Tim Harty, The Business Times

After the original concept of a pizza restaurant and brewery turned into more of a bar/nightclub, and the dancing turned toward country line dancing on weekends, then pretty much country every night, Mama Ree’s is taking the next step in its evolution: No more pizza.

Gone is a linchpin-turned-vestige of the original business ideation. As of April 9, the menu is Texas-style barbecue.

Mama Ree’s, 664 North Ave., is trading in its large pizza oven for the Moberg wood smokers that Snooks Bottom Barbecue will use to make barbecue meats like it has been providing from its converted shipping container at 555 1/2 U.S. 50.

Mama Ree’s co-owner Maxwell Weckerly summarized the reason for the change with: “A really quick gist of it is that we switched to a country bar, country night club – that’s what we really are now – and so we just think barbecue is just a better fit for that brand.

“And it’s nice to have a separate business just lease the space, and then we don’t have to manage the restaurant part, so that’s really where it came to be.”

It’s a different place than the one that opened in November 2022 – Mama Ree’s Pizza & Brewing – and it got an appropriate name change to boot: Mama Ree’s Cowboy Bar.

Weckerly said Mama Ree’s is happy to turn over its kitchen to Snooks Bottom, and it didn’t require much of a transition. Mama Ree’s shut down the restaurant during the day for a couple weeks, but kept operating the nightclub at night. Meanwhile, Snooks Bottom didn’t need to change much in the kitchen, because most of the meat smoking takes place outdoors in the parking lot or at the Orchard Mesa location.

Weckerly said the kitchen still has a large pizza oven that Snooks Bottom won’t use, so Mama Ree’s will sell it. The pizza oven’s status change from essential to unnecessary is a little sad, but that’s business, Weckerly said. They tried one thing, and it gradually changed, then changed some more.

“We’ve definitely been happy to adapt basically as we’ve seen different needs for different things,” he said. “We’ve changed a lot from the opening to what it is now. One of the big things we did a couple years ago is open the nightclub section. When we first opened, there was no nightclub, there was no bar, we were just closed at like 8 p.m. every day just like normal.

“And then we all kind of worked together, and it was really one of the projects I particularly worked on. I just moved back from California, and I really wanted to kind of get that part going. And so we switched it to focusing more on a nightclub and being open till 2 a.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then that was really successful, and that kind of took over as the main revenue generator for the business, this nightclub piece.”

As dramatic as that change was, there was more to come.

The closing of a country-music nightclub called Central Station happened around the same time as Mama Ree’s nightclub emerged.

“A lot of country people and line-dancing people were looking for a new spot to come and line dance and experience kind of that country-bar atmosphere, so they all came to Mama Ree’s,” Weckerly said. “And so even on nights that weren’t country nights, they would all come and request country music, and every night just turned into a country-bar night. I was deejaying then, so I really have a first-hand experience of that, and so then we really switched over to this kind of country-bar vibe.”

The new patrons also brought a different appetite, so a menu change of some sort was coming eventually.

“We’ve been realizing that the pizza part doesn’t really fit in with the more country bar that we have become,” Weckerly said.

That led to discussions with different people, looking for someone who wanted to take over the restaurant side of the business.

“It all stems back to the fact that the nightclub is really the main business, and that’s what we spend most of our time and efforts working on,” Weckerly said. “And we felt like we were neglecting the restaurant a little bit, so we were like, ‘Hey what if we just cease our food operations and have someone else come in, take over the kitchen and restaurant during the day, and then we would keep our same country bar and nightclub stuff going separately.”

There was no rush to remove pizza, and Mama Ree’s was open to ideas such as barbecue, burgers, a pub-food vibe. And then Scott Krug from Snooks Bottom Barbecue came knocking.

“We just kind of connected, especially Cameron, my brother, really connected with Scott, and they just got to talking, and then it just pretty quickly snowballed from there into what it is now,” Weckerly said.

Snooks Bottom brought some free samples to Mama Ree’s a couple times to see what customers thought of the food, and that went over well.

“That just happened to be a good fit, kind of the right place, right time,” Weckerly said.

Maxwell’s mom and co-owner, Sandra Weckerly, said Mama Ree’s and Snooks Bottom Barbecue is a perfect partnership. And she summed it up perfectly: “We’re letting them do what they do, and we do what we do.”

More About Snooks Bottom Barbecue

A COUPLE GUYS WHO LOVE TEXAS-STYLE BBQ

To learn more about Snooks Bottom Barbecue, go to snooksbottombarbecue.com.

In the website’s “About Us” section is this summary of how Snooks Bottom Barbecue came to be:

“Back in 1985, owner Scott Krug and owner Steve Martin met while working construction in the New Braunfels/Canyon Lake, TX, area. Both eventually moved to Grand Junction, CO, without the other knowing, then reconnected in 2002 when their kids became high school friends.

“Fast forward to 2018. After many years of discussing the lack of authentic Texas BBQ on the Western Slope, and Steve winning a number of local awards for his ribs, Snooks Bottom Barbecue was born.

“We love having folks who hail from the South (especially Texas!) giving our barbecue a taste. We are so happy to introduce true Texas-style BBQ to the residents and tourists of Western Colorado.”

More About Mama Ree’s and Snooks Bottom BBQ Partnership

JUST NEEDED A PARTNER BUSINESS

Co-owner Scott Krug said he’d been looking for a second location, a brick-and-mortar option, for Snooks Bottom Barbecue, which operates out of a converted Conex shipping container at 555 1/2 U.S. 50 on Orchard Mesa, next to the car-wash building. However, the big outlay of cash required to house a restaurant in a building has been a deterrent.

Then, along came David Weckerly, patriarch of the Weckerly family that owns more than a few things around town, such as Mama Ree’s Cowboy Bar and The Golf Club at Redlands Mesa. Krug said Weckerly first approached him about a Mama Ree’s and Snooks Bottom partnership about four months ago, but he wasn’t sure it would go anywhere.

“As time went on, I had more conversations with David, and things started to make more sense,” Krug said.

Now that Snooks Bottom is operating in Mama Ree’s kitchen, there’s once again a second location to get its barbecue in the Grand Valley. Krug and Martin had set up shop in Palisade in 2022, but they didn’t stay long. Krug said he’d like to try again in Palisade if the right opportunity materializes.

The Texas-style barbecue that’s available now inside Mama Ree’s is meat specialties such as brisket, pulled pork, baby back ribs and cheddar jalapeno sausage.

Snooks Bottom’s catering business offers beef ribs and prime rib, and Krug thinks there can be occasional nights where those will be featured at Mama Ree’s.

YOUR SMOKER MATTERS

Krug takes pride in the smokers he uses at Snooks Bottom. He has six Moberg Smokers fireboxes, and he believes “they’re the only Mobergs in Colorado.”

He also said Snooks Bottom Barbecue has been in business long enough for those smokers to blossom, adding, “They get better and better after they get more seasoned.”

And the wood that’s been burning in the fireboxes is post oak, which Snooks Bottom gets from Palestine, TX.

“Everything we do is 100 percent wood-fired,” Krug said.

LEARN TO DANCE OR RIDE THE BULL

Becoming Mama Ree’s Cowboy Bar brought a few other changes that make sense in the restaurant/brewery/bar/nightclub’s evolution.

Co-owner Sandra Weckerly said Mama Ree’s now has classes for line dancing and salsa dancing.

And in a throwback to the 1980s, there is a mechanical bull, to which Weckerly said, “I think we’re the only one in town who has one.”

One thing hasn’t changed at Mama Ree’s: It still brews its own craft beers, featuring 10 of them on the beer menu at the moment.