I need some advice if anyone has done anything like this before. Owner of a large sports facility had some of my bbq at my house and liked it, then asked if I wanted to provide food to his facility for their 8 two-day tournaments from January to April. 700-1200 people will be there in the morning (7-11) and same amount will be there in the afternoon. There is currently no food options other than tiny bags of chips inside. No restaurants anywhere near facility and apparently people don't like to leave once they have a parking spot. Said he didn't care what I charged or what I serve because currently there is nothing and people will eat whatever I make.

I'm thinking breakfast tacos (maybe brisket egg cheese, and bacon egg cheese) wrapped in foil like at buccees with a red sauce and green sauce. I like to do homemade but with this volume it's probably much smarter to buy tortillas and sauces from Mexican market. Was thinking maybe some sort of protein bowl as well with eggs and a protein with cheese, and maybe a yogurt/granola type bowl for the trophy wives.

For lunch we are thinking nachos (with pulled pork or chopped brisket), tacos (either protein) and a hashbrown casserole that we make with a protein on top with bbq sauce.

Brisket and pulled pork would be cooked before hand and vac sealed. Will have a food trailer with proofing/warming cabinet, steam table, and griddle. Everyone has said that 40% of the people there will want to buy food so this is a massive undertaking. Any advice, or anything standing out that I'm missing. We're trying to keep menu small so that line can go quick and we can sell to a lot of people. The guy that parked a bbq trailer there last year has a bbq restaurant and brought his entire menu and line wrapped around building and went very slow. Any thoughtful advice very much appreciated!

I was involved with the Cowboy Breakfast in SA for a decade or so. We served a buttload of people primarily breakfast tacos in a span of a few hours on a Friday morning ( 40K or so) but the cooking started before midnight and we had a buttload of equipment and a bunch of people to do so. I am still involved with the SA rodeo and cooking for the buyers at the Junior Livestock Auction serving food through out the 3 day event to 300 plus folks per day. There is a lot of equipment involved there but 5 or 6 of us are able to keep up. We cooked for a funeral wake for a buddy that died and 350 people went through 13 briskets, about 100 lbs of potato salad and 25lbs of beans. Feeding 700 to 1200 people is going to take the equipment and manpower and the time.........you're talking more than a few briskets, eggs, tortillas etc etc. Do you have the equipment to cook that many briskets? The storage place for the finished product? And 6 or 8 guys that can help? One of these comes in real handy when cooking for the masses....Where is this located?

Thanks for the response. We are looking to buy a food trailer in the next couple weeks. We were already looking at starting a catering company so we figure we'll be able to pay it off solely from these 8 events. This offer kind of forced us into starting company we had been talking about for several years. Planning on having warming oven that will hold 18 hotel pans of meat/sides. Steam table for meat and sides. Not sure if trailer will have a pit on it or not, but we have large offsets and can smoke quite a few briskets/butts at a time and will vac seal them in advance. We are in far north Fort Worth.

How did you prepare the breakfast tacos? Foil wraps? Thanks again.

Sausage wraps in a tortilla would be simple and go a long way with a bag of chips or something as a side. Pulled pork and brisket are good as well. I hope you have enough bodies for prepping breakfast tacos. It seems like that would be pretty labor intensive but to be fair I have never done that many at once. You could take some labor out of it by serving buffet style but then you risk guests over serving themselves (if that is a concern at all)

agcrock2005 said:

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Thanks for the response. We are looking to buy a food trailer in the next couple weeks. We were already looking at starting a catering company so we figure we'll be able to pay it off solely from these 8 events. This offer kind of forced us into starting company we had been talking about for several years. Planning on having warming oven that will hold 18 hotel pans of meat/sides. Steam table for meat and sides. Not sure if trailer will have a pit on it or not, but we have large offsets and can smoke quite a few briskets/butts at a time and will vac seal them in advance. We are in far north Fort Worth.

How did you prepare the breakfast tacos? Foil wraps? Thanks again.

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At the Cowboy Breakfast we had 4 4ft X 4 ft tables made out of 1/4 inch plate with about a 2 inch lip all the way around and square tubing for legs with a metal slide out "drawer" underneath the plate that we put coals in. We would do a set amount of meat, (breakfast sausage, chorizo) or diced potatoes and then pour a couple of gallons of eggs with a quart or so of Rotel and salt and pepper mixed in on top of the meat or potatoes and mix it all till cooked with drywall taping tools. When done it went into ice chests. The tortillas were bought and we warmed them on a 3X8 foot contraption similar to the above tables. Ladies at the serving lines put the eggs in the tortillas and wrapped them in foil, then served them.

As a side note the CB is being taken over by the rodeo this next year and those tables might be for sale. I'm buds with all the board members of the CB so PM me if your interested

For breakfast tacos, you'll have to wrap and hold them; there won't be another way to do it to serve that many people quickly. I like the idea of sausage wraps, and those can hold forever.

HTownAg98 said:

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For breakfast tacos, you'll have to wrap and hold them; there won't be another way to do it to serve that many people quickly. I like the idea of sausage wraps, and those can hold forever.

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Was planning on wrapping and holding. Will probably experiment soon to see if I can hold them overnight or if I'll have to get there really early and make that morning. First weekend is definitely going to be one hell of an experiment! I like sausage wraps as well.

PM'd you. On a side note, I'm thinking with this volume I'm going to have to order the eggs that are already cracked an in containers? How did you do it?

agcrock2005 said:

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PM'd you. On a side note, I'm thinking with this volume I'm going to have to order the eggs that are already cracked an in containers? How did you do it?

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Order BIB eggs from your friendly distributor. Get the 5 gal box.

I appreciate the feedback greatly! This will be the second year they've had these tournaments. We are in a rapidly growing area with good demos and huge demand for food, even taking the volleyball events out of the equation. I live about 3 miles from the facility and if I want to go get something to eat I have 3 options within a few miles, or I'm going to drive 8 miles to get lunch. What i'm hearing from people in the club volleyball circuit is that they're used to absolute crap food being available, if anything. Also, these tournaments are mostly going to be different teams every weekend, so not many repeat customers, if any so don't have to worry about them packing lunches. We aren't trying to screw people over either on pricing. We are looking at this more as an opportunity to get a food business started and paid for in a couple months, so we're just trying to figure out how to get people through the lines as quickly as possible with as high quality food as we can and gain some recognition as well. Thinking about doing square POS systems and no cash to help efficiency. Hopefully we can get food trailer and everything set up a couple weeks in advance to do a couple dry runs somewhere to work through the kinks. First event 12/16 so that's not very far off.

Rexter said:

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agcrock2005 said:

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PM'd you. On a side note, I'm thinking with this volume I'm going to have to order the eggs that are already cracked an in containers? How did you do it?

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Order BIB eggs from your friendly distributor. Get the 5 gal box.

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I don't have a distributor yet! Ha. This went from 0 to 60 really fast. Glad to hear that's an option though. Appreciate it.

Also, don't you have a thread somewhere that talks about your preparation and execution for one of thos events? I know I've seen some pics and narrative on your events somewhere.

agcrock2005 said:

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PM'd you. On a side note, I'm thinking with this volume I'm going to have to order the eggs that are already cracked an in containers? How did you do it?

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When I first started way back we bought eggs by the carton and about 30 ladies from the SA conservation society chipped the top of the egg off, poured the egg into a 5 gallon bucket and kept the intact shell to make cascarones for NIOSA and Fiesta. That was long long ago. Then we went to buying liquid eggs in jugs which should be readily available in bulk at a restaurant supply company. I'll have more info for you on the "cookers" Friday

Tanya 93 said:

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I do a hella lot of catering with the restaurant.

How many people will you be hiring to help you?
Saying people are gonna show up to help, doesn't always mean they will.

Breakfast, I would not do breakfast tacos. They are not gonna hold up well unless you are making them every hour

The mentioned sausage wraps or sausage biscuits will hold up better.

Doing three options, if you don't have like 7-10 people, is going to be a pain

I would do the sausage biscuits or wraps and maybe 4 ounce containers of yogurt with some whole fruit.



Why do tacos again if that is what you want to do for breakfast?

Pulled pork or brisket or chicken sandwiches, with two sides, vinegar based coleslaw holds up better than mayo based, Mac and cheese, or something like baked beans or green beans would be easy.

I wish you luck, but you seem like you may be biting off more than you can chew on this first time.

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Thanks for the response. Yes, I bit off more than I can chew but they have no food options for 1,000's of people. I'm going to figure out a way to be that option!

There's a tournament with X number of teams signed up to play for two days on 8 weekends (maybe 12), so they're going to show up. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to feed them since they have no other options and there is demand. I can not imagine making bisquits for hundreds of people. How do you recommend doing that?

Reasoning for doing tacos again potentially is to take advantage of buying in bulk. If you're already buying 300 tortillas, then might be cheaper to buy 500 and do tacos with meat that's already cooked and maybe sausage wrap where margins would be high. I want to keep menu very small and try to do it well and to get as many people through the line as possible without them being upset. Going to be one heck of a learning experience and a lot of work!

I'd be pre cooking all the eggs, bacon, sausage, whatever you want for the tacos, off site a day or so in advance of tournament weekend. Freeze/refigerate and then thaw and warm big pans of each and make the tacos as ordered. It wont take any longer to make an order for a few breakfast tacos than it will for the CC to be run thru your system. If everything is hot and ready, it takes just seconds to make a taco, wrap and serve. Of course have someone making fairly non stop if the crowd is there, and just keep filling all the ingredients pans with thawed out and warm as needed. You said you had large offset, i'd lean towards pulled pork as its got premium price with much lower cost per sandwich over brisket,, so prep, pull, and then keep warm as needed. Again, it takes seconds to make a sandwich. Let them add their own pickles, onions, sauce, whatever else you want to provide them at a separate table away from the ordering/serving window. Out at the site, i'd think you would be very little if any cooking, just warming and putting it together. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

edit to add

You're just looking to provide some good food where not much if any is available, not made to order food truck stuff you see in the food truck lots and on TV. You got this.

Pulled pork is a good idea. It freezes well and can be made days in advance. I think it freezes better with sauce mixed in but that's just me. It'd be easy to thaw and provide the bun and pork and let the customer add the pickles or onions as the poster above suggested. Plus pork is way less expensive than beef and your margin would be much better.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the thoughtful response. I'm leaning toward no brisket as well. Having the toppings away from the window is a great idea as well so we can get people through line more quickly and they can have it how they want it.

HTownAg98 said:

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Nachos are another thing that are easy with a high margin. The most expensive component is the container that holds the chips and cheese.

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Definitely planning on that being an option for lunch. Probably with pull pork. Then we can do a pulled pork sandwich and maybe pulled pork tacos since we'll already be buying tortillas for breakfast. Got a steal on a food trailer last night so one hurdle down!

I lucked out and found an awesome trailer on FB marketplace that was way underpriced. Less than 3 weeks away from the first event! Any recommendations on holding cabinets to keep meat fresh/warm like a lot of the bbq restaurants use now? Will a proofing oven work just as well? Thanks.

Awesome! Good luck and keep us posted!

Hope it's going well! Update us?

Any updates?