Sebastopol's A&M BBQ seeks a new space due to zoning issues and neighbor complaints
In which the city struggles to both appease the neighbors and find a new place in town for the popular BBQ spot
Kris Austin opened A&M BBQ in June of 2024. Offering luscious BBQ and delectable smoked meats—seriously, the smoked turkey is outta this world—it was mobbed from the beginning, with long lines snaking out the front door. With catering jobs and festival gigs, the business continued to grow, and to keep up with demand, it replaced its two small outdoor smokers with two larger models—and that’s when the trouble began.
Some neighbors began to complain to the city about the smoke.
Smoke signals
At the May 5th Sebastopol City Council meeting, a group of neighbors from Eleanor Avenue, a quiet street one block east of Petaluma Avenue, complained to the council about the smoke coming from A&M Barbecue’s two large smokers, which often run all day, starting very early in the morning, Tuesday through Saturday.
Eleanor Avenue neighbor Megan Kaun said, “We’re here to speak up about the A&M barbecue situation. When they first opened with the two small smokers, that was completely acceptable, but when they rolled out the two identical large commercial smokers with the large smokestacks, air quality in our neighborhood became untenable. The smokestacks bring the smoke directly up into our neighborhood…and it creates this very toxic situation that has been captured in the PM 2.5 meters on Purple Air.”
PM stands for particulate matter, and the number reflects the size of the particulates in microns.
“I’ve been working with the city of Sebastopol since last fall…They’ve been amazing to monitor the situation,” Kaun continued. “It’s really been showing a steady, elevated PM 2.5 right in our neighborhood. I’ll just say that as recent as yesterday [May 4], even with the one smoker in operation, the PM 2.5 in our neighborhood went up to 75 and the rest of the day, when the smoker was not in operation, the PM 2.5 was zero.”
In her letter to the council, Kaun wrote that, according to a monitor near the hospital, the PM2.5 in her neighborhood “routinely spikes to 100-200 overnight due to A&M BBQ operations.”
The U.S. EPA Air Quality Index rates a 2.5 micron particulate score of 51–100 as “Moderate – Air quality is acceptable; some pollutants may pose a mild risk for sensitive groups.” Scores of 0 to 50 are defined as good. The higher the number, the worse the air quality: scores of 101 to 150 are defined as “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” 151 to 200 are “unhealthy” in general, 201 to 300 is “very unhealthy,” and 301+ is “hazardous.”
Several Eleanor Street neighbors complained of having to close all their windows to keep the smoke out and of having to change their early morning exercise routes to avoid the smoke.
Former city councilmember Larry Robinson, who also lives on Eleanor Avenue, framed the neighborhood’s current concern in a historical light. “In 2005, it was my honor to serve as Mayor of Sebastopol, and in that year, we adopted our wood-smoke ordinance, because clean air was a high priority for this community, and it still is.”
Robinson said that, although they exempted BBQs, “We never intended that to be an exemption for an industrial-level smoker. I know that you’re considering requiring A&M Barbecue to put filters on their smoker. So I encourage you to move ahead with that. We love their food. We love having them in the neighborhood, but we don’t love having smoke in our neighborhood.”
Here’s the problem: According to the Bay Area Regional Air Quality Board, the numbers in this part of Sebastopol don’t actually violate air quality standards.
“The Air Quality Board has determined that there is no violation,” Interim City Planner Jane Riley said. “They said it would have to be over a certain level, sustained for some period of time, to be a violation.”
Sebastopol’s Senior Building Inspector Steve Brown thinks Sebastopol’s early morning particulate readings are a more complicated issue.
“The problem is we have six years of records going back where every morning for the last six years there’s been a spike at 5 am basically. Well, A&M BBQ has only been in business for two years,” he said. “We think it’s diesel trucks going by early in the morning that’s causing the majority of the particulates. It [air quality] still stays mostly in the good zone, which is zero to 50 most of the time, though sometimes it’ll jump up into the cautious zone, which is 50 to 100.”
Zoned out
The bigger problem, according to the City, is zoning. During the city’s investigation into the neighbor’s air quality complaints, it determined that the large smokers of the sort A&M is now using aren’t allowed in the neighborhood where they are currently located.
Planner Jane Riley laid out the problem: “We have a definition of an outdoor commercial barbecue in our zoning code, and it’s allowed only in some districts with a use permit,” she said. “In the area where he is right now, the restaurant’s allowed, but the outdoor commercial barbecue part is not allowed—even with a use permit—so he can’t continue to do that use on that site,” Riley said. “He needs to be in a General Commercial or an Industrial area where he’s not surrounded by neighbors.”
Brown said he first looked into the issues with A&M BBQ when Megan Kaun contacted him in November 2025. He said he’s been working closely with Austin ever since, trying to find a new location for the business.
“To be honest, I’ve had a really good relationship with Kris, the owner,” Brown said. “We have talked 20 different times, I’m sure. We’ve approached this as it’s a quality business in town, and we’d like to see it stay in town, just in a location that’s approved or approvable.”
“It’s been hard to find a different location that will work for them with two large outdoor barbecues,” Brown said. “That makes it very difficult.”
At Brown’s recommendation, Austin looked at the old Mary’s Pizza Shack location in the north end of town, but that didn’t work for them. Brown said he’s suggested a couple of other sites, and Austin has called him about a couple more. “Every time he gets a site, we talk about it—if it works for us or if it works for them—and we just haven’t found one that works yet,” Brown said. He noted that anywhere in the Barlow would also work, but Finn Liss, Austin’s new business partner, said that’s out of their price range.
As a short-term solution, A&M has learned that they can move their smokers to the property of El Coronel, the Mexican restaurant further south down Gravenstein Highway.
“That’s an approved zoning,” Liss said. “Now we just have to do the paperwork to get the use permit.” But Liss also said the El Coronel property won’t work as a long-term solution, due to the inconvenience and safety issues of moving heavy, large trays of hot food from one location to another.
Planner Jane Riley said the city is doing its best to expedite that user permit process, but getting a use permit from the city can take from three weeks to three months.
The problem is, A&M is running up against a time clock set ticking by the zoning issue.
In her letter and public comment to the council, Megan Kaun said the City had already sent A&M a cease and desist letter in April, a characterization Brown disputes.
“We never sent a cease and desist,” Brown said. “I’ve sent them [A&M] four letters—the first three were courtesy letters saying, ‘Hey, you don’t fit in that zoning,’ and then the last one, which was sent a week and a half ago, was a notice of violation, which did give him 10 days to respond and tell us what they were going to do.”
“It does start a kind of informal clock. We will continue to push to make sure that they resolve this issue by either moving the barbecues or moving the business, one or the other,” Brown said. “The business that’s there now will not be allowed to operate the way it is continually.”
Thus far, A&M BBQ has removed one of its large smokers. The other one is still in operation.
A popular—and now embattled—business
Kris Austin, A&M’s founder, has found the whole situation extremely distressing
“It’s really disheartening,” Austin said, noting his long involvement in the Sebastopol community—coaching high school sports, working as a personal trainer with seniors, and donating food from A&M to local events.
“There’s a lot of worse things that are going on in this world, besides me cooking barbecue,” he said. “I don’t mean to be negative towards anybody. People are totally entitled to their opinions and how they feel about a certain thing, but just to read some of the comments that were made—that we’re just doing this to make a quick buck and that we think we can do whatever we feel, that’s not the case. We’re here to be a pillar and a help in the community and be a service. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
He’s worried that the neighbor complaints and the zoning issue will ultimately force him to close.
“I worked hard and to just have it torn away—to just have someone say that they can come and shut our doors if we don’t move the smokers off-site…It’s rough,” he said, tearing up, “and it’s hard not to get kind of emotional about it.”
Noting that he’s heading into his busiest season, he said, “It’s like, what am I supposed to do about all the people that work for me, all the people that have booked weddings and that have booked events?”
“I try not to get too disheartened,” he said. “I know God has another plan, and if one door closes, another one will open. So I’m just trying to stay positive and just trying to figure it out,” he said.
In response to the Eleanor Avenue neighbors’ criticism at the May 5th city council, Austin appeared at the May 19th Sebastopol City Council meeting to have his say.
“I come from a small town, so I know what it’s like to be a part of a community,” he said. “I know what it’s like to share, to not want to be a nuisance, to want to be actually a help to the community that you live in. That’s how I’ve been raised,” he said. “Speaking for A&M BBQ, ever since we’ve been here in this town, that’s all we tried to ever be is a help. We’ve never wanted to be a nuisance, we’ve never wanted to be a problem. We’ve always strived to do more—we donate, and we make sure that we’re at any charity events that we can possibly be. So to hear some of the things that were written, it’s not a representation of who I actually am as a person…we’re here to be a service and not a problem.”
Earlier this month, A&M took its case to social media, posting a 3-page letter on Instagram.
That letter said, in part, “For nearly a year, we have actively been searching for a more appropriate long-term location that can better support our growth and operations. Relocating a restaurant involving a commercial smoker, permitting, and infrastructure takes time, but we are committed to finding a responsible path forward.”
This Instagram post got over 2,000 likes. Messages of support came pouring in, including, according to Liss, an offer from the local NAACP to speak up in the defense of one of Sebastopol’s few black-owned businesses.
Liss said that Austin and the rest of the A&M team were immensely heartened by this response. They’d been feeling under siege—and truth be told, a bit unloved. The response to their post reassured them that they had many defenders and supporters in town.
A&M followed up that first post a week later with this one, requesting that supporters write to the city council before the upcoming June 2 council meeting, asking the council to give A&M more time to relocate.
As for the neighbors who are upset about the smoke, they’re still sleeping with their windows closed, a strategy that will grow more uncomfortable as summer comes on.
Just a really sad overall story, honestly. A hard working, extremely talented small business entrepreneur brings a valued, thriving, excellent establishment into a town that desperately needs something just like that and this is the response? I know the city seems to be working on finding a solution but blaming this on antiquated zoning regulations is just such an easy scapegoat. The same city that said “oops, we checked the wrong box, nothing we can do now!” about adding Little Caesars can’t make quick updates to the rules to allow this restaurant to continue to grow? Nonsense.
Excuse the pejorative but this is prototypical Karen behavior.
Great article. I have never been to the BBQ but it sure smells good when I drive by. So basically the city is trying to kill popular local businesses while throwing our tax dollars at Barney's Barlow Bailout? How does that make sense?