It was supposed to be a homecoming.

Award-winning pitmaster Matt Horn was bringing his famous brisket to the city where he graduated from high school and learned to barbecue in his grandma’s backyard. The restaurant opened in January to long lines of people willing to wait for the meat that he slow smoked for 14 hours.

But when the restaurant closed less than five months later, the reaction was swift and unanimous.

“Guess all those red flags were actual red flags,” said one Reddit user.

“Was there even a chance it would end any other way?” said another. “The guy was bleeding money in law suits, labor judgments.”

Horn’s culinary empire — which had included six restaurants, a James Beard Award nomination, a Michelin Bib Gourmand award and two cookbooks — had crumbled.

There were signs of trouble before the Fresno location opened.

Horn faced more than $500,000 in claims from at least four separate lawsuits, The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2024. The fire that destroyed his original Oakland location was deemed arson that same year. Claims for unpaid wages were starting to pile up.

It left many in Fresno wondering why people here didn’t pay more attention to the red flags. How could it happen again?

The answer is likely a combination of factors: Of timing. Of people who said Horn appeared to be financially solid when they signed agreements with him. Of workers wooed by the idea of working with a chef with the word Michelin attached to his name, and who either didn’t know about or didn’t care about the warning signs.

And Horn may have committed a classic stumble that chefs who skyrocket to success often do. They get too big too fast.

“I’ve seen that so many times, it’s almost like a script,” said Alfred Goldberg, founder of the Absolute Marketing Solutions in Tampa, Fla., which has helped restaurants market themselves and grow for 26 years.

The Bee also talked to Horn Barbecue’s landlord and three employees who worked closely with Horn. The Bee agreed to not use the workers names because they are still seeking unpaid wages and do not want to jeopardize their chances of getting paid.

Horn did not respond to The Bee directly, or his spokesman for this story, though some areas are addressed with his past statements.

“Financially stable”

Horn signed a lease in March 2025 to pay $12,000 a month in rent, plus fees to maintain the common areas of the shopping center.

Manny Perales owns the building at Granite Park near Dakota and Cedar avenues. Perales used to run Yosemite Falls Cafe at that spot — and still runs its two other locations — and has decades of restaurant experience.

The lease said Horn would get four months free rent on the 6,500-square-foot space and then start paying rent.

Perales’ broker looked into Horn.

“He interviewed well and we did our vetting,” Perales said. “They want to make sure he’s financially stable and he was at that time.”

Horn then had restaurants open in Elk Grove and Lafayette. Perales drove up to Elk Grove to check out the restaurant and called it “beautiful.”

But it would take Horn 10 months to open the Fresno restaurant. The January opening came much later than the original summertime opening he had planned.

Horn later cited that delay in a statement to The Bee when it reported on employees not getting paid and quitting in March.

“Horn Barbecue acknowledges that the delayed opening of our Fresno restaurant created financial challenges that led to payroll delays for some employees,” the statement said in part. “Like many independent restaurants, opening a new location can come with unexpected challenges.”

But it was a struggle to get Horn to pay rent from the beginning, Perales said.

“He never paid on time,” he said. “It took a three-day letter posted from the courts. It just happened throughout the whole year.”

Perales eventually ended up evicting the business and is still owed three months rent.

The property is now for sale.

Too big too fast

Horn shot to fame nationally in 2021 when his restaurant was the first Black-owned barbecue restaurant in the country to receive Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award. The James Beard Foundation Award nomination for Best New Restaurant came a year later.

Food + Wine named Horn one of the Best New Chefs of 2021. The New York Times wrote about the line outside his first Oakland restaurant.

“When you are fêted as a genius and you start winning industry accolades, it is perfectly normal to feel like you can do no wrong,” said Goldberg, the restaurant consultant in Florida.

Customers and sometimes investors who come in after the awards are handed out start demanding chefs expand to new markets, Goldberg said.

But being a talented chef and running a business are two separate skills, he said. Goldberg doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of Horn or his restaurants, but has seen this pattern repeat itself in the industry.

“The necessary skills to run multiple restaurants are completely different than it is to run a single restaurant,” he said. “Many chefs are never taught those skills. Those are business skills.”

At one point, three Horn Barbecue locations were open and Horn was working on launching the spot in Fresno, a combination that soon proved unwieldy, employees confirmed.

They said meat was being smoked in Lafayette and driven to Oakland and Elk Grove.

Several employees said they thought money was being mismanaged.

One said Horn didn’t understand payroll taxes. Money was spent on liquor bottles that went unused before a restaurant had developed its bar program, a worker said. Another said Horn spent money on high-end whiskey, cigars and a country club membership.

“He wanted to blow up too big too fast,” said one worker. “You couldn’t tell Matt to slow down. Telling him to slow down was like a slap in the face.”

When new locations are opened up too quickly, they can siphon off profits from healthy locations and “before you know it, the healthy store is not healthy,” Goldberg said.

Landlord Perales noted how far Fresno was from the other restaurants.

“I’ve been in the business for 45 years and I know when you open up a restaurant, you’ve got to live it, breathe it, at least for the first year,” he said. “To be in Elk Grove — demographically speaking — East Bay and Fresno ... it’s too spread out.”

All of this was happening during an extremely tough environment for any restaurant to survive, Goldberg said. Scores of restaurants have closed.

Unpaid wages and Horn’s response

Since the Fresno Horn Barbecue’s closure, a former employee has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking unpaid wages in Alameda County. The Fresno’s City Attorney’s Office confirmed it is investigating the restaurant for wage theft. And 14 claims for back pay in Fresno, 25 statewide, have been filed with the State of California.

Horn declined to comment for this story. But in a previous emailed statement, he reminded people that the restaurant industry is facing “one of the most difficult economic environments in recent memory. Rising food costs, inflation, higher labor expenses, and reduced consumer spending have forced many restaurants — including longtime institutions — to close their doors.”

He also pushed back against some of the conversation surrounding his closures as a Black-owned business.

“Too often, when businesses struggle under extraordinary economic pressures, those challenges are understood as the result of difficult market conditions. But when a Black-owned business experiences those same pressures, the conversation can quickly shift from economics to assumptions about character or intent.

The issue is not whether Horn Barbecue faced significant financial headwinds — those challenges have affected restaurants across California. The question is whether Black-owned businesses are afforded the same context, fairness, and presumption of good faith that others receive while disputes are resolved.”

Timeline of Matt Horn’s restaurants

2020 September: The original Horn Barbecue Oakland on Mandela Parkway opens.

2021 September: Oakland’s Horn Barbecue earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand honor, the first Black-owned barbecue eatery to do so.

2022 January: Kowbird fried chicken sandwich restaurant opens in Oakland.

2022 February: Matt Horn becomes semi-finalist for James Beard Award.

2023 July: Matty’s Old Fashioned opened serving burgers on 8th Street in downtown Oakland.

2023 November: Horn Barbecue Oakland on Mandela Parkway close after fire destroys it.

2024 May: Oakland Fire Dept. finds evidence the fire was “intentionally set,” Eater reports.

2024 December: Horn Barbecue opens in Lafayette.

2024 April: Oakland Horn Barbecue reopens in the former Matty’s space on 8th Street downtown.

2025 May: Horn Barbecue opens in Elk Grove.

2026 January: Horn Barbecue Elk Grove space repossessed.

2026 February: Horn Barbecue Lafayette evicted.

Early 2026: Oakland’s Kowbird closes.

Early 2026: Fresno Horn Barbecue closes.

fresno-instagram

Fresno stores can’t keep these viral squishy toys in stock. Here’s why

Get unlimited digital access

#ReadLocal