One key word Balismoke said "
consistently " to me that is what makes a successful BBQ joint. We have quite a few here in Tyler, the problem is about half of them are inconsistent, sometimes you go and their food is great, the next time awful. What I have noticed is the pit master's at the franchise stores it seems like a new guy every time you go, I asked one of the young guys about that, he said that he had just started, never really cooked BBQ before, he told me "There is really nothing to it" you go to one of the other stores to train for a few days, and everything is laid out for you. I said like a schedule ? he said yes. you have a chart on how much and when to put what on, then you wait, look at the chart and it tells you when to pull it off, pretty easy. These are the big Auto Smokers (that's what I call them) Most are gas fired with a place for wood to generate smoke. We have a couple of places that use real pits, as does Franklin. He has a great product because he is consistent. And like anything else you do if you do it enough you get good at it, develop an eye and touch to tell. Texas Monthly had a real good article, actually that month was about BBQ it talked about and rated the BBQ joints in Texas, but it also talked about the pit masters and how long and much experience they had. If you got up each day put on 5 or 6 briskets every day lets say for a year, you would probably would have learned by feel, looks and time, and be turning out some pretty darn good brisket.
Gary