Not the news Alabama fans will want to hear, but their favorite pop-up spot for delicious barbecue nachos and sandwiches will not return. Big Bad Wolves, which set up in the patio of The Houndstooth on the Strip in Tuscaloosa for Alabama home game weekends, has shut down permanently.

“Sad to say, we are closed for good,” co-owner Marsha McKinley, also known as “Mama Wolf,” told AL.com.

She said after the pandemic, the exorbitant rise in meat prices kept them from reopening during the 2020 season, and they’ve struggled to find help with all of their grandchildren now grown, married, moved or attending college at other locations.

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“With all that being said, we were extremely blessed for 22 years!” McKinley said. “Not many mom and pop businesses, especially ones that are likes ours, can possibly last 22 years. We had the most amazing, wonderful and faithful customers many of which became friends. The same can be said about our workers, who if not family, became just like family.

“In the end we hope we were a bright spot on the Strip, brought joy to some people and blessed some people through the years. It has been quite sad for us. We miss everyone terribly.”

But you can still enjoy a piece of Big Bad Wolves, after all. McKinley said they bottle their sauce, and fans can buy it at South’s Finest Meats in Tuscaloosa and Cottondale.

The news is certainly bittersweet, but perhaps not a surprise for those of us routinely glancing over at the corner of The Houndstooth as they mill about the Strip on gamedays. After Big Bad Wolves took a year off due to COVID, fans in town for the Crimson Tide’s 2021 home opener against Mercer noticed the absence of the seasonal gameday staple, hoping the BBW crew would return for future game weekends.

Sadly, we learned then that the pandemic and the price of meat sidelined the pop-up restaurant for a second straight season, according to co-owner McKinley, who said in 2021 they would attempt a comeback after taking two seasons off.

Big Bad Wolves first began selling barbecue on The Houndstooth property more than two decades ago, becoming one of the first to serve barbecue nachos in Tuscaloosa. The product quickly became a go-to pregame and postgame snack on gamedays, with fans piling BBW sauce and jalapenos atop the barbecue pork and yellow circular tortilla chips. With smoke billowing from the corner of one of the area’s most popular bars and patios, it was tough to miss them each week, typically with crimson-clad fans (and visitors) anxiously waiting in a single-file line along University Boulevard.

McKinley said they first heard about barbecue nachos out of Memphis. A family member told her about the trend and implored them to try it in Tuscaloosa. “He comes down and cooks with us, and he said, ‘You know, the big thing now is barbecue nachos. You’ve just got to try them,’” McKinley told AL.com. “And so with that, we tried them out one ballgame, they were a big hit, and we said ‘OK, we’ll go start selling them,’ and that’s how it started. And it was just a great new thing in Tuscaloosa.”

Without a brick-and-mortar location, the pop-up stand would only open for seven home-game weekends throughout the year. McKinley said the proceeds were often used to fund church activities including mission trips. “We don’t have to have Big Bad Wolves to supplement our income to live, but it has become a ministry or a way of life for sorts for us to help a lot of people, and we’re able to help a lot of people by being there and by being family with a lot of people that we wouldn’t normally get to interact with. It’s a lot more to us than just a barbecue business.”

When asked what it meant to her personally to bring Big Bad Wolves to the gameday experience for seven weekends out of each season, McKinley expressed pride in the legacy they created through their barbecue nachos but also the relationships and reunions they helped to create through their service.

“I feel like we’ve built something that means a lot to a lot of people,” McKinley said. “I think we have a really good reputation with people. We try our best to be a bright spot down there, a good wholesome place for families. People meet up there, meet people they’ve known through the years and everybody knows where we are. They’ll say ‘Let’s go to Big Bad Wolves and eat today.’ And so we’ll see people that we haven’t seen in years that’ll come visit us and visit the people that work for us, students through the years that’ll meet up and see each other. It’s just a happy reunion going on all around us. It’s just such a joyful place.

“When you’re only open seven times a year, it’s just a happy place to be. It’s not like being at work, not like drudgery. It’s seven weekends. It’s happy. I think we’ve built that atmosphere, and we try to be as nice and kind to everyone and make not only Alabama fans but everybody that comes to our tent from other schools and places in the country, we welcome them in and make them feel like they’re at home. We just want to be that really nice, welcoming spot to students, to alumni, to families. I’m just proud of what we’ve done through all these years.”