As J&B Barbecue & Catering approaches its 20th year in operation at the corner of Holloway and Washington streets, the business has been listed for sale with a real estate company.
After operating the business for nearly four years, owner Nick Murdach said, “I’ve just other things I want to do. Nothing’s going wrong. I just want to give somebody else a chance” to run it.
“Staying busy all the time,” he said of the business. “Lot of catering” at “weddings, the paper plant, the road department, doctors’ offices” that he said accounts for around 70% of his business.
The website of F.C. Tucker Commercial lists the business and property for sale at an asking price of $275,000, though the owners say they would consider selling the real estate only for $185,000. Detailed information and a flyer are available at fctuckercommercial.com.
J&B was launched in the early 2000s by longtime friends John Klein and Barry Burton, who each had lots of experience as large-scale barbecuers.
Burton grew up helping his father, the late Sonny Burton, barbecue racks of chickens and cook pork chops for countless fundraisers for nonprofit organizations at the barbecue pits in Atkinson Park. (The restaurant’s motto — “Home of the Open Pit Chicken” — harkened back to those days.)
Klein, meanwhile, tried his hand competing at barbecue contests, then became the biggest server of barbecue at the former Taste of Henderson Barbecue events associated with the W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival. That only grew when Burton teamed up with Klein at the annual event.
That led to them going into business as J&B Barbecue, which opened humbly as a carryout-only joint in the back of a hardware store at the corner of Powell and Letcher streets in the heart of the East End. It was, according to Klein, intended to just be a small-scale enterprise to supplement his city pension and Burton’s income from a commercial cleaning business after the Peabody Coal Co. Camp One mine, where he had worked for 23 years, closed.
J&B proved to be a hit, and in 2005 Klein and Burton built the existing 1,260-square-foot restaurant at 48 S. Holloway St. They added a separate 680-square-foot prep kitchen later.
The restaurant and catering business—they catered to customers as big as coal companies and local industries, which accounted for the biggest portion of their enterprise—were both successes.
“I thought it would just be a hobby,” Klein joked a few years ago. “It didn’t pan out.”
The partners’ success wasn’t just a two-person achievement; they had help from several friends who were experienced barbecuers and a long string of women, including some family members, who helped in the kitchen and served diners.
But over the years, the long hours and physical labor began to take a toll on the partners as they entered their 60s. In early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic began, they announced their intention to retire, though they were willing to sell.
They found a buyer in then-27-year-old Murdach of Henderson and his parents, Greg and Denise Murdach, who took it over in December 2020 after Nick had spent months working alongside Klein and Burton, learning the business and their barbecuing techniques.
J&B traditionally fared well in Kentucky Living’s Best in Kentucky competition, and that continued under Murdach as it was ranked the second-best barbecue in the state by readers of the magazine in 2021.
Today, J&B uses “the same recipes as John and Barry plus adding a few things” such as beef brisket, Murdach said. “Smooth sailing.”
“I’ll operate it until I find a buyer,” he said. “I’m in no rush. I’ve had a few people reach out to me already.
“I’d like to see it continue,” Murdach said. “I know John and Barry would, too.”
