# First Cater Job!



## krj (Aug 15, 2018)

Last month I met with the local Lion's club. They have a food stand that sells hamburgers and such every year at that towns fair. This small little fair is in it's 107th year in this tiny 130 person town. Over the course of the weekend it explodes in size, to several thousand people. It's bonkers there! Anyway this Lion's group last year sold 800lbs of hamburgers, plus I don't know how much chili, fries, and homemade pie. 

This year since I'm trying to get experience with cooks I attended their meeting to offer them my services. For no cost to them, aside from the supplies of course, I'll cook them as much pulled pork as they would like to sell. I told them I wasn't interested in making money off them because they are a good group of guys that do a lot for this rinky dink area. They decided to shelve the decision until this month's meeting, and one of them who used to teach at my high school suggested I cater their August meeting as a "taste test".

I'll admit I wasn't ready to start doing any catering, I hadn't worked on getting sides together. But that man is kind of hard to say no to, and it was only for 30 people. So here we are day of, I've been working on my baked bean recipe which are prepped and ready to be cooked off. Went a little overboard with the bean size, tripled it when I probably should have just doubled. Oh well I guess they can have leftovers! I went with a pretty basic coleslaw recipe which tastes pretty good, but I'm going to tinker with it some more. And 27lbs of pork butt which are currently wrapped and making their way through the stall.

I'm normally horrible about taking pictures, because...well I'm just forgetful. But I have managed to snap a few today. Maybe I'll remember to take some finishing shots when it's all said and done.

Beans with bacon and pulled pork!







Coleslaw, nice color mix of green and purple cabbage.






Roughly 2 hours into the cook, good color starting to form.






 2

6 hours in and made it to 165, color is right what I want, bark is set how I like it. They have been wrapped and are back in to bring it up to final temp.


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## Jeff Wright (Aug 15, 2018)

Looks like some darn good food heading to the Lions.   I guarantee if I had beans hanging over the edge of the counter like that I would be mopping them up soon:confused:.

Will be interested in seeing your final money shot!


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## krj (Aug 16, 2018)

Didn’t manage to get an all in one shot of the finished products, but I did snap a pick of the after foil butt and when it was pulled after a few people had been through the line. 

Everything went great, got plenty of compliments and thank yous. I think all the men that were there plus a few ladies came back up for seconds. And 5-6 took to-go plates for leftovers. The club voted to have me cook them up enough butt for them to sell 300 1/3lb sandwiches during the fair, so another big cook on the horizon!

Gonna send a thank you card to the club for having me, and I need to give a really big thanks to the guy who wrangled me into doing last night. It got me off my butt(waawaaawaaaa) and made me start working on catering sides. Now I’m more energized that ever to make this work!


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## RiversideSm0ker (Aug 16, 2018)

That sounds really exciting. Congrats to you for getting yourself started. I don't think that I would ever try to make money from my barbecue cause the stress would ruin the process for me. Plenty of people who have eaten my barbecue have asked why I don't try to sell it. That is my standard response. I just love smoking meat. Doing it for money and under constraints might change that for me. That's not something that I want to risk. Good luck with your upcoming cook. 

George


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## Smoke23 (Aug 16, 2018)

The pork looks delicious!
As does the coleslaw and beans, great job!!


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## darrin maxey (Sep 28, 2018)

krj said:


> Last month I met with the local Lion's club. They have a food stand that sells hamburgers and such every year at that towns fair. This small little fair is in it's 107th year in this tiny 130 person town. Over the course of the weekend it explodes in size, to several thousand people. It's bonkers there! Anyway this Lion's group last year sold 800lbs of hamburgers, plus I don't know how much chili, fries, and homemade pie.
> 
> This year since I'm trying to get experience with cooks I attended their meeting to offer them my services. For no cost to them, aside from the supplies of course, I'll cook them as much pulled pork as they would like to sell. I told them I wasn't interested in making money off them because they are a good group of guys that do a lot for this rinky dink area. They decided to shelve the decision until this month's meeting, and one of them who used to teach at my high school suggested I cater their August meeting as a "taste test".
> 
> ...


I kind of did the same thing with a organization I belong to I took 1 butt pulled with sauce and buns to a meeting I ended up cooking 10 butts for them


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## T3660 (Sep 28, 2018)

Good job.  It looks great!!


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