Brisket may dominate barbecue menus in Texas today, but nearly a century ago, a Dallas institution built its mighty restaurant empire on a simple Tennessee-style barbecued-pork sandwich: the “Pig Sandwich.” Perhaps some already know that I’m referring to the signature item served at the Pig Stand, a Dallas-based chain that formed in the twenties and quickly grew into a nationwide franchise.
And when I say quickly, that’s no exaggeration. According to an advertisement from 1924— when the Pig Stands Co. was only 30 months old—50,000 sandwiches were sold each week from just the ten Dallas locations (there were Pig Stands in six other states by then too). That’s a mighty impressive number for such a young company.
The Pig Stand’s history captured my attention long ago, mostly because of its much-ballyhooed legacy as the first drive-in. This sounded like a big claim to stake, and I wanted to know what happened to the restaurant chain that could not only sell 50,000 sandwiches a week in Dallas when the city only had about 250,000 residents but also invented the concept of the drive-in. After some digging, I found that there was no significant event that led to the eventual shuttering of the last Pig Stands in 2006. In fact, I discovered, despite rapid expansion and the public’s cultish obsession with the place, the franchise went quietly into the night, not with a squeal, but rather with a prolonged whimper that dragged out over decades.
