Reppond and her husband, Bryan, moved here from Washington State 20 years ago. She promptly found herself running a barbecue restaurant, a job she talks about with equal parts pride and practicality.
KT’s started before the Repponds arrived, originally with a trailer and then this building, opened in 2001 by Moulton “MoMo” and Katherine “Katie” Storey. Katie is where the place got its name. When Allison and Bryan bought the business, the name came with it. “The community has such a great support for us,” she shares. “It just didn’t feel right to change the name.”
The Repponds moved to Arkansas in 2006 from the far northwest corner of Washington State. Allison is from Bellingham. Her husband is originally from Louisiana, and his parents retired to the Mountain Home area. They were neighbors of the Storeys, and that proximity ended up shaping the couple’s future. “We had just gotten married in August,” Allison tells me. “They called us up at the beginning of October… and said, ‘there’s this little BBQ restaurant for sale.’ ”
The timing was perfect - shortly before the 2008 financial crash, a time when, as Allison put it, the banks were still saying “yeah, they’re willing to loan you a bunch of money.” They went back to Washington, and listed their house. “It sold within a day.” First of December they were in Arkansas, “owning and operating our very own restaurant for the first time for both of us.”
Fifteen months after they took over, Allison got a crash course in disaster management. A tornado tore through Highway 62 on February 5th, 2008. “When it hit,” Allison shares, “it imploded all our doors and windows and ripped off part of the roof!” She and her employees were taking shelter in the back office, when suddenly, “we were looking up at the sky and you could just feel the pressure. It started to suck me out. They were pulling on my leg to hold me down.”
Rebuilding took time, she says. “It took almost six weeks for the insurance adjusters to even get here.”
“Did you ever want to just walk away?” I ask.
“Well, I told my husband, if this happens again, I’m out. If it were to happen today, 19 years later, I think that we would just figure it out.”
KT’s is a family operation in the truest sense, built around the reality of raising two boys (now 16 and 13) who stay busy with sports. The workday is split in a way that makes the business possible: “He usually leaves around one,” Allison said of her husband’s early-morning shift, and “I usually get here around one or two when I close. That’s just kind of what we’ve always done since we had kids.”
Some of Allison’s biggest operational shifts came in the last few years. After COVID, they decided to cut back from five days open to four, which has been a saving grace, creating more family time while still leaving room for the work most customers never see. “Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off,” she said. “Granted, we’re up here Mondays and Tuesdays stocking our coolers and smoking meats, but it’s a little bit different.”
Running the place means being ready for the unpredictable rhythm of a small-town restaurant. “It will go zero to 100 in like two seconds around here,” Allison said. “It’ll be empty and then all of a sudden our restaurant will be completely full.”
At the heart of KT’s is the smoke schedule. The work starts early each day. “Bryan pulls the pork and brisket off in the morning, gets our ribs and chicken on for the day. He babysits each rack of ribs - not every rack God creates equal, so some are thick, some are thin. Some get removed off the smoker sooner than others.”
Ask Allison what flies out the door fastest and she’ll tell you, “Gosh, I’d like to say pork, but I swear it’s brisket, even with the price of brisket these days! People love their brisket.” And of course, “our house-made bacon… is just amazing,” she says. “It’s a game changer.”
How does she keep it all going? “We just have amazing customers, loyal customers,” she shares. “We open the doors and they just keep showing.” She keeps the cooler case stocked with variety. Regulars come by and quickly grab their favorites - though it can be a little overwhelming for first time customers.
Her variety is intentional. She’s built a “grab and go” collage of whole chickens, whole racks of ribs, and several types of smoked sausages. “People don’t always have time to sit down, but they still want something made right,” she says.
The case also contains a lot of Cajun favorites like andouille sausage and gumbo. “We got his Louisiana flair in there!”
They make almost all the sausages, except for one that comes from Sysco that’s been offered for more than 15 years. The rest, they’ve innovated to work in home kitchens - German-style, jalapeno cheddar, and that aforementioned andouille - fully smoked and ready to go.
When you dine in, you’ll find three sauces on the table that are made in-house - hot barbecue sauce in red, sweet in yellow, and the original in clear bottles. She finds herself warning kids that the red sauce isn’t ketchup. For folks who want spicier stuff, she can oblige. “I make a house-made jalapeño sauce I can from the jalapeños in my garden,” she says.
Those sides, both those in the case and served alongside the barbecue, are also homemade - baked beans, coleslaw dressing, mac and cheese, and even the divine peanut butter pie. KT’s Smokehouse also offers full-service catering as well as ready-to-heat pans, and during the holidays it offers whole smoked pork butts, briskets, turkeys, chickens, and whatever else can get through the smoker in time.
Allison’s need for order can be felt in different places - like the long lists of instructions and catering jobs on the walls, and the neatly wrapped packages of sausages in pans waiting to go to the cooler. “I don’t think we can operate in chaos,” she states. “It’s too hard.”
She thinks of everything, including the rendered fat, which she has a special vat for out back. It’s picked up by biodiesel operators - which both helps them and helps Allison reduce the restaurant’s waste.
And, for a packed shop, a restaurant where cooler cases take up a whole wall and there’s often a wait at the counter to order, it’s orderly and efficient. It tends to be packed out with regulars - some of whom will give you happy recommendations as you skim the overhead menu. It feels like a place you’ll visit repeatedly, a permanent stop on the itinerary for vacations yet to come.
You'll find KT's Smokehouse at 406 East Main Street in Gassville - that's along US 62/412, not far from Casey's. Call-in orders go to (870) 435-5080. Check out the specials on the Facebook page.
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