farragutpress

Patience pays off

The rise of Smoked Pickle Barbecue

May 27, 2026 by Jake Nichols

On a sunny Friday afternoon in west Knoxville, Eric Pickle sat underneath a wooden canopy.

His relaxed demeanor cut a hard contrast with the chaos reflected in and around his blue-tinted Costa lenses.

Trucks pulled into the gravel lot behind him, customers forming a lunchtime line for the red food truck bearing Pickle’s name: Smoked Pickle Barbecue.

Here, some business owners would be panicking, ready to jump in and help — but not Pickle.

Because deep down, on some level, he knew all along that this hysteria was coming. And he was prepared.

“It’s a lot to think about, but I try to remember it’s all part of the vision for that,” he said. “It was supposed to happen.”

Until it almost didn’t.

A leap of faith

A graduate of Bearden High School, Pickle attended the University of Virginia before returning to Knoxville in 2018. He worked in the corporate world for several years, sampling barbecue across the country before deciding to start smoking meats on his own more than six years ago.

In 2020, after changing jobs, Pickle was furloughed during the pandemic. Looking for something else to occupy his time, he bought meat in bulk and developed his own twist to Texas-style barbecue.

“We didn’t know what the heck we were doing,” he said, “so we shot a few videos and started a little Instagram page. But we sold a lot through PayPal and Venmo, and that’s when I was like, ‘Hey, I could maybe do something with this.’”

A year later, he cashed out part of his retirement to purchase a food truck — “which was probably stupid,” Pickle said — yet saw immediate returns through weekend gigs and catering work.

But he had already quit his job in 2022, and by early 2023, Pickle was begging for it back.

A catering customer agreed to an extra gig, and business hung on by a thread.

Yet from there, things have only ramped up.

A unique connection brought catering gigs for the Volunteer Club, the Tennessee athletics’ Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) hub, as Smoked Pickle put out a full spread for the club’s tailgate before the 2024 Tennessee-Alabama game.

Pickle credited Vol Club founder James Clawson for being “really instrumental in growing our brand,” adding he also developed a relationship with former Tennessee football nutritionist Ethan Bauer, who’s now with Auburn.

That led to cookouts for the Vols, as Pickle and his own growing team threw together a whole hog roast after UT’s win over Arkansas and cooked an alligator one day after Tennessee took down Florida.

“They’re wanting to elevate their student-athlete experience, and part of that is what they eat,” Pickle said. “So we started doing smaller events for them like a whole hog and stuff. We’re trying to be edgy in what we’re doing, and we’re more geared toward those events, using a live fire and really cool elements of barbecue.”

That approach has applied to the food truck,

as well, which found a permanent spot in February 2025 off Ebenezer Road, right next to Pip’s Iron Works.

For that, Pickle said he can thank local businessmen Dale Akins and Dave Carter, both of whom helped in the location scouting and development of their new pavilion.

“It was really like divine intervention,” Pickle said. “I grew up a mile from here and drove by this every single day.”

From there, starting at 11 a.m. every Thursday through Sunday, Pickle and his team of seven employees welcome people to try their unique take on a Southern delicacy.

With more than 75 years of cooking experience on staff, Smoked Pickle offers elements of Pickle’s trips through Texas and North and South Carolina with their beef ribs, brisket and pulled pork, respectively. But they also feature a nod to west Tennessee in spice-coated dry-rub ribs and a full array of sauces and side dishes whose recipes are homegrown — even down to a corn recipe that spins off the one coined by the late Pat Summitt.

“We go through more wood that probably any barbecue joint in Knoxville,” Pickle cracked. “Our guys cook in the elements. If it’s 110 degrees they’re outside, and if it’s 20 degrees they’re outside. But we think it’s worth it because of the taste difference.”

“We’ve tried to bring in elements of other barbecue while still sticking to craft barbecue,” he added in summary. “I think we had to give up the notion of sticking to one general type because Knoxville doesn’t have a barbecue identity. Knoxville’s barbecue identity is whatever we say it is, basically.”

Looking forward

Now, with more than 5,000 Instagram followers, a growing client list and weekly functions that have taken Knoxville by storm, Pickle is planning for the future. But he wants to stop and smell the smoke-infused roses, too, as a business that almost broke him is thriving.

“A lot of it was just about surviving long enough to get to this point,” he said.

“At first, I couldn’t enjoy this. Now I’m doing it for my family and the guys that work for me. I want to build something my kids have one day.”