At this very moment, somebody in a Hutchins BBQ kitchen is probably hollowing out a very large jalapeño.
That pepper has a big day ahead. It’s about to be stuffed with chopped brisket and cream cheese, wrapped in thick-cut bacon and sent to the smoker. At Hutchins BBQ, they call it the Texas Twinkie, and on Friday, October 16, the restaurant celebrates it with its fourth annual National Texas Twinkie Day.
Here’s the deal. On October 16 only, Texas Twinkies are $5 each at both Hutchins locations, in McKinney and Frisco, with a limit of four per person. Plan accordingly. Bringing a friend doubles your haul.
No, it has nothing to do with the snack cake, other than being about the same size and every bit as hard to put down. Hutchins takes credit for inventing it, and versions now turn up on barbecue menus well beyond Collin County. Hutchins is still the name most people connect with the original, and the numbers prove it: the restaurant sold more than 400,000 Texas Twinkies in 2025 alone.
The Hutchins story goes back nearly 50 years. Roy and Delores Hutchins opened their first barbecue place in Princeton in 1978. In 1991, the family moved the business to McKinney under the Hutchins BBQ name. Their son Tim Hutchins started working there as a teenager, came up through the pits and took over the business in 2002, when he was just 22. A second location opened in Frisco in 2014. It began mostly as a catering kitchen and grew into the busier of the two restaurants.
There have been hard days, too. A fire shut down the McKinney restaurant for months after the end of 2020. Hutchins moved its McKinney staff to Frisco and kept them working until the original location reopened.
Hutchins has been a regular on Texas Monthly’s list of the 50 best barbecue joints in Texas for more than a decade. The Twinkie gets the attention, but it’s hardly the only reason to go. The brisket, beef ribs and house-made sausage are the core of it, and there’s an all-you-can-eat option for big appetites. Leave a little room, because dessert is on the house. Depending on the day, that’s banana pudding, peach cobbler or ice cream.
Twinkie Day does some good, too. Hutchins is running its annual charity raffle around Twinkie Day, with tickets at $10 each. Proceeds go to two Collin County nonprofits: Frisco Family Services, which runs Frisco’s only food pantry, and The Samaritan Inn, a homeless program in McKinney that has served the community since 1984.
If you’ve never had a Texas Twinkie, October 16 is the day to fix that. If you have, you already know why the line will be long.
Hutchins BBQ has two locations: 1301 N. Tennessee St. in McKinney, 972-548-2629, and 9225 Preston Road in Frisco, 972-377-2046. Both are open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the menus for each are on the Hutchins website.
