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For Phil Peters Jr., Bar-B-Que means so much more than just an appetizing meal. For Peters, it brings back fond memories of his father, the namesake for which his restaurant Shotgun Pete’s BBQ is named after.

 

“The name, well we got that from my dad when he played football for West Virginia,” Peters said. “His nickname was Shotgun Pete partly because of his deer hunting and also because the football team ran what was called a shotgun formation.”

 

Peters said that it was said when his dad got the football, it was like the ball was shot out of both barrels of a shotgun at the same time.

 

Sitting at an aged wooden bench at his restaurant in downtown Columbia, Peters described how he had told his dad when he was a kid that if they ever decided to open a restaurant, “Shotgun Pete’s would be a good name for it,” so when the idea came to invest in one, he stuck with the name from his childhood.

 

“My dad was so proud of this place,” Peters said, glancing at the pictures of him and his father on the wall above him. “He just passed away on March 27, so it’s been kind of rough these past few weeks and coming to work everyday and seeing his pictures on the wall.”

 

Since he started his business, Peters has been working on a grill his father constructed 30 years prior. He said he drove all the way from his original home in Pensacola, Florida about 900 miles to Missouri with it. All the cooking takes place at Shotgun Pete’s on the back patio, absent of an oven or kitchen.

 

“We cook like we would for our own families,” Peters said. “We try to treat people like they’re our own family here. Everybody that comes in is like family.”

 

Shotgun Pete employee Dequan Maxwell attested to the fact that not only does Peters aim to treat his customers like one of his own, but his employees as well.

 

“I’ve worked her for about two and a half years,” Maxwell said. “It’s like another family here.”

 

Peters made his way to Columbia in 1993 when he said his and his sister’s cars were “sabotaged,” so they were both without a car.

 

“My sister was looking in the paper one day for jobs trying to help us both and she found a job for an outgoing, adventurous person to be a youth counselor, and you didn’t need a car for this job, so I thought, ‘well, OK, I’ll check it out,’” Peters said.

 

From there, he submitted his application and was hired as a counselor for a youth treatment program, where he was trained in Pennsylvania and then transferred to Lawrence, Kansas.

 

Peters said they traveled by wagon trains on horseback about 50 miles a week across the country and stayed in teepees. They were allotted 3 days off and worked for four days each week.

 

“We stopped at an area close to Columbia, and on my days off, I went into the city where I met a young lady at a Mexican restaurant here in town with about seven of her friends,” Peters said. “The last lady that sat next to me, well, we’ve been together for 22 years now.”

 

That night, Peters said she took him to the Silver Bullet to “show off her cowboy.”

 

“I had long hair, a beard, a cowboy hat, a duster, spurs on my boots, dust still on me, horsehair all over me,” Peters said. “We started dating after that night.”

 

“Next thing I knew, I moved up here. I’ve been here 22 years. Fell off my horse in Columbia,” Peters said.

 

Though away from his immediate family, the restaurant helps to remember his father and keep his memory alive through photos and having his namesake attached to his business.

 

“I’m honoring him by carrying on and doing stuff he’s proud of and the things he taught me how to do,” Peters said. 

Shotgun Pete's BBQ Shack 

 

Hear from Phil Peters Jr., owner of Shotgun Pete's BBQ Shack, as he describes his time in the Bar-B-Que business, and how family has played an important part of his restaurant. 

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