
Kansas City barbecue refers to the specific inner city style of barbecue that evolved from the pit of Henry Perry in the early 1900s in Kansas City, Missouri. The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is renowned for barbecue. Kansas City, Missouri has more than 100 barbecue restaurants and proclaims itself to be the "world's barbecue capital." There are large, well attended barbecue cooking contests, the two most notable being in Lenexa, Kansas and at the American Royal.In 1977, Rich Davis began the efforts to nationally market a more suburban version of barbecue sauce called KC Masterpiece (which is now owned by a division of Clorox). Efforts by Arthur Bryant's and Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q to export Kansas City barbecue beyond the metro area have not been commercially successful, although the two do market their sauces to travelers at Kansas City International Airport. Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue has been shipping its barbecue nationwide since 2000, and also offer their sauces and fully cooked pork rib packages at the airport.