We don’t use gas or electricity. This is wood. You really gotta be into it and know what you’re doing. And have a love for it.

But those three facets—restaurant, products, real estate—are great. The thing I think will keep us going, the staple, is the restaurant. That’s the glue that keeps the rest of them together.