4Rivers is growing

Ten months after a simmering, smoky dream became delicious reality, a local entrepreneur’s first foray into roadside barbecue has more than doubled in size.

The line was too long outside John Rivers’ 4Rivers Smokehouse, stretching to the edge of Winter Park’s Fairbanks Avenue, so Rivers decided to expand.

“I just like making people happy,” Rivers said about his love of cooking for friends. And now the man who said he likes feeding his friends good brisket will have a whole new group of friends to feed. The popular restaurant is adding a second location, in addition to opening another kitchen to help feed a rapidly expanding customer base.

Winter Park Commissioner Beth Dillaha said that a good business sense can help any business thrive, even in a bad economy.

“They’ve got the right menu, the right place, the right location, the right service; you put everything together and it’ll work for you,” Dillaha said.

Despite the expansion, don’t expect a shorter line for the popular smoked Texas-style food in Winter Park; his second location will be opening 20 miles away in Winter Garden, and it’ll be under construction until March.

That hasn’t stopped Rivers from expanding in other ways. Keying off the initial success of his mail-order sauce and brisket business and then the extreme popularity of his first restaurant, he’s already launched a catering business that serves all of Central Florida, giving people a Texas-style smokehouse taste for the first time.

“It’s a new type of barbecue that people in Florida haven’t tasted before,” Rivers said.

Visitors to the University of Central Florida football team’s opening kickoff game may have noticed the 4Rivers trailer just outside the gates.

“I’m doing what I love,” Rivers, a part-time health care consultant, said of his culinary passion. “But I’ve been working on it for 18 years.”