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Teens going back to school after earning, learning from local restaurant owner

Ballhogg’s Barbecue owner mentored 26 teens this summer

SAN ANTONIO – As they carefully placed racks of ribs in the outdoor smoker behind Ballhogg’s Barbecue, Byron Delane, Jr., and Marcus Calloway kept in mind all the pointers they had learned about cooking this summer.

Inside the restaurant, though, is where they both learned important lessons about life.

“Not to play around as much, to take work seriously, because I used to play around a lot,” Calloway said.

Delane said he has grown this summer, too, under the careful supervision of Hubert Brown, the owner of Ballhogg’s.

“This man,” he said, pointing to Brown, “gave me a chance, an easy, good, very good chance to work here.”

Ballhogg's is known for its barbecue. Brown opened the restaurant in late 2019, just ahead of the global pandemic that shut down businesses everywhere. (KSAT 12 News)

That is Brown’s goal in a program he runs each year with help from the Texas Work Commission and basketball legend George “The Iceman” Gervin.

“I try to teach them how to work in a work environment because, a lot of these kids, it’s their first job,” Brown said.

Mentoring is a big part of Brown’s life now, but music also brought him success for a while.

He said he was one of the founders of a record company called 15Five Entertainment, which made its mark in the world of hip hop.

“We moved to Atlanta. We wrote the song ‘Blame it on the Alcohol’ for Jamie Foxx. We got Grammy (awards),” Brown said.

Eventually, though, he said he felt the need to return to San Antonio to give back to the youth in the East Side neighborhood.

His restaurant is located on E. Houston Street, right around the corner from the Frost Bank Center.

“It’s because I was those kids,” he said. “I grew up in the Lincoln Court projects. My mom was on crack.”

Brown said his father, a “real live cowboy,” raised him and his brother as a single father.

One wall features a mural depicting Hubert Brown in front of the Spurs' Fiesta-themed logo. (KSAT 12 News)

While avoiding trouble wasn’t exactly easy for him, Brown decided to help pave the way for others.

One of his initial community projects was creating a nonprofit called “Power” to teach young people how to start and run a business.

A photo posted inside Ballhogg's shows the original group Brown said he mentored. He credits them for helping him build the restaurant from the ground up. (KSAT 12 News)

Brown said some of the youth in that group convinced him to start his own business, Ballhogg’s, with their help. He said the teens pitched in to build the restaurant from the ground up, which included hand-making the furniture.

The basketball-themed restaurant features pictures of past Spurs legends, including Gervin. There’s even a portrait of Brown in front of the team’s Fiesta-themed logo.

His restaurant’s logo, meanwhile, is a take on a famous Tim Duncan photo. It features a hog peering over a basketball with his arms wrapped tightly around it.

“We were, like, ‘We’re right here where (the Spurs) ball at. We sell hog. It’s Ballhogg’s,” Brown said, explaining the unusual name.

When he is not in the kitchen, Brown said he works for the city of San Antonio, as well as a community mediator in times of tension related to gun violence.

Nothing he does is with money in mind, he said.

“At the end of the day, when you’re gone, people aren’t going to remember your money,” Brown said. “They’re going to remember how many lives you impacted.”

After this year’s summer jobs program, Brown said the number of young lives he has impacted is 68. He said that is how many teens and youths have worked in his restaurant and then gone on to be successful in life.


About the Authors
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Katrina Webber joined KSAT 12 in December 2009. She reports for Good Morning San Antonio. Katrina was born and raised in Queens, NY, but after living in Gulf Coast states for the past decade, she feels right at home in Texas. It's not unusual to find her singing karaoke or leading a song with her church choir when she's not on-air.

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