Abingdon’s Bone Fire Smokehouse sells building to new restaurateur

ABINGDON, Va. (WJHL) — The Bone Fire Smokehouse announced it has handed its building off to a new tenant after closing permanently this year.

The post said that Bone Fire owners worked for months to find a tenant who would keep the longstanding business’ legacy and brand alive. The owners said they believed they found it, but upon discussions, they discovered the new tenant’s vision didn’t “reflect the culture or history of the establishment.”

Management then decided to retire the Bone Fire Smokehouse brand “rather than risk its legacy.” The post wished the new building tenant the best of luck and thanked patrons for visiting the BBQ spot and live music venue over the years.

The full announcement by the Bone Fire Smokehouse can be found below:

This will be Bone Fire’s final post. After 15 years serving the good people of Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee great BBQ and fostering Abingdon’s music scene, we have decided to retire. It was our hope to find a good steward to continue the operations of “The Bone”. We thought we had found that individual however after more than 4 months with lots of talk, we have decided to retire the brand rather than risk its legacy. We feel the new tenant’s vision for Bone Fire did not reflect the culture or history of the establishment. We have heard the new tenant is confident they can duplicate the recipes and the unique experience on their own. We have always believed attempts at imitation are the highest form of flattery. The Bone Fire experience will be impossible to recreate. It was about the great people who worked there over the years. Not only at Bone Fire but also the two other restaurants that have occupied the Hardware over the past 40 years. It was about the hundreds of thousands of people who sat at the giant wooden bar made from the original hardware store counter and the stories they had to share about their memories of being there at some point in their life. It always was the people that made Bone Fire feel like home.

Bone Fire is not associated nor involved in any way with the new restaurant. We wish the new tenant good luck in their venture. We hope they will take the time to learn the history and the culture of the area. People here are different than city folk in Florida.

Thanks to all of you wonderful people who supported Bone Fire over the years either through your hard work or your generous patronage. It was you that made it all happen. There will always be a warm place in our hearts for you. Cheers!

The Bone Fire Smokehouse

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