A fire-damaged Dickey's Barbecue Pit at 600 N. Central Expressway in McKinney is getting a $350,000 makeover, with state paperwork now confirming the smokehouse chain's plans to bring the shuttered location back to life. The restaurant, listed as permanently closed on Google, has sat dark since a fire struck sometime before March 25, according to the company's own account of the timeline.
According to MySA, Dickey's Barbecue Pit filed paperwork with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which received the submission on August 28. The filing covers a full renovation of the restaurant's 2,800-square-foot interior, though it requires no structural work, per the outlet's reporting. The project's size is why it landed in front of state regulators in the first place: Texas law under the Elimination of Architectural Barriers Act requires any commercial renovation estimated at $50,000 or more to register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for a formal accessibility review by a Registered Accessibility Specialist, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Smaller projects still have to meet state accessibility standards, but they skip the mandatory filing.
A Slow-Burn Timeline For Reopening
State records list the renovation as having started August 1 and project a finish date of December 1, according to TDLR, though the agency's own timelines are subject to change without notice. MySA's report notes that this location's most recent health or safety review came seven months before publication, underscoring how long the space has been out of normal operation.
Word of the fire first surfaced publicly in March, when a different McKinney Dickey's location, at 8628 State Highway 121, posted on Facebook that the North Central Expressway restaurant had been temporarily closed due to a recent fire. That Highway 121 location stayed open throughout its sister restaurant's closure, giving McKinney barbecue fans at least one nearby option while the Central Expressway spot sat idle.
How Other Dickey's Fires Have Played Out
The McKinney closure is not an isolated incident for the chain. A Dickey's Barbecue Pit franchise in Perrysburg Township, Ohio, went through a similar fire restoration after a blaze in July 2025, and that location took seven months of repairs before its grand reopening in March, according to WTOL. In February, an electrical fire destroyed a Dickey's location in Whiting, New Jersey, causing structural damage that spread to neighboring retail spaces, as reported by News 12 New Jersey.
Kitchen fires are a well-documented hazard for restaurants generally, and barbecue joints carry particular risk given their reliance on grease-heavy exhaust hoods and open-flame smoking equipment. Cooking equipment is the leading cause of commercial restaurant fires nationally, accounting for 61% of all blazes in eating and drinking establishments and more than $165 million in direct property damage annually, according to National Fire Protection Association data reported by fire safety equipment manufacturer Ansul.
A Dallas-Founded Chain With Deep North Texas Roots
Dickey's Barbecue Pit traces its history to 1941, when World War I veteran Travis Dickey founded the chain in Dallas. The company, still run by the Dickey family, has since expanded to more than 500 restaurants across 45 states and two countries, with over 30 locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone, according to Dickey's own media kit as cited by MySA.
The chain has also built organizational ties to first responders over the years. The Dickey Foundation, founded in 2016 by former Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey following that year's Dallas police shooting ambush, has distributed more than $750,000 in safety gear and equipment grants to fire departments and first responders nationwide, according to the foundation. Any restoration work in McKinney would fall under the jurisdiction of the McKinney Fire Department, which ranks as the 19th largest certified fire protection department in Texas with 259 appointed personnel, per Texas Commission on Fire Protection records.
The restoration lands amid rapid growth for both the surrounding city and the barbecue chain. McKinney's population reached 211,397 residents as of 2023, with municipal projections forecasting growth to 284,000 by 2040, according to City of McKinney development records. Dickey's, meanwhile, opened 46 new locations globally in 2025 and is projecting more than 60 additional openings to surpass 400 total active locations, per a corporate release distributed by Business Wire.
Not every Dickey's location in the region has had a clean recent record. In June, Hoodline reported that a nearby Dickey's Barbecue Pit in Plano scored a 70 on a routine municipal health inspection, the low end of acceptable compliance on Plano's 100-point scale. MySA said it had requested comment from Dickey's Barbecue Pit on the McKinney restoration, no response was included in the outlet's report.
