Clarks Barbecue

Company Overview

Clark''s Barbecue is a family-style sit-down barbecue restaurant located at 1331 NC Highway 66 South in Kernersville, North Carolina. Founded in 1993 by the Gentry family — natives of Davidson County, the home of Lexington-style pit barbecue — Clark''s was built to recreate the wood-fueled, pit-style barbecue tradition the family grew up on. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with the Coarse Chopped Barbecue serving as the menu''s signature dish: pork shoulders cooked low and slow over real wood, with the saltiness, spice, and authentic smoke flavor that Lexington-style aficionados expect.

Clark''s holds a respectable Tripadvisor ranking among Kernersville restaurants and has built a regional following over more than three decades of consistent operation. This is the kind of regional, family-built barbecue institution that defines authentic American food culture — not a private-equity-owned chain pumping out reheated pulled pork in a thousand identical strip-mall locations.

ESG and Sustainability

As a privately owned single-location North Carolina restaurant, Clark''s Barbecue does not produce corporate ESG reports or engage in sustainability marketing campaigns. The restaurant''s footprint is exactly what you would expect of a wood-fired pit barbecue operation — a single building, a smoking pit, a staff of cooks and servers, and a steady supply of pork shoulders and hardwood. There is no greenwashed corporate ESG theater here; just a functioning Carolina barbecue restaurant that has stayed in business for more than 30 years by serving consistent food at fair prices.

DEI Programs

Clark''s Barbecue does not operate a formal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department. As a family-owned single-location restaurant, hiring is focused on the practical skills barbecue restaurants need — cooks who can run a pit, servers who treat customers right, and the kind of work ethic that keeps a 30-plus-year business running. There is no DEI officer, no public diversity statement, and no demographic-quota hiring framework. This stands in sharp contrast to large restaurant chains and franchise systems where DEI departments have grown to wield significant operational influence.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

Clark''s Barbecue does not appear on the Human Rights Campaign''s Corporate Equality Index, runs no Pride sponsorships, and produces no rainbow-themed limited menu items every June. The restaurant''s marketing focuses on what a barbecue restaurant''s marketing should focus on: the quality of the meat, the authenticity of the wood-fired tradition, and the family-style dining experience. For North Carolina diners tired of having every restaurant trip filtered through a corporate culture-war lens, Clark''s is a refreshingly straightforward operation.

Political Activity

As a privately owned family restaurant, Clark''s Barbecue does not maintain a corporate PAC, does not engage in political lobbying, and has no public record of corporate political donations through the business. The Gentry family has not used the restaurant as a political platform of any kind. The restaurant''s political position, to the extent one exists, is the implicit cultural position of running an authentic, traditional Lexington-style barbecue joint in small-town North Carolina — a position that, by and large, conservative diners will recognize as their own.

Consumer Impact

For North Carolina barbecue lovers in the Kernersville, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro region — and for travelers passing through on I-40 — Clark''s Barbecue is exactly the kind of authentic, family-owned American institution that values-based diners should be supporting. With a woke score of 4 out of 100, the restaurant earns a 100% Woke Free rating in our preliminary review. Your meal supports a multi-decade family business, contributes to the preservation of Lexington-style pit barbecue tradition, and — refreshingly — comes with zero corporate political activism on the side.

Order the Coarse Chopped, pull up a chair, and enjoy a Carolina barbecue tradition done right by a family that has been doing it right since 1993.