KC Disasterpiece

Last year, the Travel Channel took viewers to places where barbecue is a point of civic pride. Naturally, the tour included Kansas City -- which one writer described as "the Constantinople of the barbecue world."

For their Kansas City visit, the producers of Food Wars: Barbecue came up with a predictable itinerary: Arthur Bryant's, the place native son Calvin Trillin called "the best damn restaurant in the world" back in a 1974 issue of The New Yorker, and KC Masterpiece Barbecue & Grill, which shares its name with a brand of sauce sold in supermarkets across the nation.

Aficionados may scoff at including KC Masterpiece in a survey of great barbecue joints. In the Food Wars episode, a well-fed Bryant's patron characterizes the KC Masterpiece restaurant as "on the elegant side" -- words not intended to compliment.

Though it may lack authenticity among connoisseurs, KC Masterpiece has an interesting story to tell. The sauce was invented by Dr. Rich Davis, a child psychiatrist in Kansas City who liked to tinker in the kitchen. After perfecting a recipe for barbecue sauce, Davis began peddling his concoction to grocers in 1977. Sales grew an average of 60 percent each year after that, Davis later said.

Davis eventually sold the sauce to the Clorox Company for millions. But as a condition of the sale, he retained the right to open and operate restaurants under the KC Masterpiece name. The first KC Masterpiece Barbecue & Grill opened in Overland Park in 1987.

That site remains open for business; there's also a location on the Plaza. On Metcalf, the Travel Channel crew captured images of Davis greeting customers as they entered the building. He's now 79 years old. But his eyes are alert and his voice clear as he describes how molasses brings a distinct flavor to the tomato-based invention that brought him wealth and fame.

But that's the sauce. The restaurants tell a sorrier tale of family drama and legal strife, ineptitude and sleazy business practices.

Originally, Davis' two sons, Rich II and Charlie, ran the restaurants. But they no longer have roles with the business. Rich, 50, declared bankruptcy last year. Divorce records show that Charlie, 47, gambled away thousands, cheated on his wife and was fired for mishandling money.

The family eventually turned over the business to Bruce Frazey, who runs it today. Since Frazey's arrival, several vendors and creditors have sued over the restaurants' unpaid bills. In February, a judge awarded $319,000 to the restaurants' former supplier of spices, mayonnaise and other items.

Courts everywhere are busy with plaintiffs and defendants arguing over money. But what's striking about KC Masterpiece Barbecue & Grill is the way it has managed to elude debtors without having to suffer the humiliation of bankruptcy. Instead, the restaurants have found a new corporate identity, leaving its suppliers to chase a ghost.

As the Travel Channel showed, the KC Masterpiece name remains an icon. But sometimes icons have their sordid sides.

A hungry customer who steps into one of the restaurants enters a place where time stopped sometime during Bill Clinton's first term.

The restaurants recall the days when Roy Williams and Norm Stewart were still coaching in the Big 12. When Morton Downey Jr. commanded a following. When a proprietor would hold a picture of himself standing with Joe Garagiola and think, I need a frame for this.

The restaurants on either side of the state line are virtual clones. The same photographs of the same celebrities (as well as the same reprints of the same newspaper and magazine articles celebrating Dr. Davis' achievements) hang on the walls. Are the images classic or dated? One might say that George Brett's 3,000th hit was a timeless event. One might also gaze upon the photo of Ken Ober (host of MTV's 1987-90 show Remote Control) near the hostess stand and conclude that management has stopped caring about the details.

For sure, KC Masterpiece Barbecue & Grill is not riding high. At one point, the chain had expanded to six restaurants: two in Kansas City, two in St. Louis and two in Chicago. Now its Chicago outposts have closed and its presence in St. Louis is restricted to a spot in the Union Station food court.

Davis and the boys had much grander plans.

"We want to have a national chain of restaurants," Charlie told the Kansas City Business Journal in 1993, when the number of locations stood at four. Charlie mentioned possible expansion into Denver and Phoenix.

The idea, of course, was to take advantage of the sauce's name recognition. At the time the Business Journal article was published, KC Masterpiece was No. 3 and gaining in supermarket sales.

Davis had sold the recipe when he realized he couldn't afford the advertising campaign he would need to compete with food conglomerates like Kraft and Heinz. Davis had been an excellent promoter of the sauce, traveling extensively, appearing on talk shows, conducting taste tests. But outside the region, KC Masterpiece was still a boutique brand.

"Somebody once said that we are too big to be considered small and too small to be big," Davis told Forbes magazine in 1986. "It's true. We will probably need a partner who has larger resources."