So, as many of you have already seen or heard in the news, we had a fire yesterday. It was a scary ordeal and I was the only one in the building when the fire broke out. Luckily I caught it within minutes of starting and managed to keep it at bay with our two fire extinguishers until just by pure luck/coincidence, a police officer and customer pulled in because he saw the smoke and immediately called the fire crews.
Thank god he showed up so quickly because I had used up both fire extinguishers and the fire began spreading to the kitchen. Crews arrived within five minutes and had the fire out about 15 minutes later. That isn't to say damage was limited to the smoker. The back part of the kitchen sustained major fire/smoke/water damage.
We are so thankful to have such a good crew working for us and such loyal customers because immediately after the fire was out everyone pitched in to begin rebuilding. We formed an assembly line from the building to the dumpster to remove all of the debris, the health department showed up within an hour to tell us what food we could save and what we couldn't, we had our foodservice company drop off a refrigerated trailer within the hour so we could empty and save the thousands of dollars worth of meat in the walk-in coolers, and a fire restoration company was in there doing their thing before noon.
It is a setback to be sure and we're looking at a week or two before we'll be able to get the doors back open again, which sucks, but from what the fire department told us, they said the building was literally minutes from becoming a complete loss. And even more importantly, nobody or myself got hurt (although I almost got arrested for disobeying police orders to not enter the building to try to put the fire out myself).
As for the cause of the fire? It's just an awful smoker design. I won't disclose the brand of the smoker, but it's an offset cabinet style smoker. The problem is the firebox is a mere 16 inches away from the grease catch basin. Open flames that close to highly flammable grease is a recipe for disaster. From what the fire department told me, they have been called to that restaurant probably five times over the past two years for similar fires.
The good news is my southern pride has returned from Ft. Wayne, completely retrofitted on a trailer and is ready for action. We're resuming smoking tomorrow night to do a bunch of super bowl catering. After that it will be relocated to the restaurant and be the workhorse for most of the smoking. As for the existing smoker, we are still undecided. Nobody wants to keep it, but we need the added capacity. It's just not designed well to put out the consistent product I demand. It's so bad that the lower racks can be running at 300 degrees while the top racks struggle to hit 200. That makes most of the smoker unusable, or at best, inconsistent. As time goes on we may replace that entirely, or just junk it and find another permanent solution.
So, the saga continues...
I thought I'd seen it all running my own place, but to throw almost burning a building down into the mix? I pray to god I've seen it all now. But there's no rest when it comes to BBQ. We're rebuilding and expanding and will be slinging meat again in no time at all.
Thanks for all of the well wishes and concern. It means a lot to have the support of everyone here.
