Founded in 1998 by restaurateur Phil Pace, Phil's BBQ in Point Loma, San Diego anchors its flagship on Sports Arena Boulevard near Pechanga Arena, mesquite-grilling baby back ribs, beef ribs, and pulled pork from a proprietary rub-and-sauce recipe Pace developed from scratch. The counter-service format moves thousands of plates daily through a high-volume kitchen that has pushed more than one million gallons of signature BBQ sauce since opening—a production scale that dwarfs smaller smoke operations like The Pig's Gig BBQ by orders of magnitude. Originally a four-employee storefront on Mission Hills' Goldfinch Street, the operation relocated to this larger Sports Arena Boulevard location in 2007 and now employs over 400 staff across multiple San Diego County locations including Santee, Rancho Bernardo, Temecula, and the San Diego International Airport. Mesquite hardwood fires every protein on the menu—baby backs, beefy ribs, El Toro tri-tip, the Broham pulled-pork sandwich—producing the smoky char that separates the technique from gas-assisted or pellet-smoker operations common in the Midway District. A full bar program pours craft beer and cocktails alongside the counter-service BBQ line, adding a sit-down happy hour track with bar-menu wings and Phrings (fresh-cut fries and batter-dipped onion rings) that draws the Pechanga Arena pre-event crowd alongside the casual bar format at Dirty Birds Liberty Station. A fleet of GPS-equipped catering trucks deploys the full mesquite-grill program to weddings, corporate events, and stadium-scale private parties across San Diego County, with on-site cooking capacity that replicates the flagship's kitchen at remote venues.