Rodney Scott arrives at his namesake restaurant, Rodney Scott's BBQ, in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, at 7:30 a.m. He's road weary from recent TV appearances and traveling between his three restaurants in three different states. On other days, he may have been up all night cooking whole hogs. “When we cook [whole hogs] we're talking about at least 12 hours of cook time. That's half a day! You can get worn out cooking whole hogs every day. That's something you don't hear a lot about.”
Despite the long hours, Scott is quick to tell you that “every day is a good day,” a motto he's become well-known for. As he enters the pit room at the back of the restaurant, his weariness turns to smiles and ease as he greets the members of his crew, who are hard at work. Six cooks hustle around the screened-in bunker burning oak logs in a roaring furnace, shoveling hot coals into concrete pits, and hand-pulling meat from freshly cooked hogs for the day's service. Saturday is their busiest day—customers begin lining up around the corner an hour before the 11 a.m. opening.