NORTH AUGUSTA, SC (WFXG) - No need to fire up the grill. This Aiken restaurant will take care of all that for you. In this EAT.PLAY.GO. we take you inside Pot Smoker BBQ.

Philip Pye and his family brought Pot Smoker BBQ to Aiken in 2018 and since then, business has taken off.

"It's gotten busier every year."

They've got all your BBQ staples. While the brisket is Pye's favorite, the most popular menu items are the pork and macaroni & cheese. "We've taken a lot of time and a lot of pride and every single food item on our menu is made from scratch and it took it a few years to get it to that point. We didn't start off that way."

Pye says the secret is really no secret at all. He says they just go the extra mile. "The thing that we do with our meats is we come in the night before we serve it and we pay a person her name is crystal here she comes in every night and she smokes the meat all night long so it's a third shift and when she leaves in the morning we pull the meat off then so it's not like other places can't do that they just don't for whatever reason."

And the key ingredient that goes into everything is passion. "I am doing exactly what I feel like I was made to do."

Pye says if you want to get food that's fresh and made right from people that take pride in it, come on down to Pot Smoker BBQ. It's located on Silver Bluff Rd. in Aiken, and there's a second location on Edgefield Rd. in North Augusta.

The owner of that location, Robert Whitfield, shares the same pride and passion. He says they have also perfected their brisket by going the extra mile. In the beginning, when it started out as a food truck, it got so popular, they would run out of food.

"We would end up angering people because we didn't have enough, you know the regular customers, we had met every week we had been getting so much busier and busier and then the idea was like let's open a restaurant. So many people have told us if you open it we'll come and oh boy, they do."

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