Open a BBQ restaurant, they said. It will be fun, they said

How about some more drama to this epic tale?

So, I'm no longer at Fat Cap. About a month ago I broke my hand (non-workplace injury). Therefore I was unable to work. So guess what they did? They fired me. Still using all of my recipes and techniques, but since I got hurt and couldn't work for a while they just decided to let me go. So incredibly unprofessional. But there's not much I can do about it.

Of course it could be a blessing in disguise, because guess what they have decided to do since I left? They are moving away from only selling fresh BBQ to now cooking excess and just cooling/reheating meat just so they can stay open longer and avoid putting a "sold out" sign up. So if you go in there now you don't know if you'll be getting that day's fresh BBQ or something from earlier in the week that was just warmed back up.

That's not how I do BBQ and I wouldn't be able to stand behind the meat counter and consciously serve people knowing that was the case. The funny thing is, they even announced on facebook that they were going to start doing this! Then customers started calling them out on the leftovers and now they have started deleting all of the facebook comments talking about serving leftover BBQ.

So at the end of the day, I guess it's good I'm not there any longer. They only care about making a few extra bucks rather than serve up the highest quality food.

The silver lining to this story? Almost immediately when word began to spread that I was fired, people began contacting me. And I'm in the early stages of working with a local chef and restauranteur who is in the process of opening a BBQ restaurant and needed a consultant and pitmaster. It's a little too early to share details on this venture, but it sounds exciting. They are actually picking up two smokers from Tennessee on Sunday and getting them up here to hopefully begin catering for Notre Dame football in just a few weeks and use that to build up some hype before the restaurant is slated to open in early 2019.

Is there ever a dull moment?

airedale said:

Good job.

If you are not consciously working at self-promotion now would be a good time to start. You have a great story and the food columnist for the local newspaper should hear it if he/she has not. Someone in your network of restaurant friends knows this columnist and should be able to arrange a meeting for you. It's an even exchange; you have a story you'd like to get out and the columnist needs material to publish. If you have a good photo of your closed restaurant, take it along. It may get published. Your new employer would be ecstatic, too, if you get some ink.

Click to expand...

Right there with you. As soon as the deal is inked we will be leveraging the story of what happened at Fat Cap, and the original Prized Pig and hitting the media to get the ball rolling on this new gig.

Oddly enough, as soon as I posted this update my old boss tried calling me. I didn't pick up. lol