About Us

Smulligan’s Pizza and BBQ is a local, family owned restaurant.  I moved to the Royal Slope in 1975 and it has been my home ever since.  I grew up farming, where I learned to fix and fabricate equipment for our family farm.  After leaving the farm, I opened my own fabricating business to fix and design farm and industrial equipment.

Cynthia and I have been fortunate to raise our family in this great area.  My love of cooking began early with my grandmother. She operated a café in Bellingham, Washington before I was born.  When I went to visit as a kid, she would let me help her in her home kitchen. Even though I didn’t have much opportunity to expand my cooking skills growing up, once I graduated from high school, I was able to cook for myself and try new things. Honestly, when we finally got satellite TV, The Food Network became my favorite channel. (Still is!)  

My journey into BBQ began about fifteen years ago when I was discouraged that there were no good BBQ places around.  Looking back on my first Q’s, I wouldn’t even serve it today!  As I have perfected my smoking over the years, the desire to start my own restaurant has grown.  Because of the high cost involved in getting a brick and mortar establishment, we started doing catering and selling BBQ at festivals instead.  We were lucky enough to have all four of our kids still at home to be a workforce for the events.  Even though they grumbled about working, I’m grateful for the opportunity to teach them work ethics. 

Early summer of 2018, an opportunity arose to open our own restaurant in my home town of Royal City. Making the decision to change my occupation from fabricator to owning and operating a full-time restaurant was a difficult decision to make.  After a couple months of prayer and discussion, we decided to make the jump & open our first restaurant in Royal City. After a couple of years & knowing we wanted to grow & expand our business & those we are able to serve, we began the hunt for a larger space. We found one we had our eye on for a while, in Moses Lake, that was in desperate need of some TLC. We decided to go for it. Months and months of hard work & renovations paid off in our new Moses Lake restaurant.  We are looking forward to providing competition level Texas-style BBQ and New York-style pizza to the Moses Lake community.

-Warren Small