Almost afraid to ask this but here goes. Awarding Peoples Choice......

Having witnessed a near online riot over People's Choice the only suggestion I would make is that you make sure the rules are clear and you stick to them.

I would go so far as to have a page of rules that the competitors had to sign and return.

We did a fundraiser where the public had to buy tickets to sample. 5 tickets for 3 bucks. With the tickets they go from team to team and trade a ticket for a sample. When the got the tickets, they also got a score sheet where they put their 3 favorite team numbers on them... then turn in the score sheets and someone tallied them up.

They can buy as many 5 packs as they want, and get 3 votes for each 5 pack.

Bigmista the California State People's Choice Champion will chime it. Thom Emery ran People's Choice at Stagecoach this year. They both should be good sources of information.

BBQchef33 said:

We did a fundraiser where the public had to buy tickets to sample. 5 tickets for 3 bucks. With the tickets they go from team to team and trade a ticket for a sample. When the got the tickets, they also got a score sheet where they put their 3 favorite team numbers on them... then turn in the score sheets and someone tallied them up.

They can buy as many 5 packs as they want, and get 3 votes for each 5 pack.

Click to expand...

I like that idea.

The only suggestion I have is to "Not" have the voting done at the individual cook site. The end result I have seen is that usually the team with the most friends and visitors gets the most votes. Jeff set up tables at Pleasant Hill last year, and put baskets in front of each entry for blind voting. It evens the playing field, and keeps the voting on the up & up.

Here is what we did this past spring for a non-sanctioned "comp" that we did at our church.

We gave each of the teams a half size aluminum pan for their pork turn in. That is what was "people's judge". We gave each person a single ticket to judge what was the best. They were given a 1 oz sample cup to taste at the tables. Then they put the ticket in a bucket provided behind each pan. The number of tickets in the bucket determined the placement of each team. We gave 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place trophies.

The teams were given the opportunity to cook the other three categories but they were judged only by a select team to only judge those categories. Those categories were only given a 1st place trophy.

Hope this helps some too.