22 Chamber Executive Spring 2012

n 1995, staff and delegates from the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce were preparing for Panhandle Days in Austin, our annual visit to the state capitol to lo bby f or issues that are important to Amarillo’s cit izens. We figur ed a g reat way to get the att ention of legislators was b y cooking them some tasty Texas barbecue on the capitol grounds, so we had a cook-off to help us decide who would get the ho nor of feeding the crowd. We invited five

barbecue restaurants and a judge to pick the winner. From that little-noticed cook-out in the chamber parking lot, a huge

barbecue dream was born, and it’s still going strong 17 years later.The Amarillo Chamber of Commerce Good Times Celebration Barbecue

Cook-Off is held each September on and near the chamber’s office property in d owntown Amarillo. I t’s our larg est o f f our no n-dues r evenue e vents, representing six figures of revenue. These events help the chamber keep fees down, and contribute to the fact that member dues have not been raised in more than 25 y ears. But aside from the revenue, there’s incalculable value in uniting the community at a party with live music where thousands of people have a lot of fun cooking, eating, drinking, networking and promoting their businesses.

The y ear aft er our par king lot c ooking c ontest, w e o pened the c ompetition t o al l chamber me mbers w ho want ed t o sho wcase the ir g rilling skil ls, w hich ar e c onsider-able throughout the L one Star stat e whether you’re a bar becue professional or not. We believed a larger event would provide members an appetizing opportunity to brag about their businesses to the community and to serve up tasty food dripping in sauce. We were right. After 16 events, our cook-off now attracts more than 100 cooking teams and 5,000 attendees.

Of course, successful events like this don’t just happen after you plant the se ed. They require countless hours of manpower, organization, volunteers, sponsors, creativity and energy. Here are some key things that have allowed us to grow our barbecue cook-off to one of the most successful events in the area.

The Amarillo Chamber’s Favorite Recipe for Non-Dues Revenue.

By Penni Bentley

Barbecue Dreams

More than 5,000 people attend this annual event that covers a four-block area in downtown Amarillo, Texas.

The large cooker/grill shown on this poster is made by inmates of the Randall County Jail. Along with two tickets donated by Southwest Airlines, the cooker is a prize in a raffle that generates about $4,000. A month prior to the barbecue, the cooker is decorated with a banner promoting the event and parked at a supermarket where tickets are sold.

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24 Chamber Executive Spring 2012

Event StructureThe Good Times Celebration Barbecue Cook-Off takes place on the second Thursday of September and is o pen to the pub lic from 5-8 p.m. Tickets are $25 in a dvance or $30 at the g ate. The ticket price includes all you can eat and dr ink, plus live entertainment. We have one ticket price no matter what the age of the attendee, a reminder to the public that this is a business networking event and not a carnival-like situation for families and y oung children. There are more than 100 hot cookers and grills, large crowds and some alcohol served, so the event isn’t a good fit for st rollers and smal l children. We don’t tell people not t o bring children, but our p ricing policy helps limit the number, and it simplifies our a ccounting. We can easil y deter-mine the n umber of presale tickets and o nsite sales. We use a local company (P anhandleTickets.com) t o p re-sell t ickets in nine lo cal locations and online. Panhandle Tickets is listed as a sponsor because we aren’t charged for their services. We started this method of ticket sales a few years ago; it’s taken stress off our staff and phone lines to outsource the processing of more than 3,000 pre-event tickets.

Each cooking team pays a minimum $200 entry fee to participate in the e vent and t o hold the ir cooking space, but the v ast majority of the t eams ar e at least $500 sp onsors. Ea ch t eam ag rees t o prepare e nough f ood f or at least 200 p eople, in a ddition t o cooking the meat d onated to each team by our main sp onsor, Tyson Foods, Inc.

Cooking t eams se t up o n Wednesday mo rning and c ook for a p rivate par ty Wednesday e vening cal led “Team N ight,” which is invitation-only to allow participants to cook for their employees and families. There is a larg e time commitment for teams to participate. Team Night allows them to relax and g ive back to their employees.

Thursday is all about serving the public and preparing entries to be judged. We award top three plaques in Corporate, Amateur & Professional divisions for R ibs, Brisket and O ther Meat cat -egories. We have more than 100 volunteer judges who score each entry, and a c ommittee that tab ulates the sc ores t o d etermine winners. It’s a blind judging system; each entry is identified only by a t icket number. The winning ticket numbers are announced during the event on the main stage at 7 p.m. for the public to share the excitement of the winners. We also award the top three places for showmanship, and e ncourage teams to d ecorate the ir c ooking spa ces o r ha ve the mes for the ir t eam. We give a t otal o f 30 awards. You’ll notice thr oughout our c ommunity p revious w in-ners’ plaques displayed in their businesses.

Sponsors, Sponsors and More SponsorsWithout a d oubt, our c hamber could not p roduce this event without many generous sponsors. We are fortunate to have several big businesses in Amarillo that make it a point to give back to the community. The most critical part of our event is the bar becue itself: the meat. And w hat’s a bar becue w ithout something to wash it down?

Happy State Bank serves up more than 5,000 ears of corn on the cob.

Team from Wells Fargo Bank celebrates their win.

w Budweiser prints this 4’x8’ sign each year with all the sponsor logos for the stage and awards area.

26 Chamber Executive Spring 2012

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Tyson Foods, Inc. and Great Western Distrib-uting have supported us sinc e the fir st event by generously donating meat and beer. Those items are cr itical f or our b ottom line, and the she er volume provided to us is staggering. At our 2011 event, Tyson provided 6,800 p ounds of ribs and 9,500 pounds of brisket—more than e ight tons of meat—for our c ooking teams to prepare and serve. Tyson employs more than 3,700 p eople in Amarillo.

Great Western D istributing is our lo cal C oors dist ributor, and in 2011 se rved 36 kegs and 350 cases o f 12-ounce cans o f their p roducts. Two othe r lo cal b eer dist ributors and a liq uor wholesaler provided additional beverages. In total, the equivalent of 28,000 beers was served along with nearly 3,000 non-alcoholic beverages provided by our local Coca-Cola distributor. Meat and beverages have to be kept cold for health r easons, and our lo cal Arctic Gla cier P remium I ce dist ributor p rovided a r efrigerated semi for storage, as well as 50,000 pounds of ice for the event.

Live bands perform on stage for the crowds on Wednesday and Thursday. The two bands ar e listed as sp onsors and g iven t ickets for each member and guest to attend both nights’ events. We don’t pay for entertainment because the bands g et great exposure play-ing for several thousand p eople. A lo cal r adio stat ion covers the expense of the sound system setup in exchange for sponsorship.

Other k ey c omponents o f an e vent o f this mag -nitude inc lude wast e r emoval, se curity, p rinting, advertising, staffing , tab les and c hairs, f orklifts and gators, paper goods, electricity, fencing and more. We are f ortunate to g et sp onsorships f or most o f these things, and in 2011, we had an est imated $80,000 of in-kind sponsorships for these se rvices. The bottom line: the less we have to pay for out of our budget, the more money we raise to offset basic o perating costs

of the chamber. When planning our event, we start with a list of items we need

and cal l up on our me mbers t o ask if the y w ould sp onsor the event. We have a n umber of cooking teams whose sponsorships come in the form of money, but large amounts are in-kind dona-tions of goods or services. Sponsor levels are $500, $750, $1,500 and hig her f or k ey sp onsors. We o ffer diff erent sp onsorship benefits based on the value of the contribution. All sponsors of $500 or more are listed on the p romotional materials including posters, website, sponsor signage and newsletters. The key spon-sors (Tyson, Coors and Arctic Ice) are listed prominently on those items, as w ell as o n e vent t ickets. Ea ch sp onsor also g ets a se t number of t ickets/wristbands for their team, staff and guests t o attend the Wednesday and Thursday night events. The bigger the sponsor, the more event tickets they get. The main thing t o note about our sponsor benefits is that it d oesn’t cost the chamber to

See us in Louisville for ACCE’s Convention 2012, at booth #415.

28 Chamber Executive Spring 2012

reward those sponsors with event tickets and publicity. For example, a $1,500 sponsor gets 30 tickets to the Thursday event, a v alue of $900, in a ddition to the 20 t ickets to the p rivate Wednesday Team N ight e vent. Teams se e value in their sponsorship and we get needed funds or services. It’s a win-win.

PromotionWe created a 30-second commercial (http://goo.gl/ZyoDh) which all of the lo cal TV stations and cab le providers ran for free as a sponsorship trade before the e vent. A similar audio c ommercial was run on local radio stat ions for free. The week of the e vent, I and othe r staff me mbers do r adio and mo rning T V p rogram spots to promote the e vent. We give the r adio stations tickets to give away to their callers. The cook-off has become something of an annual tradition, with the whole town getting behind an event they anticipate and enjoy.

Working for BBQFor this event, it’s “all hands on deck” for our 18 full-time cham-ber e mployees. Most o f the lo gistics and p rep-work is hand led months in a dvance b y a t eam o f f our staff me mbers, b ut the entire staff w orks s unup t o s undown f or the thr ee da ys o f the cook-off. Staff is p rimarily r esponsible f or w orking the f our entrance g ates and hand ling t icket sales and mo ney. We use a temporary staffing service, SOS Staffing, to assist at the e ntrance gates, b ut the ir w ork is d onated as a sp onsorship. Alongside the staff are more than 120 v olunteers who take t ickets, put on armbands, d eliver ic e and se rve b eer at the nine b everage sta -tions. We’ve ne ver ha d a p roblem g etting p eople t o v olunteer for this e vent, mainl y b ecause the y g et t o eat, dr ink and ha ve fun in exchange for working a 1½ hour shift. Volunteers also are invited t o the Wednesday Team N ight so the y can pic k up the instructions and v olunteer ba dges the y w ill ne ed o n T hursday. They get to relax and enjoy Wednesday as a reward for their work on Thursday. Many of our volunteers come from various boards, councils and committees that serve the chamber throughout the year. Our staff also r ecruits family and fr iends to volunteer. We joke that our volunteers are literally “working for BBQ.”

We ha ve a c ommunity se rvice ag reement w ith the T exas Department o f C riminal Justice, w hich p rovides 12-15 t rustees from the lo cal prison and fi ve armed guards who oversee them in setting up fencing, staging, electrical lines, tables and chairs, as well as post-event clean-up. The trustees are non-violent offend-ers on good behavior lists, and w ork only when the e vent is not open to the g eneral pub lic. T hey come late Tuesday e vening to install e lectrical lines and p ower b oxes, and r eturn Wednesday morning t o se t up mo re than 1,700 f eet o f c hain-link f encing, hang sp onsor banners, e rect the stag e, and dist ribute meat and ice to cooking teams. They return late Thursday evening to tear down fencing and stag ing, load tab les and c hairs, remove t rash and sweep the st reets and par king lots. We reward the ir e fforts with breakfast and lunch each day and barbecue after the event is

over. Local restaurants and other cooking teams generously donate food to feed these w orkers. In the ear ly years of

the cook-off, chamber staff worked until the wee hours picking up beer cans and r ib bones, so using offenders has gone a long way in keeping staff happy.

Health ConcernsThe chamber works very closely with the cit y health d epart-

ment. We f ollow the ir r ules and guid elines f or f ood saf ety. We have a mandat ory hea d c ooks’ me eting ab out tw o w eeks p rior to the c ook-off. One t eam me mber is r equired t o att end that meeting to get updates and r ule changes from us and the health department. We shot a v ideo of this me eting (htt p://goo.gl/XcDkB) last year and sent the link to all the cooking teams so they could share it with team members. Two years ago we recruited 6-8 volunteer food and beverage inspectors who visit all the cooking teams o n Wednesday and T hursday t o r einforce r ules and saf e handling tips for food so that we don’t get any citations from the health department. Teams know that fail ure to follow the r ules will get them kicked out and not allowed to return in the future.

ExpensesNot everything related to the cook-off is free. In addition to our paid chamber staff, we hire 20 police officers during the event and five security guards that sta y on the g rounds overnight Tuesday and Wednesday to patrol while the teams spend the nig ht cook-ing. We also pay for trash removal staff during the event. We rent more than 50 p ort-a-potties and pay for 1,700 feet of fencing to secure the area.

If it’s a Good Idea, Copy itThe Amarillo C hamber is ho nored t o ha ve ha d its c ook-off emulated b y at least tw o othe r Texas c hambers: L ubbock and Odessa. Lubbock r ecently he ld its 10th ann ual e vent. Staff and board me mbers fr om the Od essa C hamber att ended our 2010 barbecue to lear n w hat was in volved w ith planning a c ook-off. In 2011, tw o Od essa staff me mbers g ot hands-o n e xperience by working gates and assist ing our staff for two ful l days. They were e xhausted w hen it was o ver, b ut b etter p repared f or the ir first event held in Oc tober with 15 c ooking teams. We sent two staff me mbers and tw o volunteers t o assist and c heer the m o n last fall. With positive feedback from their community, Odessa is planning a second event which they expect will continue to grow in the coming years.

Penni Bentley is senior director of chamber communi-cations and website manager for the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce. For more information on this and other non-dues revenue events, contact her at (806) 373-7800 or penni@amarillo-chamber.org.

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