I know the others here can give you more insight than I can but we do a People's Choice contest at our cook off each year and it has gone over very well for both the cookers and the public. First and formost, make sure it is a blind judged contest. Don't have the public go to the cook sites to taste the samples. The home town cookers will have the advanage and the other cookers won't be happy. Second, provide the cookers with the meat for the contest so everyone starts out with the same meat. We give all the cookers pork butt at our People's Choice contest. We provide the pan for the cookers to put their entry in and we have numbers for each pan. When they bring us their entry we switch the number to a letter and thereby making it a blind judged event so no one knows whose sample they are trying. Third, make sure the turn in for the People's Choice does not interfere with the turn ins for the sanctioned event. We have our turn in for the People's Choice at 11 AM, an hour before the first turn in for the KCBS event, (chicken). We provide 5 samples for $5. They are put in 4 oz. cup, ( I think its 4 oz. I would have to check on that but its somewhere around that size). The sample cups are labeled with the letter and are all mixed up so no one knows whose meat they are tasting.They also get a fork, and a ticket. We have a board set up with containers to put the tickets in labeled A through Z and then AA through ?? whatever the number of cookers who have entered the contest. ( If 30 cookers have entered its A through DD) If the public wants to try more than the 5 samples they come through the line again and we start over. We put the samples on a plate for ease of handling and mix up the cups so each cookers entry is tried about the same amount of times. For example a person might come through the line and get samples A, D, M, S, BB. The next person might get C, K, Q, T, Z. I hope this helps a little. Our system might not be perfect but it has worked for us so far without any complaints.
