another season in the books!

Congrats on the success of your business! I remember when you first posted about the start of your new BBQ joint. Thanks for proving us with an update. Enjoy your off season and good luck in the future!

Jeff:

Mucho Congrats!!

Great job and here is to wishing you much continued success.

Congrats Jeff, on another good season. Sorry to hear about you running the weight off, but hey things could have been worse.

Nice to hear that the FEC has done the job well, and please keep us informed on your future plans...it is nice to hear of success in times that some would want to paint a picture of poor.

hey all,

thanks for all the good words, i forgot to report, this year we bottled our sauce to sell, [we make our own from scratch]. people have said our sauce is some of the best that they have had. we bought bottles [18oz.], lables made, caps with seals. we made regular and chipotle spiced. and boy did it pay off! we sold over 1200 bottles! @ $4.95 a bottle. we even had people stealing bottles off our tables.....cheap, stealing bast---s! but hey i guess it goes with the business......

jeff heaton, "The Smoque Shack BBQ"....Lake City Co.

Chain the bottles like banks do with pens.

Congrats and thanks for checking in. I didn't make it to Colorado, but one of these days we'll find you out there cooking.

Sounds great. Do you have a website or any pics of your outfit. We had a great year with our mobile unit here in SE IA but recently had the opportunity to purchase a lot with a great location where we set our trailer up from time to time. Now I have to get the "sharp pencil" out and see if a building is in our future. The trailer has been great and it doesn't have much overhead but we are getting a good following and I would really like to expand my menu a bit. Always looking to see how the other guy is doing things.

mbailey,

sorry i don't have many pics of my place....i never think about it...lol. BUT! here are a few of the outside of building... http://www.photoshow.com/watch/pd6FT5JA I hope that works. anyway, im trying to move my time line up, i found a place that is in a shopping center close to a medium size university. the shopping center has a TSC, hastings, penneys, hibberts sports, movie theaters etc. tons of traffic. i also put a "sharp pencil" to it. its a 3,000 sqft. place, should seat about 80-90 people. cost? for a turn key start, equipment, seating, heat n air, electric, plumbing, and decor? right at $100k. and thats for brand new equipment. will be less if i buy used equipment. with rent at $3k/mo. my plan is to run the business for 3-5 years then look to build a place. my business plan is to target families, college crowd, church crowd, and bikers. i'm a biker and i have lots of conections with several rideing clubs. SO! your gig sounds interesting, what kind of numbers [meals] do you run in a week? my meal $$ average last summer was $11 a meal. who knows, i may decide to do it your way...just thinking.

jeff,

We had shopped around last winter and never came up with anything that caught our eye so we opted to jump into the portable facility. Problem is, by now I wanted to have a plan to move forward, or if we didn't think it would work, say the heck with it.

We only run 2-3 days per week serving to mainly the 30 minute lunch crowd if we didn't have catering or a big weekend event booked. We averaged around $1300 in receipts on basically a 3 sandwich menu + occasionally would do baby backs or grilled ribeye steak sandwiches. We also always did the kettle corn which made us a bunch of money this summer (and it's easy).

We had a huge bump in the road this summer. My mother was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in late August and passed away on Dec. 11 so we were a little preoccupied with that. Now with the nice weather (in the 50's in Iowa in Dec & Jan.???), we are still working and with great success. One of these days I really need to get to work on some building plans but who's complaining??

I would love to find someone that has the same interests in our area and start something with a partner. I don't care to be tied up managing everything and not have any time to do the cooking if we did start something else. I am really scared about finding good, reliable help as I have seen this be the death of other places.

Cool looking facility, just need to get some more pics of the inside! I don't have a website yet but my wife uses Facebook to promote ours a little. Look up Bailey's BBQ Barn and there are a few pics on there.

I also put a rather lengthy comment on the following link a while back. Not much has changed since then.

http://forum.cookshack.com/eve...212940517#7212940517