Here's a request from a competitor who also vends on occasion.
If you have a small team, doing both can be a bitch! Unless I have plenty of help, I won't do both because I'm a compeititor first!
But my request is this. If you're a competitor who is vending, PLEASE take some pride in what you vend.
Nothing like serving up folks who have just thrown complete meals in the trash because that's where they belonged and believe me, they'll be happy to tell you where they bought 'em, too. The last such occurance found some of our freinds visiting an event where we were not vending. We recommended a team that was serving the full meal deal. We remarked how they were a successful competition team and we assumed they would get a good lunch. We could not have been more wrong. So, we fed our friends from our comp "leftovers" and they loved 'em.
Then you know what happens? The team that served the disgusting meal ends up Grand Champs.
Do I expect your vend to be as tasty and tender as your boxed entries? Well, hell no but could you please make it at least comparable or could we please at least not allow it to be crap?
I am very probably preaching to the choir here but spread the word, would ya? We attract a lot of folks who are happy to shell out they're hard earned sheckles because they've always hear that competition bbq is so much better than restaurant bbq. I for one (and I bet you do too) take pride in what I hand out or sell to anyone. The less than good bites go in the trash. I won't sell 'em or hand 'em out.
I think it's a tradition we should talk about at our events and we should insist upon! Maybe we can start with the Bretheran. In other words, if you sample or purchase from a Bretheran team you can count on it being competition quality! I like that approach. How about y'all?
(OK off my box of soap)