FD Chicken BBQ benefit

Yesterday I helped out at the local Fire Department Chicken BBQ benefit. A friend asked if I would help because he was short handed. They have a custom Meadowcreek BBQ 96 with a hog cooker across the back. They started the pit at 500 am and put chicken on by 630. The plan was to cook 800# of chicken halves and 600 baked potatoes by 200pm. It was a nice day, temps in the 70's but then the wind kicked up. And the pit temps fell and the chicken wasn't getting done quick enough to meet demand. They ended up turning away about 150 people because they could not keep up.They fell short of their goal and sold the last 6 cases of chicken to members because people weren't waiting.
My friend asked me what I thought went wrong. When I worked a lot of FD BBQs in the past, we always started earlier for a cook that large and within the those time constraints. Or we used more pits. Every other year they sold out early, so my thought was they started too late.

Any suggestions for him next time?

I asked my friend who was in charge a few things going into it. A few things I noticed were 1) his chicken was packed in ice in a reefer trailer so it was more or less frozen going on the pit. 2) he had a very small bed of coals in each bay something close to 20# if I were to guess ( I believed he needed more) 3) they had only 3 racks which slowed reloading down
If it were me, I would have borrowed or rented another 4 rack cooker and started earlier. He was very short handed there were 5 people for the most part + the ladies doing box assembly.

When I do pork in my PR60, I start with 40#. The chicken cookers are much larger.

I am actually a mile from TMI. I work on the west shore and it was over there. Another local FD has a 144 that they can borrow next time. But thanks for the offer.

Years ago, the FD had a bunch of metal breakdown pits and about 40 or so flip racks. They would start cooking chicken at 1130 the night before and had the chicken cooked before 100pm. Of course, they also made 1000 halves or more at that time. They also had more available manpower. I am hoping that the next time they plan on doing this that they borrow the larger pit, start earlier and learn from this experience. I hope to help out again, because I know they are always short handed when it comes to fundraisers.
My hometown FD has a brick and mortar pit next to the station, they do ok with manpower and their pit size.