Flyby BBQ | Photo by Grace Ramsdell | The Wright State Guardian
Flyby BBQ, located at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek, Ohio, offers delicious dishes to Wright State University (WSU) students and out-of-town barbecue lovers alike.
A difficult balancing act
Owner David Butcher runs the business with his cousin Mark. They started Flyby BBQ as a food truck in 2016 while Butcher was a student at Ohio State University.
“It was a way to portray that food that I loved and present it in a way that was really fun and relevant to today,” said Butcher. “I felt like nobody was really doing anything exciting with it anymore, which was sad to me, and that was a big problem that I wanted to solve.”
This led him to take their menu in an intriguing direction with items such as barbecue macaroni bowls and cook those menu items using traditional barbecuing methods.
“Our meat is still smoked as legitimately as possible for 16 hours the hard way, so finding that cool balance and making young people excited about it too was a big thing for me,” said Butcher.
Butcher was named the number one student entrepreneur in Central Ohio and the Entrepreneurs Organization placed him in the top 25 in the United States in 2016 and 2017, according to a press release.
Opening a new space
The Fairfield Commons location of Flyby BBQ opened in Feb. 2018.. This location was chosen because of its traffic as well as the proximity to WSU and the Air Force Base.
The dish of choice for Butcher is the brisket macaroni bowl topped with ghost pepper pickles. According to him, the secret to making a good barbecue dish is not rushing the process.
“If somebody takes the time and puts the hours into smoking their meat right, that’s the most important thing,” Butcher said. “It’s something that no matter how busy we are, even though now we’re in a big restaurant and serve a lot of customers, we still do it the right way.”
WSU student Kenna Thomas has been to Flyby BBQ and is a fan of the restaurant.
“It has the right balance of sweet and savory,” said Thomas. “I’m not necessarily one for barbecue because it’s just too sweet, but Flyby makes some good barbecue.”
Continuing through the coronavirus
Flyby BBQ was the first business in Dayton to close because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Butcher. Starting in December, the business began utilizing “fly-through” service by situating the food truck between the main entrance to the mall and Panera Bread. This will be continuing for at least the next two months, though in-store ordering and delivery through Doordash are also available.
“We closed two days before we had to because we saw it coming, and we wanted to make sure that our customers were as safe as possible,” said Butcher. “This was our way of continuing that trust with people and giving our customers an option, if they aren’t comfortable coming into the store, to still have our food.”
Fundraising and the future
Student organizations at WSU are able to do fundraisers with Flyby BBQ and keep 25 percent of the sales brought in during fundraising nights. Interested organizations can apply through the business’s website.
Butcher believes that the future of Flyby BBQ will be spreading a love of barbecue as far as possible, partly because many of their customers make long drives in order to eat at the business.
“Some of our cult followers come from Columbus or Cincinnati just to get us, so if we can expand and make ourselves more available to the people that love us, that would be the best way forward,” said Butcher.
