Texas Monthly: Brothers Open New Store for Their Smokers in the Barbecue Mecca of Lockhart
Weld it, and they will come. Mill Scale Metalworks' new downtown store features smokers for both professional and backyard pitmasters as well as firepits, grills, and branded apparel.
When Caleb and Matt Johnson opened Lockhart’s Mill Scale Metalworks, in 2018, customers had to spend the price of a small car to buy one of the company’s commercial offset smokers, sight unseen. Every project was made to order, so the brothers didn’t keep any inventory. The welding shop, northeast of downtown, didn’t even show up on Google Maps for several years. It relied on referrals to bring in orders, some from as far away as Aruba, Kuwait, or Singapore. But the shopping experience, for both backyard barbecuers and professional pitmasters, has changed with Mill Scale’s new 10,000-square-foot workshop and retail space, which opened in February just off Colorado Street, the main thoroughfare of the barbecue capital of Texas.
