Before Sept. 6, Rodney Phillips and his wife, Stephanie, planned on selling Hot Rod’s House of Bar-B-Que. The owners of Hot Rod’s announced their intentions to sell the popular restaurant located on S Morris St. in an effort to move down south, so their son could pursue a career in bull riding.

Then, shortly before 4 a.m. on a Thursday morning, Hot Rod’s caught fire, putting the restaurant—and the sale— on the shelf indefinitely.

“There’s nothing to sell, so it’s not for sale anymore,” said Phillips, owner, and founder of Hot Rod’s. “Hot Rod’s is no longer for sale because there is no Hot Rod’s. We lost basically everything. 13 years of work has basically gone out the window.”

It wasn’t until the morning of Sept. 6 and the fallout from the fire that Phillips realized what his restaurant meant to the town of Waynesburg.

Although Phillips is at the center of the restaurant’s daily operations, he said that he’s learned a lot about Hot Rod’s’ impact from a business standpoint, in addition to the social aspect.

“I have had a lot of business people come up to me in the last few weeks,” he said. “Even though I’m in there every day, I never realized how many business meetings are done inside Hot Rod’s. It was the only place in town they felt they could go in and do a business meeting. So I think a lot of that dynamic was lost when we lost the restaurant.”

Phillips said that it will be 2 to 3 years before the restaurant will be back in a position to sell. The focus, for now, is to get Hot Rod’s back on its feet as soon as possible. Phillips said that the goal is to have the restaurant ready to reopen in six months, but that it might take a year or more to really pull it off. Even the best case scenario, Phillips said, is still a major setback for selling the restaurant.

“Six months is a long time to not be in the market doing what you do,” he said. “So as it stands now, we’re not going anywhere [since] there’s not business anymore. Our plan now is just to reopen Hot Rod’s.”              

Phillips said that the perspective that he’s gained as a result of the fire is driving him to reopen the place he started more than a decade ago.

“It never really came to my attention, even as a business owner, that we were that integral a part of town,” Phillips said. “Even beyond the food, I never realized what an impact losing that restaurant made in town. It never crossed my mind. We’ve had a lot of positive comments and statements and reinforcements from people inside that town, so we want to get it responded.”  

Phillips said that the fire was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

“I’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” Phillips said. “It was definitely a change.

Less than a month ago, it looked like the Phillips family would be selling Hot Rod’s House of Bar-B-Que. Now, they are “in this for the long haul,” Rodney Phillips said.