Tops Bar-B-Q will open two new locations this year during its 70th anniversary.
“The first one we’ll launch this year will be in East Memphis,” says Tops Operations LLC vice president Hunter Brown.
They’re not ready to give the exact addresses, but the first one will be “the farthest east location we’ll be,” Brown says. The second location, which also will launch this year, will be in Cordova.
That will add two more locations to their 16 Tops locations.
Tops plans to expand as Memphis expands. They’re checking out neighborhoods “in terms of where we would be next,” says Tops CEO Randy Hough.
Tops has plans for “at least two more” locations in 2023.
They like to tell people, “If we’re not close by, I’d be on the lookout.”
As for opening Downtown, their store at 1286 Union Avenue is “as far west as we’ve gone outside of Marion, Arkansas,” Hough says.
“The pandemic changed the way Downtown exists today. Just in terms of foot traffic.” But, he adds, “We’re looking pretty heavy at just how the footprint would expand.”
As for existing Tops locations, Brown says, “We’re not looking to close any that are still here. We’re simply adding more restaurants to neighborhoods we’re currently not in.”
They’re using a drawing of the Tops Summer Avenue/National Street location to promote their 70th anniversary. “That’s what Tops is all about,” Hough says. “That’s the way a lot of our guests remember Tops — some of the nostalgia. It takes you back to that feeling of driving up. You’ve got the neon. That’s the sixth store that was built. It’s just a special one in terms of nostalgia.”
The Tops brand is ingrained in the memory of so many Memphians. “Our colors are red, white, and yellow. Those are the kinds of colors you’ll see on Tops.”
The new Bartlett store was the first to shift colors. “Some of that is because of city ordinances and what’s allowed. It’s got more red, white, and gray.”
Some of the old locations feature a logo of a pig standing on a spinning top, Hough says, and “neon is used on some of the buildings where it says ‘Memphis Best Bar-B-Q Since 1952.’”
Neon is “not on all of our Tops, but that’s another thing that you’ll notice that’s kind of unique.”
Tops founder J.W. Lawson came up with the name Tops. Their slogan is “Tops in barbecue. Tops in Memphis, too.”
The first store, which was on Macon Road near National Street, “closed many years ago,” Brown says.
The second location, which opened in 1954 at Rhodes Avenue and Getwell Road near the University of Memphis, is “still going strong today,” he says. “It was an old house. And it was the last house in the neighborhood on Rhodes at Getwell. And you certainly can tell if you look at it. It kind of blends in the neighborhood. That’s a special one to us. It has a lot of memories. There are a lot of people who lived and grew up in that area who talk about it all the time. It has an emotional connection.”
The taste of the barbecue — which is cooked in an open pit — and the hamburgers hasn’t changed since the 1950s, Hough says. The recipes may have been tweaked back in the ’50s, but they’re “the same ones we know of that would be back in the ’50s. I just don’t know if it’s ’52.”
They want people to experience the same taste people did in the 1950s. “That’s really important to us. When you taste the sauce, the beans, the pork — those are the same.
“We tried to stay true for that long.”
New food items at Tops are rare. Tops Bar-B-Q recently added the Smoked BBQ Bologna sandwich — the first new item in 10 years.
