The Brisket Shoppe / Grill & Provisions
3501 N Armenia Ave.
Tampa
813.879.4647
Founder Danny Hernandez has a lifelong relationship with barbecue, West Tampa and the community that connects the two.
His parents opened the first Pipo’s Cuban Café in the late-1970s, and the building he operates his barbecue restaurant and grill store out of boasts even older ties to the Cuban families that founded La Segunda and the now-closed Faedo Family Bakery.
By 2018, Hernandez was operating five Holy Hog BBQ locations between its brick and mortars, food trucks and a vendor spot inside Tampa’s Amalie Arena. But after enduring the long process of healing from serious kitchen fire burns, Hernandez decided to pivot slightly and open his retail store Grill & Provisions in 2019.
By 2021, that space expanded and its restaurant counterpart The Brisket Shoppe started slinging Cuban-inspired barbecue, smoked on native Florida wood out of a massive 1,000 gallon barbecue pit.
Grill & Provisions and The Brisket Shoppe now share a parcel of land at 3501 N Armenia Ave. in West Tampa. “This is definitely the last evolution of my business—it’s my swan song,” Hernandez says about Grill & Provisions and The Brisket Shoppe.
Now that both the retail store and restaurant have been up and running for a few years, Hernandez wanted to pivot yet again towards a cause bigger than barbecue and business—a philanthropic effort with a culinary force behind it.