Need Your Opinion on Vending Quantities

FireTowerBBQ · Newbie Joined: 19 Jan 2011 Posts: 99 Location: Louisiana

I've got a festival next weekend. It's 3 days. Fri from 5 - 10pm, Sat from 8am - 12am, and Sun 8am - 2pm. There are 10 other food venders, only one of them is BBQ and they are just a church group selling ribs.

I'm selling spare ribs, chopped brisket / pulled pork sandwiches, and BBQ nachos (PP or Brisket). It's not a huge festival, they expect around 3000 people. Saturday being the largest volume.

I know vending is a gamble, but given the information, how much meat do you think I should buy. I'm really pushing the nacho's. They are a good seller. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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SoEzzy · Posted: May 11 2012 Post subject:

Is this a festival you have been to before?

What pit are you cooking on?

Is it being widely publicized?

Do you have attendance number from previous years?

What is the weather forecast for the three days?

How much spare money do you have to risk on the whole venture?

Do you have the time and ability to pre-cook part or all of a days supply, do you have access to additional supplies on short order?

Not trying to give a more complicated answer than you can work with, but if we had all the above questions answered, we could still only tell you, our best guesses.

Friday 5 - 10PM You need meats fully cooked by 5, but you should be able to hot hold what you cooked right through to 10PM.

Saturday 8 - 12AM you wont be able to do that.

Sunday 8 to 2PM you should be able to hold again.

But these are all how, "long is a piece of string" questions!

The perfect answer is, you should always have one more sandwich than people to serve to! Wink

If you fill in some of these blanks we can give you a better guess... but at the end of the day that's all you are going to get... better guesses.
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FireTowerBBQ · Newbie Joined: 19 Jan 2011 Posts: 99 Location: Louisiana

daddywoofdawg · Posted: May 11 2012 Post subject:

As a vendor and using your numbers,3K and 10 vendors,if they are all food vendors,you'll make more money staying home.Not trying to rain on your parade,Just saying I figure 10% of the people there will eat unless it's a eat type event.(BBQ fest,taste of the town)so that would bring the number to 300 people,That in it's self is hardly worth it,but if you divide that by 10 that's 30-40 people,even if you were getting $10.00 per person that's only 300.00,A tank of fuel in my truck is 100.00,pork butt 1.79lb,ribs 2+ a lb.is it worth the risk?When a promoter sells that much space for that few of people,they just want the money and not going to do much for the vendors bottom line.If you go for it please let us know how you did.I always like to see how close my estimations or to real life.
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FireTowerBBQ · Newbie Joined: 19 Jan 2011 Posts: 99 Location: Louisiana

There are 10 vendors, but most of them are fried pie, funnel cake, popcorn, etc... I think there are only 3 of us selling "real" food. Normally I wouldn't do it, but it's 10 min from my house and I always do really well at local festivals.
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QDogsBBQ · Newbie Joined: 19 Feb 2012 Posts: 75

daddywoofdawg · Posted: May 13 2012 Post subject:

He means hot hold I think.
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Good BBQ is all smoke and beers!
The Dawghouse Custom vertical Gasser
Custom Made offset smoker
Char grill smoker
Weber kettle

QDogsBBQ · Newbie Joined: 19 Feb 2012 Posts: 75

Ah, Roger! We have a real big event coming up with similar hours and plan to have the holding cabinet full and the Ole Hickory puffing 24-7. This event is 50-60,000 10 food vendors and their first annual KCBS contest. I am the only BBQ guy too. Having a hard time getting a grip on the four day logistics of product amounts. I will have my food service folks deliver every morning but they wont on Saturday.

SoEzzy · Posted: May 14 2012 Post subject:

Sorry for not being clearer.

I did mean hot holding would be a problem for 16 hours, quality will suffer let alone the HD 4 hour rule.

But in order to keep filling orders, you need to be able to pull chilled product out of the coolers, warm it up and have it ready when it's needed.

And that's the hard part unless you are set up for it from the word GO!
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Jerk Pit Master · Posted: May 16 2012 Post subject:

3000 people over 3 days and 10 vendors is a lot of work for little gain, even close to home.

I would do Saturday only, if I had a choice, and open 11am to midnight.

I hate so-called 3-day events, that are only worth vendors attending on the middle day.
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