7pm and all is well in BBQland

The 7pm number of free meals served was a shade under 4,900

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Might get busy later!

We’ve served about 4,300 at 6:30.  Recommending folks get here and in line in the next hour or so to make it in by cutoff time of 8pm.

Come on down!

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Over 3600 served

By 5pm we’ve topped 3600 free meals.  Reports are the folks at the back of the line are getting their meal in 15-20 minutes.

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And Free Dinner starts in earnest

We’ve served 2800 free meals.  Day crew is heading home, night crew ready to make your visit special.  

Big D and Janae hammed it up a bit for the cameras.  This is Darryl’s 11th free day, Janae’s 9th.  

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Lunch coming to end... Thinking we'll just skip our break

We usually close from 3-4pm during Customer Appreciation Day to catch our breath and do some re-stocking.  The crew tells me they had their breather, the place looks great, and they want to keep on jammin’,  OK with me!  We’ll just keep serving free meals until 8 tonight!  ABC Channel 15 should carry a report on our event on the 5 or 6pm newscast.   I think with the Gilbert High Artwalk going on tonight downtown is going to be a great place to be.  We’ll see you soon!  

This pic is of Dana – wrapper (rapper?) extraordinaire.

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Hour 1 under our belt

Nice pace thus far today.  675 meals served in hour 1.  We’ll have to pick up the pace a little bit if we hope to break 6200 free meals given out.  I think we’re up to the challenge.  We’re having a blast!

Some of the things happening today...

Joe is handing out coupons for yet another free meal.  This one is a free breakfast.  What?  Yup, we’re offering weekend breakfast in late May.  Saturday and Sunday mornings 8a-11am.

We worked hard on the menu and are pretty excited about adding to the great breakfast lineup already downtown Gilbert.  More details, and an advance peek at the menu later.

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Preparation is key


I must admit it is a little unsettling to see our staff smiling and upbeat as we make final preparations for Customer Appreciation Day.  I mean, in a few hours we’ll start handing out free meals every 5 seconds or so.  Shouldn’t everyone be running around screaming? Sweating?  “We’ve done this a few times, Mr. P.”  They’re right.  This ain’t their first rodeo.  6,000 buns have arrived from our bakery.  6500 sodas are ice cold.  Every table and chair is clean and ready to be occupied 20 or more times today.  We’ll be ready for you when we open that front door at 11am.  

  This pic… magical fruit.

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Free Day - Planning


We have some of the best employees around.  They rise to the occasion for Customer Appreciation Day.  

  Big D (Darryl) has been around since the beginning.  He was our first employee, and he still oversees one of the highest volume kitchens in the Valley.

  This year I asked Big D if he and his carvers were up to slicing chicken breast for a few thousand people.  Yup.  No problem.  And they will pull pork all day too.  Thousands of pounds worth.

  To give you an idea of how much meat we are talking about, imagine if you were having 10 people over for dinner.  You are in a BBQ mood and want to slow smoke some meat and make some tasty side dishes.  You’d need somewhere around 3 pounds of meat for your guests.  If you didn’t do this often, you might not know that if you were serving pork you would lose about 2/3 of the weight of the meat while it smoked.  You would need to load your smoker with about 9 pounds of meat.  Multiply that a few times and we’re smoking about 4,500 pounds of meat for the event.

  I’ll provide some of the pictures of homemade side dishes being made tomorrow.  It is quite an undertaking.   Each bun will make its way through the toaster before we add the meat.

  And we’ll need a few plates, some silverware, some sauce, pickles and onions.  For 6,000+ folks.  

  And we’d like to know throughout the day how many we’ve served.  You can see from the packages of plates that is how we count the number of meals completed.  The plates have 175 in a package, so if we do a good job of tracking we should know all day long what the counts are.  

  Planning had to start a year ahead.  Literally.  We sit down on the Thursday after the event and map out what went well, and what things we could do better.  We calculate what needs to be done when in order to open at 11am hitting on all cylinders.  We pray everything will go safely and smoothly, and that our bakery truck doesn’t get stuck on I-60.  The staffing plan is pretty simple.  If you work here you are working free day!  Say hi to the smiling faces tomorrow and know each of us sincerely appreciates you coming out!

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GHS Art Walk

Gilbert High School is having their Art Walk downtown tomorrow, giving you even more reason to make the trip.  We hope you will make a night of it, bring a friend and make a few new ones!

We are recommending if you come for free dinner you jump in the line by 7:30

http://www.gilbert.k12.az.us/news/news.php?id=405

About

Gilbert guy who walks with Christ, sells BBQ, and appreciates those who care enough about his random musings to occasionally read his blog.