People's Choice vs. Samples

First and formost, if you are working on a BBQ competition, you should contact your local health and/or commerce department and ask them. I mention commerce the commerce department, because in my county, grocery stores, gas stations, and any restaurants inside them (including samples) are approved by commerce, not health. Since I don't know all the details of your situation, I'll shut up there, except to say that my understanding is that there is a difference between giving food to your friends and giving it to the general public. Where that difference line exists, I don't know. Some one from Kooker's Kare might be able to shed some light on this as well.

dmp

nothing or depends.

If there's prize money involved, the meat being distributed anonymously helps to even the playing field vs teams handing it out themselves.

If it's a health code thing, you'd need to check with the local health dept to determine if teams/organizer can even give out food to the general public.

I hope this doens't make me sound like an a@@. If I want to hand out food to a bunch of people on a weekend, I'll go vend and make money, and if I'm going to a comp, it's to compete in the main categories, not cook a bunch of extra food for little or no chance of getting my money back.

This post rightly belongs in the organizer's section.

I'm not sure your question is clear. What do you mean exactly?

Most organizers find that one of the most difficult issues to deal with is the fact that when the public comes to a BBQ contest, they assume they will be able to eat food the teams cook. Most teams don't want to feed the public. Both have perfectly good reasons for their viewpoint, so some sort of compromise is in order; hence People's Choice was born.

If we are talking about people's choice versus a "blind" people's choice. I say you go blind. It puts less burden on the team and levels the playing field.

We are a new team and I have won both, but appreciate the blind more.