My friend started a BBQ joint[0] a couple years back, I'll try to add some insight from what I learned talking with him (this is all second hand obviously). (1)

My friend started a BBQ joint[0] a couple years back, I'll try to add some insight from what I learned talking with him (this is all second hand obviously). (1) Quality of meat, (2) quality of the cooker, (3) wood used, (4) temperature/time spent cooking the meat. For meat quality, as the article calls out, you want to buy from good suppliers. Franklins gets this right, and I believe Rudy's does as well (they have some of their own farms). Side note: with the explosion of BBQ in Austin and Texas area, prices of meat has been going up (probably screws with quality you can get too). My friend's joint actually bought Franklins old cooker when he started up. He had a new one built later that can hold more meat for a given footprint. The newer cooker also did better at having more even temperatures throughout the cooker (since the woodbox is at one end, making sure the heat circulates properly can be difficult). Wood quality is interesting and difficult as called out. For the restaurants outside of Austin (ones in Lockhart), they can get a ton of land for cheap and can dry/season all the wood themselves (they have a year+ worth of wood on their lots out there). Places in Austin will need to either have their own land outside the city or source from different places to get the right kind of wood they currently need. Temperature is what differentiates places like Franklins (and Blue Ox) from places like Rudy's and restaurants. Franklins will be cooking the brisket they serve for 12+ hours. They cook at a lower temperature, as the final goal is 145 degrees, so they run their cooker at something like 180-200 degrees (I forget what they set it to. Also, this is the temp at the point where the meat is, not the woodbox itself). While places like Rudy's will cook at a much higher temperature so they can have meat ready in 4-5 hours of cook time. [0] http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-ox-bbq-austin http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-ox-bbq-austin