Why is National Barbecue Month in May?

The trade body that promotes it calls May the beginning of peak grilling season. No source located records why the Barbecue Industry Association picked May when it relaunched the observance in 1981, rather than the June or July it had used before.

Is National Barbecue Month the same as National Barbecue Day?

No. National Barbecue Day is a separate observance on May 16, and July is promoted as National Grilling Month, so three different slots circulate for what sounds like one thing.

Who created National Barbecue Month?

No source names a founder. The 1963 newspapers credit a National Barbecue Month Council and quote a national chairman, but no organisation by that name has been located, and the campaign's recipes repeatedly called for one brand of browning sauce.

National Barbecue Month

Next celebratedSaturday, May 1, 2027

Barbecue is the slow half of outdoor cooking, and National Barbecue Month is its turn on the calendar. Put on a cut that needs hours rather than minutes, and let the low heat do the rest.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEAll of May

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYBBQ

ORIGIN

Corporate Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

1963

“Every city had a chairman. The council they answered to has not been traced.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A trade campaign that changed months twice.

The phrase first reaches print in 1963, when American newspapers ran syndicated features announcing that June was National Barbecue Month and quoting figures from a National Barbecue Month Council that no record opened for this page could locate. The observance was being printed as a July event by the late 1960s, dropped out of the papers through the 1970s, and returned in May in 1981 under the Barbecue Industry Association.

See the BIA's May calendarvia Barbecue Industry Association

INTRO

The recipes kept calling for one sauce

National Barbecue Month has not always been in May. The first newspapers to print the phrase, in 1963, were talking about June. "It's official: June is National Barbecue Month," the Hanford Sentinel told its readers that summer.

The authority behind that announcement was a National Barbecue Month Council, which supplied the survey figures local chairmen quoted to reporters city by city. The barbecue historian Robert F. Moss writes that no organisation by that name seems to have actually existed.

What does turn up in the record is a browning sauce. The grilling recipes that travelled with those features kept telling cooks to brush their steaks with Kitchen Bouquet, and on 12 June that year four California papers ran the instruction in identical words.

ORIGINS

Barbecue Month history

INTRODUCTION

The phrase surfaced in the trade press before it reached anybody's backyard. Fourteen publications carried it in 1963, ten of them trade journals, among them Butchers' Advocate, The Progressive Grocer and Super Market Merchandising.

No earlier use has turned up. California's digitised newspapers carry nothing for the phrase before 1963.

CHAPTER 01

June, with a chairman in every city

Reporters that summer interviewed a local chairman of National Barbecue Month, city by city, many of them photographed at a grill with a spatula in hand. A year later Los Angeles Mayor Samuel W. Yorty named June National Barbecue Month for his city, and the Valley Times of North Hollywood photographed him showing a copy.

The national chairman was Colonel Edgar W. Garbisch, introduced to readers as a one-time All-American center at West Point and a prominent American industrialist. Both were true. What the stories left out was the rest of his job: he was chairman and chief executive of Grocery Store Products Company of West Chester, Pennsylvania, which made Kitchen Bouquet.

CHAPTER 02

The month that would not stay put

By the end of the decade the designation had moved. The Desert Sun listed it under July in 1969, beside National Hot Dog Month, and California papers were still filing it there in 1971.

Then it stopped. California's digitised newspapers hold nothing for the phrase between 1973 and 1980.

Chase's Calendar of Annual Events had carried it in 1963 and again in 1968. It is missing from the 1978-1980 editions.

CHAPTER 03

May, and a sponsor willing to sign its name

It came back on 13 May 1981, when the Thousand Oaks Star reported that May had been designated National Barbecue Month. Moss credits the relaunch to the Barbecue Industry Association, which, unlike the campaign of the 1960s, put its own name on it. By the end of the 1990s it was printing the month on its own calendar of events, under May.

That name is younger than the observance it took over. It appears in no HathiTrust volume published before 1978. The association's own page, archived in 2000, describes a body originally formed in 1958 that arrived at its name only after three changes.

TIMELINE

Timeline

June is National Barbecue Month

Newspapers across the country run syndicated features announcing that June is National Barbecue Month.

A mayor names the month

Los Angeles Mayor Samuel W. Yorty names June National Barbecue Month for his city.

The month has moved to July

The Desert Sun lists it in July, alongside National Hot Dog Month.

May, with a sponsor named

The Thousand Oaks Star reports on 13 May that May has been designated National Barbecue Month.

The association lists May itself

The Barbecue Industry Association's own calendar of events carries National Barbecue Month under May.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Barbecue Month Matters

LANGUAGE

Barbecue named the frame long before it named the meat.

The Oxford English Dictionary files barbecue as a borrowing from Spanish, from barbacoa, and the Real Academia Española traces that word only tentatively, to Taino. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina says the word the Spanish encountered in the West Indies named a method of drying meat over a fire on a frame of wooden sticks.

CHEMISTRY

Why a shoulder needs the whole afternoon

Collagen is what holds a hard-working cut together, and a 2023 review in Foods puts its denaturation between 53 and 63 degrees Celsius, with gelatin forming above that. The same review notes that the cross-links stiffen as an animal ages, which is why an old shoulder asks for time rather than a fiercer fire.

TRADE

The month has never hidden what it is

The Barbecue Industry Association ran May as a sales season and published its own consumer research to fill it, reporting grill ownership, fuel preferences and an estimate of how many cookouts Americans held. Its successor kept the habit, timing a State of the Barbecue Industry release to 1 May 2018.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Barbecue Month by the Numbers

3.1B: US cookouts a year, industry estimate
75%: US households owning a grill, 1999
$190,000+: Memphis contest prize money, 2026
1.8: Uses of barbecue per million words, 2010

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Barbecue Month

The dictionary's oldest barbecue is a bed

The OED's earliest evidence for the noun is William Dampier in 1697, describing a night camped on a river bank: his party lay on their Barbecu's, frames of sticks raised about three foot from the ground.

English had the verb before it had the noun

The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for the verb is dated 1661 and for the noun 1697, so barbecue is on record as something you do before it is on record as a thing.

In Spanish it is mostly not about cooking

Six of the eight senses the Real Academia Española lists for barbacoa describe a frame or a platform, including the scaffold a maize-field watchman is posted on and, in Ecuador and Peru, a propped-up hurdle used as a rough bed.

One state argues with itself about the sauce

The Encyclopedia of North Carolina sets the Coastal Plain's cider vinegar, red pepper and salt against the Piedmont's thin tomato sauce, which Lexington calls dip, and describes generations-long arguments over which is worthy of the state.

The association now markets a different month

The Barbecue Industry Association's successor, the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, used its June 2025 seasonal release to promote July as National Grilling Month, not May.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Barbecue Month

Give a tough cut the whole afternoon

Pick something built from connective tissue, a pork shoulder or a whole hog rather than a steak, and hold it at low heat for hours. Collagen only lets go after a long stretch at a modest temperature, and there is no shortcut through it.

Follow the championship in Memphis

The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest takes over a Memphis park in the middle of May, judged by more than 250 people the festival trains and certifies itself. Memphis in May publishes the dates and the entry details for each edition.

READ

Read the 1963 features in the archive

The California Digital Newspaper Collection holds the syndicated stories that launched the month, dated and searchable. Search the phrase and read what a local chairman told the food editor.

COOK

Cook both Carolina sauces and pick one

Make a cider vinegar, red pepper and salt mixture for one batch and a thin tomato dip for the other. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina sets out what belongs on each side of the state.

SET

Set the grill up outdoors and clear of the house

The Barbecue Industry Association's own safety sheet says grills are for outdoor use only, because carbon monoxide can build up in a garage, tent or trailer. It also asks cooks to set up away from buildings, dry leaves or brush.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Barbecue Month?

1 / 8

Which month did National Barbecue Month occupy when it first appeared?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial trade and media observance: the Federal Register carries no document naming it, and no proclamation, statute or congressional resolution was located, so May runs as a normal working month.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

15sources

10primary records

11independently dated

Primary records

California Digital Newspaper Collection

Search results for "national barbecue month", 1900 to 2000

Seventy-five dated California newspaper hits, from June 1963 to the 1990s.