How many contests do you do in a year?

R

rescue_ranger

Guest
I am trying to figure out if there is a rhyme and reason to doing certain contest vs others and how many do you or an average team (not that we are average by any means) to do in a season, I know some of the big ticket contest are by invitation only, but I wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts or strategies this is, I hail from VA so I will be doing the east coast South east
 
We do between 7 and 10 depending on the time and the location. We are doing 8 this year. Back to back events are killer for us.
 
I will end up completing 25 or so by the end of December 2010. No strategies here, we just like it and can swing it so we do it. I try to stay within 100 miles of home but sometimes I go outside that boundry. I could do near 50 sanctioned cooks a year within 110 miles of home.
 
ZILLA said:
I will end up completing 25 or so by the end of December 2010. No strategies here, we just like it and can swing it so we do it. I try to stay within 100 miles of home but sometimes I go outside that boundry. I could do near 50 sanctioned cooks a year within 110 miles of home.
Click to expand...

I would add that we don’t have that many sanctioned events within a 100 mile radius. If we did, we would do more. Wish I was in Texas.
 
I did one in 2008, one so far this year with a second coming up at the end of the month and hopefully a third in October.

But I'm just a backyard guy that has occasional delusions of competence.:roll:
 
We will have done 6 by the end of October. Would like to afford to do more, but without sponsors, that's about all we can swing. I have to think that, the more a team does, the more consistent they can become
 
i used to do 25+ a yer. Having a full time job, full time taking care of 2 kids on my own, trying to run a foundation, keep up a house and compete in that many contests wore my ass out. My goal was to cut it back to 15 contests this year. I think I will be at 16 or 17 for the season. Hope to cut that back next year as well. Just too much work. I've achieved BBQ goals that I've wanted and don't really have to prove it anymore...
 
Around 10. Would like to do more but life interferes.
 
We will do 9 this year plus we did a charity cook for kookers kare early in the year. We try to stick to about 1 every 4 weeks or so. We split everything 4 ways so it makes it a bit easier on the wallet and we are able to do more than if we were just a 1 or 2 man team.
 
We did 4 this year, but had 5 scheduled but Bellevue, NE was flooded out. We have a 6 member team who are all in our early 30's and trying to find time around kids and work is just challenging. It does help the pocket book to have a large team and if we had more time and were single we might do more.

We have already talked about 2011 and I think we will end up doing 3-4 with one of those being out of town as a little road trip for the guys.
 
Too damn many...:twisted: This season was a full court press to get to The Jack...:flame:
I have done 11 as Left Hand Smoke (12 counting The Jack :becky:). I will do 3 as SouthPaw BBQ...15 total.

Next year I plan to do a little more catering on the weekends (the pay is much better :thumb:)...so maybe 6-8 comps...:cool:
 
Between chili cookoffs and BBQ cookoffs, we try to do 8 - 12 cookoffs. However, these
past 2 years have seen financial troubles hit teammates as well as a few tremendous
expenses myself, so we're down to 1 chili cookoff and 1 BBQ cookoff each year. We
do hope to get back, but it's not looking good for 2011.
 
8 our first year, 16 last year and either 16 or 17 this year. We try to stay within 5 hours drive of home. If we have to choose between two on a weekend we'll look at the venue, the competition reputation, the payout and the drive.
 
I'd do one every weekend if I could take off every Friday and had $2,000 a month to spend on it.
 
this year did five--most was 12 iirc--would like to cook every weekend---if there really was a money tree in the backyard like our kids always though!!!!! Now think I'll play more golf!!
 
We've competed in 8-14 a year for the past 3 years. But we are forced to drive quite a bit to do that many. Wish we could do more close to home, we had only 2 contest this year within 100 miles of us. Our Eggs will have over 10,000 miles on them in 2010 alone.
 
'08 was 30
'09 was 34
'10 looks to be down to 26, but I've added a weekend long promo for Kingsford in Daytona and one in Detroit.
Also taught 2 - (2 day) BBQ classes with at least one more scheduled. And picking up more catering.
I'm backing off the contests some to do more family stuff.
 
In our first season that we decided to take a real stab at competing, we did 16 events.
The next year we did 26. This year will probably top out at about that number or a little less.
Our average one-way drive is six and a half hours; the longest being something like sixteen hours (?) -- not counting Tennessee.
Who knows what we'd be doing if we lived in an area with lots more available contests.
 
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