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Larry Williamson steps nimbly out of the clattering kitchen, slides around the tall exhibition rotisserie that is still waiting to be filled with seasoned chickens and glides across the dining room.
He wears a look of poise and anxiety - the strange look that every restaurateur who has ever served a busy lunch crowd begins to wear at about 10 o'clock in the morning.
"I've got a couple of things to finish up," he tries to explain, a kind of smile working its way across his neatly goateed chin.
Then he disappears, just as nimbly, and his brother, Danny Williamson, steps into the room from a doorway, where hundreds of bottles of black pepper and barbecue sauce are lined up neatly inside a pair of tall wooden bookshelves. Danny Williamson doesn't wear a goatee or a smile, but you can tell he is the brother. And when he starts to talk, you also immediately know he grew up somewhere in the state of Alabama.
"Another day in the restaurant business," Danny Williamson says, shrugging.
The Williamsons don't make a lot of appointments. They've got a $2 million family dining operation to run - the 7-year-old Williamson Bros. Bar-Q in Marietta, Ga. - and an $800,000 bottled sauce and catering business.
Since they arrived here from Sylacauga, Ala. - in a U-Haul loaded to the roof with split hickory wood, bringing their secret barbecue recipes and $27,000 in life saw ings - Larry and Danny Williamson in fact have not ventured far outside the restaurant, except to quote or set up a catering job. That's because their operation slowcooks, "pulls" and serves as many as three and a half tons of "Boston" pork butts - and barbecues another 2,100 chickens - in an average week.
Here's how things went at the popular Williamson Bros. on a recent typical yet hectic latesummer Wednesday.
At 10 a.m. Larry Williamson, who handles much of the kitchen and purchasing side of the business, oversees from a distance this morning's delivery of Boston butts.
He and his brother believe they may be the top buyers of pork butts in Georgia, based simply on the nun ber of cases -- between 75 and 100 - they purchase each week.
Every Monday morning...