ohman,
at the present time we are only selling from 8.30am to 12.30pm saturday at our local farmers market while we put our business together..
we were originally only doing this to supplement the costs of doing bbq competitions but our sales have been so good that we are foregoing many contests in favor of the market and plowing the profits back into the business as we are highly opposed to taking out loans. to be really honest we would love to buy bassrockers bbq joint up in georgia but until we have cash money that will remain a nice dream and a reason to keep working 7 days a week (yes i do have another job and it is in a bbq joint–funny isn’t it for an acf certified chef??!!)
your hours though are what caught my eye
for my 4 hours of sales on saturday my cooking schedule looks like this;
friday
9am. load truck with the generators and go out to our rig (florida mfd approved)
10am fire off the gennies and start prepping
11am briskets go in, pork picnics in. start smoking at 145-155f
3pm. raise heat to 185f
5pm. raise heat to 215f
saturday
4am. make brisket gravy
6am. wife arrives with the tow rig
7am. set up at farmers market and fire smoker to 400f
7.20am biscuits and cornbread muffins go in
8am. chicken goes in
8.30 sales start
8.45 chicken is ready with glaze set
i guess you can see now why i was a little taken aback by your hours. granted everything we are doing is to competition standards but that has paid off in the fact that our brisket sales are 25 cooked pounds (not raw weight) in 4 hours and the pork is almost the same. bear in mind that florida is a not a beef bbq state so our beef sales are a suprise to everyone including the owner of the bbq joint i work part time for but are an end result of our not compromising on quality (we were 2nd in the state at the fba championships in 2004 for brisket)
so in my opinion if all you are cooking is 8 hours can you send me some tricks???
jack
ps. our smokers are one FEC100 and two SM150 all NSF approved