Hog Father's Old Fashioned BBQ, a Washington County, Pa.-based restaurant that includes a total of three locations, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported. Filed on Sept. 1, the legal action encompasses four separate filings for the local Washington County chain, which has locations in Washington, Canonsburg and Monongahela. The restaurants remain open and operating amid a chapter 11 filing that reveals estimated liabilities of between $500,000 and $1 million, the largest claim of which is for more than $683,000 by Reinhart Food Service LLC, a major food distributor. It's a restaurant that first opened in Washington County in the early days of the Marcellus Shale gas play in 2007, and the barbecue joint often thrived and expanded by serving the often Texas-based clientele who migrated to the region to work on the new natural gas rigs that expanded in western Pennsylvania at the time. So much so that the restaurant acknowledged that 40% of its business came from the oil and gas sector in the Pittsburgh Business Times in 2015, a period in which Hog Father's five locations included one in the lobby of the Washington County regional headquarters of Range Resources Corp., but for which two other restaurant openings were put on hold amid a decline in natural gas prices. It remains a very different world for natural gas production in western Pennsylvania, as the Marcellus play has evolved to more midstream activity and to the operation of the Shell cracker plant in nearby Beaver County. Other barbecue restaurants are expanding and opening in the region, including long-time North Side favorite Wilson's B-B-Q, which reopened recently on Perrysville Avenue after its previous location was lost in a fire in 2019.
