Porter Kinney took his love of barbecue and turned it into a science project as he experimented with smoking different types of meat and trying out various ingredients for sauces to go with those meats.

The project ended up with him creating original recipes that now have many Tri-Citians clamoring for a taste.

Kinney, along with his brother Reed, first started selling their southern-style barbecue meat sandwiches in October 2014 out of a food truck at John Dam Plaza in Richland. A year later, the Kinney brothers opened their first restaurant in in Richland.

And business is booming.

The brothers plan to open another restaurant in the near future but are not sure of the location yet, other than it will be in either Pasco or Kennewick.

Porter’s Real Barbecue, located in The Parkway, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., or whenever the meat sells out, which happens a lot, Porter Kinney said.

Everything on the menu is made from scratch and created fresh daily. The restaurant doesn’t even have a freezer.

The brioche buns used for the sandwiches are the only items bought from a vendor.

The meats are placed in the smokers at the end of each day and they cook all night. Other than using apple wood to fire the smokers, Porter Kinney isn’t giving away any secrets as to exactly how he seasons and cooks his meats.

The restaurant goes through about 700 pounds of meat a day, serving up yummy sandwiches made with brisket, pulled pork or turkey and a selection of Porter Kinney’s tasty sauces —mustard, spicy and original.

“Brisket is the toughest muscle on the cow and hardest to get right,” Porter Kinney said. “It’s also the most popular item on our menu.”

The menu also includes St. Louis ribs, peppers wrapped in smoked bacon, coleslaw, baked beans and macaroni and cheese made with gouda cheese, as well as homemade Southern-style sweet tea.

Even the desserts are made fresh daily, thanks to the siblings’ mother Linda Kinney and Porter’s wife Kate. Linda cooks up her grandmother’s recipe for molasses cookie bars and Kate makes a banana pudding.

“We call ourselves the barbecue family,” Reed said. “And that includes all the great people who work for us. It’s a team effort here, on everyone’s part. We just feel very lucky how this business has taken off.”

The popularity of their smokin’ meat sandwiches first spread by word of mouth, starting when the brothers both worked at Hanford, and Porter Kinney would bring a banquet of his smoked creations to work on occasion for all his friends, Reed Kinney said.

“My brother and friends were my Guinea pigs as I tested my recipes on them,” Porter Kinney said. “They gobbled them up.”

Porter said it took him about five or six years experimenting with barbecue in his backyard before he perfected his secret recipes.

“A restaurant was always my dream,” he said. “But I could never have come this far without my brother’s help.”

Porter Kinney, 28, learned all about the secrets of true southern barbecue when he moved to South Carolina after high school for work, which is where he met his wife, a registered nurse. He moved back to the Tri-Cities in 2009 with his newly acquired expertise in smoking meat.

“My wife and I couldn’t find anywhere in the Pacific Northwest where we could find barbecue as good as it is in the South,” Porter said.

So with his brother as his business partner, they bought a 1977 Dodge Sportsman RV, painted it red and turned it into a food truck.

“Our goal was to hopefully serve 10 people a day,” Reed said. “We were fortunate to exceed that goal and sold out almost every day. The food truck was an amazing experience and we learned a lot.”

The restaurant also provides a catering service.

For more information about Porter’s Real Barbecue, visit Facebook or portersrealbbq.com or call 509-942-9590.