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| ALABAMA |
Michael Matsos
Golden Rule Bar-B-Q
2506 Crestwood Blvd
Irondale, AL 35210
(205) 956-2678
www.goldenrulebbq.com
“I used to go to the Golden Rule, like a bunch of guys get together just to get some good barbecue. And I loved their barbecue sandwich the way [the owner, Jabo Stone] did it and everything and the sauce. And he knew I used to come out there, and then he kept after me about taking over the business. And I told him I was a steak operator. I didn’t know anything about barbecue back then. But I learned quickly, watching him.” – Michael Matsos
One of the oldest barbecue joints in Birmingham still in operation, the Golden Rule opened its doors in Irondale in 1891. Operated by the Williams family, the place was a popular stop for barbecue and beer on what was then the Atlanta Highway. In the 1930s electrician Jabo Stone married Ellene Williams and into the family business. For the next forty years, the Stones operated the Golden Rule. The Stones had no children to carry on their legacy, so in 1969 Jabo Stone approached Michael Matsos about taking over the business. Michael had been in the restaurant business for a few decades already, opening the legendary La Paree Restaurant and then his namesake Michael’s Sirloin Room in downtown Birmingham. Though he didn’t know much about barbecue, Michael saw a good business opportunity in the Golden Rule and took it over in 1969. In the intervening years the Golden Rule has expanded, not only its menu, but its presence throughout Alabama and the South.
Listen
to this 2-minute audio clip
of Michael Matsos talking about how he got to Birmingham and into the
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NOTE:
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been
edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please
click here.
Subject: Michael Matsos
Date: October 3, 2006
Location: Golden Rule Bar-B-Q – Irondale, AL
Interviewer: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways
Alliance on Tuesday, October 3rd 2006; and I’m in Irondale in Birmingham,
Alabama, at the Golden Rule Headquarters with Mr. Michael Matsos. And
Mr. Matsos, would you say your name and also your birth date for the record,
please, sir?
Michael Matsos: It’s Michael C. Matsos. My birthday, it’s
November 8th 1918.
And you were telling me earlier—you handed me this wonderful
history of your life, From Brooklyn to Birmingham. Could you talk
a little bit about your Greek heritage and how you ended up in Birmingham?
My mother and father both came from Greece, and I was born in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. We migrated to New York as a small boy. I went through
elementary school and high school in Brooklyn, New York, and then my mother
stayed behind me to go to the university. So after I went to the New York
Public Library, I wanted to go into the commerce school. I realized that
the University of Alabama Commerce School, at that time, with Dean Bidgood,
was the best buy 
for
the money. [Laughs] This was right after the Depression in those days.
So I migrated to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and—at midnight and—and
woke up a cab driver and said, “Where’s a place to sleep around
here?” [Laughs] And that’s how I started at the university.
So I was—I’m real proud of being with the university all these
years. And after I finished school in three-and-a-half years, I was lucky
enough to make good enough grades where I was a—a grader and a teacher’s
assistant. And then World War II broke out, so I got a degree in one hand
and a report to Fort Benning in the other. So after World War II, I came
back and settled in Birmingham and that’s—that’s—then
from then on, I went into business on my own.
If there’s anything as far as the Golden Rule Bar-B-Q, at that time it was—the fellow’s name was Jabo Stone owned it, he and his wife [Ellene]. Her name [maiden] was Williams, and she and her sister used to operate it. It used to be across the street of where we’re located now in Irondale. And Highway 20 came in and took that property—the Interstate. He had no children, no one to leave it with, so he kept after me about taking over the business. He used to come downtown; I used to operate the Michael’s Restaurant, the steakhouse which was known for most of the sporting people in—back with Coach Bryant [of the University of Alabama] and those years. And also being involved, I had a group of investors and we built the Hyatt [Regency Hotel] downtown, which is now part of the Sheraton and the Civic Center.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I told him, “All right, I’ll take it over. But I’m not going to pay you anything for it.” So he locked me up with a twenty-year royalty agreement, so in the long run, Jabo Stone made lots more money than I anticipated paying him on the royalty. But the twenty years have since passed. So since that time, we’ve expanded the Golden Rule concept with about—we have now twenty-two franchises. In fact, there’s one under construction at Corinth, Mississippi, right now. As far as the Golden Rule is concerned, the granddaddy—after I bought it from Jabo Stone, when the Interstate came on, I was lucky enough to acquire the land right smack across the street where the exit is, which is Exit 133 into Irondale. So that’s the granddaddy of them all because, at that time, it used to be a dirt road…However, we’ve branched out where what we call proprietary items. We have a manufacturer that does all our sauces, and then we made some deals with national outfits like Sysco Company, which is on the New York Stock Exchange, for the products and—and do the deliveries. Because when you go beyond a 300-miles radius, you’ve got to have somebody that’s able to fulfill your product development and so forth.
And so my son, Charles, he came into the business, so he’s
more or less running it; however, I still come to the office every day
to make sure that things are done right. [Laughs] However, the restaurant
business as a whole is very difficult because you may have a great product,
but if you don’t have good service to go with it, you have nothing.
And that’s always been—because I’ve always believed
you can't compromise quality for a price. Quality comes first. And that’s
been our motto, and I think we’ve been very good at it.
Well could I back up a little bit and ask you about when you returned
to Birmingham, did you immediately get into the restaurant business?
Yes…and my first restaurant was the La Paree Restaurant, which is
still—was a landmark right next to the Tutwiler Hotel. I backed
into that. And then from there, I brought in a fellow named Bill Demoes,
who was well known as a partner, as a chef, and we were the number one
restaurant in downtown. Then Bill, with the guerilla warfare in Greece
at that time, he—we—I signed up, so we put them all to work
and he brought in about six people of his family from Greece that were
involved with all that guerilla warfare right after World War II. So I
told Bill, I said, “Bill,” I said, “You’ve got
too much family, and I’m by myself,” so I said, “We’ll
split up; you take the restaurant—the La Paree,” which he
did. But at the same time I was involved with the Holiday Inns and Kemmons
Wilson out of Memphis, when he first started the Holiday Inn chains so
I was—I was involved with the fifth Holiday Inn on the Bessemer
Super Highway, so I went out there and started the Michael’s Restaurant
out there. So the Michael’s [restaurant] got bigger and then opened
the other one downtown after that. But that’s how it all started.
And Jabo Stone used to come visit us, and he kept after me about taking
over his business because he was getting old and he had no children and
his wife and everything. So that’s—I sort of backed into it.
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Now did you have an interest in cooking when you opened La Paree?
When I was at the La Paree, I used to walk behind [Bill] Demoes, who was
an excellent cook…He was a perfectionist when it came to cooking,
and I used to write the recipes down and go behind him. And I used to
tell Bill all the time, I said, “Bill,” I said, “some
days you’ll get sick,” I said. “You know, I’ve
got to come back here.” Which there were times when he didn’t
show back, and I had to go back there and help bring up lunch or something.
But that’s the way it all started.
---
And so you said that Jabo Stone used to come to your restaurant, but
had you been to the Golden Rule?
Oh, yeah. I used to go to the Golden Rule, like a bunch of guys get together
just to get some good barbecue, and I loved their barbecue sandwich the
way he did it and everything and the sauce. And he knew I used to come
out there and then he kept after me about taking over the business, and
I told him I was a steak operator. I didn’t know anything about
barbecue back then. But I learned quickly, watching him. [Laughs]
And so Jabo Stone, from what you said earlier, he married a woman whose
maiden name was Williams, and they originally opened the Golden Rule?
Yeah, they’re the original owners of the Golden Rule from way back.
It used to be in that family, the Williams family, and he married one
of the sisters. And they both passed away now, but they had no children,
so that’s why he sold it to me on a royalty basis, more or less,
with no money down. [Laughs]
But so the original Golden Rule, it opened in the late 19th century
correct?
The original Golden Rule opened when it was a dirt—in 1891, when
it used to be a dirt road and then eventually became US 78 highway going
to Atlanta. That’s—so I—I think it moved about four
or five times. I’m not quite sure. But where we’re located
now is we moved over there about thirty years ago. He used to live right
next to it. See, he used to own that property that Highway—I-20
came through so he knew that was coming. That’s why I was interested
in—I was lucky enough to get the piece of property right across
the street from the exit.
Do you know much about the Williams family or Jabo Stone and how far
back they go in this area and how they got into the restaurant business?
Well he owned—he was an electrician and his name was Stone Electric
Company. And finally, I think, one of his nephews has taken over the company.
And she came from Gadsden, Alabama—the Williams [his wife’s
family]. So that’s all I know about them but—she and her sister.
Other than that, I really don’t know too much about them because
they were a very quiet-type family, you know, and they didn’t have
many children to speak of. I do remember when he passed away, having to
pay those royalties that I had contracted with. If I remember correctly,
we did a lot of bookkeeping because I had to send out about six different
checks to different nephews and nieces that he left the money to. [Laughs]
That’s all I remember.
Can you describe what the restaurant was like when you were eating
there as a customer?
Yes. Originally since I was raised in the streets of Brooklyn, when I
first visited there the first thing that—it was just a—a regular
barbecue place and he used to sell breakfast also. But what got me, they
had a separate dining room in the back for the—for the blacks with
their own jukebox and that was something—I wasn’t used to
that, being from up North. So finally, when I first took it over, though,
that was over with [meaning, segregation], and I didn’t want to
be involved with anything like that. So I’ve never had that problem
because to this day I have employees in the Golden Rule, for example,
Bernice Kelley, she started as a teenager, and she’s now seventy-five
years old still working. And I have several other employees with us that
have been with me for thirty years. But we’re just like a big family.
So you’re saying when you bought the restaurant, which was in
about—it was 1969?
I bought the restaurant and it was about 1970, I think—something
like that.
---
Can you talk about the food in the early days? Because, as I recall,
reading from the history on your website, it was a very limited menu with
just the pork and a salad with a dollop of mayonnaise on it and whatnot.
Yes,
but I sort of elevated that—upgraded it quite a bit. I introduced
our chickens the way we do it and then loin back ribs and then introduced
some beef, you know, brisket of beef. And then we were using fresh French
fries, which to this day that—if we try to change it and the customers
rebel against us. But it’s a lot of prep area, and it’s a
lot of old-fashioned hard work but we don’t—we charge a little
bit more but they don’t mind because somebody has to overcome the
expense involved, and it works out real fine that way.
Was Jabo cooking all the barbecue himself when he had the restaurant?
Jabo never cooked; he was an electrician. But he had these old pit fellows
that I inherited. Some of them have passed away. And we’ve trained
them all over the years, and they do a good job. Because one of the things
I kept up was having the pit in the dining room, where the customers see
that it’s fresh—that there’s nothing hidden in the back.
The only thing in the back of the house is the dishwashing machine and
maybe some prep area of getting things ready, that’s about it. But
all the cooking is done right out there in front of the customer, and
he knows what he’s getting.
Can you talk about the barbecue process a little bit and how that works?
Well we—in order to keep up with the volume, I eventually bought
a big smoker that holds 600 pounds at a time. So we start it in the smoker
because with the smoker you sort of are cooking from the inside out, see,
and this way you want to make sure that when you’re cooking pork,
it’s cooked well done. And then we finish it on the pit. And the
way we finish it on the pit is important because we don’t just chop
all the meat all the time but we make a custom-made sandwich. In other
words, if a fellow wants outside meat, he gets some outside meat; if he
wants just inside, he’s got just nothing but inside or half-and-half
and—and so we have customers that are more or less spoiled, where
we make it exactly like they want it and—but our sauce is the main
thing, too, because ours is a tomato-based sauce, and people like it in
this area. Because you go to the Carolinas and other areas, it’s
more vinegar-based and you go to Georgia, it’s mustard based. So
you have different personalities and different locales where the—however,
in the long run, I think our sauce is more or less from a consumer standpoint
is accepted as a whole. So we’re doing all right with it.
Did you develop the sauce recipe?
Yes, we’ve developed the sauce recipe, and then we’ve improved
it some and made also a sweet sauce that goes better with the ribs and
on chickens and we sort of—in other words, I had the basic sauce
that I first got from them and then developed from that—added to
it different ingredients, which you make it different according to the
type of meat that you’re cooking.
So you have a number of different sauces depending on—?
We have a number—we have them all on the table for the customers
and some customers like—we even have the sweet sauce and some of
them have—we have a mustard sauce, too, so when we go to Georgia
[with the franchises], we have a mustard sauce, too, for them. So we sort
of—we’re dedicated to the Southeast, more or less.
So is that a conscious effort to look forward to franchising, when
you were developing the sauces to have a sauce specific to a particular
area?
I didn’t intend to franchise because I had a lot of requests for
it, but after my son, Charles, came into the business. And he got with
it, so I said, “Charles,” I said, “I’m getting
too old to be doing all this. You go ahead.” And so that’s
how I started the franchising, because of Charles. And then brought—then
Charles brought Todd Becker in that he went to school with, so they’re
doing pretty good with it.
Did the multiple sauces develop as the franchising developed?
Yeah. The different multiple sauces have developed more or less the last—oh,
I’d say the last ten years. That’s—in fact, but we’ve
put them all under our labels now. For example, we do our own potato salad
because we used to make our own fresh potato salad, and we have one outfit
that makes it for us with our label, and then we used a sweet-sour slaw.
I don’t like—I don’t like to use 
mayonnaise-base
because that’s how, if you don’t watch it, that’s how
people get sick from it. And we’re very careful about things of
that nature, so you don’t have that cross-contamination and people
get upset. So everything is freshly prepared and all followed according
to our recipes when we issue a franchise.
So can I ask you about the transition from fine dining to barbecue
and what that’s meant to you and your position now with Golden Rule?
Well all I can say is that when I first took over the Golden Rule, it
was all cash and we didn’t have credit cards in those days, either.
And it was—it was much easier and I used to—because I remember
doing the fine dining fifty-percent of your business, it was all credit
and you had to wait to get your money. [Laughs] And then the credit card
companies charged you such a large fee; it’s amazing when you look
at your statement how much is going out for the credit card arrangement.
And you can't very well keep increasing it because the barbecue business
was much—to me was a—a cash business and much quicker. [Laughs]
Do you ever miss some of the kind of creativity of the fine dining
and—and influencing the menu and changing things around?
I miss some of it because when I—when we did the fine dining, the
Michael’s, and naturally, it was a pleasure to sit down with—different
celebrities used to come in town, you know, and then somebody bringing
them in, and they wanted to be recognized, you know. That’s human
nature because the top businesspeople used to come in and say they’d
bring in the coach of their alma mater. And then if you recognized them,
that was a big plus for them. That’s all just part of what I call
being a good maître d'. That I miss nowadays, but I let the younger
ones take over now.
---
Can you describe the pit that they had at the original restaurant that
you took over?
It was a small pit; it was half the size of the one we have now. The pit
we have is twice as big, and then I have with the red-glazed brick, where
it stands out and do a little marketing with it. It’s a long ways
from the original Golden Rule. [Laughs]
What was Irondale like in those days?
Irondale was just a—the last stop, really, going to Atlanta. In
fact, [Jabo Stone] used to sell a lot of beer over there because that
was the last stop before you got into a dry county. I remember that, but
I never pushed the beer business. That was—I think Jabo Stone used
to sell quite a bit of it back in those days when he had it because that
was—see, the—the liquor laws were really—I don’t
know. It all depended in which way different preachers controlled certain
counties, and so a lot of these counties were dry back in those days.
So he sold a lot of beer. But when I went across the street, I didn’t
fool with it. In fact, we’re lucky to sell 500 dollars a week of
beer. We don’t push it. Ours is a family-oriented—that’s—I
don’t know what else to say.
Well with all the barbecue in Alabama and in Birmingham, how do you
think yours is different from anything else?
Well I’ll tell you one little thing that I noticed: we still serve
the individual Coca-Cola, the six-ounce bottle, and put it on the table
with a glass of ice. And it’s amazing how I see some lovely old
ladies come across town because of the Coca-Cola bottle. [Laughs] Just
a little—see you have to—little things like that you can—you
can hang your hat on to this day. Because at one time I talked to the
Coca-Cola, and was talking about talking me into just using the fountain
Coke, and I said, “Uh-uh. You just keep bringing those small bottled
Coca-Colas.” And little stuff like that is what makes us different.
Can you talk about the rest of your menu? You mentioned a lot more
of the items, but as far as sides and desserts and—and things like
that?
Yeah, we do our own pies, like the lemon icebox pies is one of our biggest
sellers. There’s a recipe we’ve used at Michael’s, and
we have coconut and also banana 
pudding
and—but that’s made daily every day, fresh, and we do our
own pies. And that’s about it. And then we sell a lot of sauce.
But we’ve also upgraded and we sell quite a bit—I started
the barbecue salad many years ago. It’s—we just—now
we chop it sometimes—now we give them a choice; they can have either
chicken or they can have barbecue or they can have beef—whatever
they want in their salad or even half-and-half. We even have smoked turkeys
also—just the turkey breast only. And we have our own honey mustard
sauce to go with it and everything, so we’ve—just in ordinary
barbecue you can get a pretty good variety, if you want a good lunch.
---
Now when you were talking about when you were at La Paree and had Michael’s
and everything about having some Greek inspired dishes on the menu, the
Greek chicken and things like tha is there anything Greek about anything
at the Golden Rule today?
No. But one operation is on the Pinson Highway is a Golden Rule, where
we do some catering. We do make a Greek chicken, if they want it and stuff
like that. We’ve done that.
Were Jabo Stone and his wife, were they surprised at how much the Golden
Rule grew after you got a hold of it?
Yeah, I think he was pleasantly surprised because he made more money,
but too bad he’s not around to see it now. Anyway, that’s
been—he’s been dead now about four or five years at least.
---
And now the long history of the Golden Rule, having been in operation
for more than 100 years, really, and on your website the history is part
of your presentation of the Golden Rule there. How much does that heritage
figure into daily operations?
Well I think the heritage in some of the old employees that’s been
there and everything else has a lot to do with the success of it. Because
when some of these new franchisees open up we try to give them the history
of it and then we send a team, and we always try to put one or two of
the old folks up there on the team. And we pay the out-of-pocket expenses
and everything else. We insist that the franchisee—the new franchisee,
you know, takes them and—and I—we have on our menu their names
and everything, so we sort of dedicate our menu to a lot of the old employees.
And when you go there, you’ll see our menu and how it’s done,
and I think that has a lot to do with it, too.
What do you see as the future of the Golden Rule?
I don’t know. The future, I don’t—I really don’t
know what it will be. Some big outfit like Wendy’s and them wants
to take it over, make me an offer and I’ll listen. [Laughs] I think
that’s what it’s going to take eventually, too, because I
really don’t know what to say about that. Personally, I think we
have an outstanding product and eventually, somebody is going—I’ve
turned down different offers but some big outfit come in that knew—that
had the management capabilities to do it, then that’s what it’s
going to take to—because the barbecue business is tough to go on
a national basis, you know, but from the regional standpoint you can do
it and—but it just takes a lot of hard work, that’s all. And
there comes a time when you have to smell the roses and too much hard
work is—my days are numbered. [Laughs]
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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