belly,
hot food holding we normmaly do in the 150 at the farmers market since the time period is low and the counts are well within a resonable reach. for the cancer society fund raiser at the end of the month i will be using the steam table as i need either the fec or sm to cook for the market while we are doing the fund raiser (walk for life is friday may 5 and we will be there all night and then at 7 tow to the market.) just for fun and giggles that is 2 totally different menus. our steam table is 120v so it takes a while to heat water but if i use the hot water from the heater it does reduce that time. our chilled food holder is ice only no electricity involved. we normally don't use that at all since sides simply don't sell at the market and for drinks and garnish we work out of coleman extreme coolers which do a great job. we also have a 22 cu ft reefer in the rig but a word of caution there. in extreme summer heat,if you are going into and out of the reefer a lot, you can cause an icing problem due to the hummidity here in florida. in the summer a trick i use to preserve ice is to place the drinks in the freezer for about 35-45 mins and then into the cooler and then ice the drinks. works like a charm. on the sides a good workable solution is to get a standard hotel pan and find a cooler that they will fit into like our big green igloo cooler which oddly enough we use as a hot food delievery device. ok with slaw and such just portion it out into the size of serving souffle cups which work best and put the while thing on ice. same net effect as my 3 well cold food table.
bj's i am not familiar with as there is not one of their stores near us. we use sam's for disposable products like aluminum pans and things like pillsbury biskets and ketchup. meat to be honest i can beat sams price at wally world here and they carry brisket which our sam's does not. pork is either rowes or wally world depending on who is cheaper. by the way we consistantly use picnics as i can get a 60% yield from them vs 50% from butts and they are much juicer in the final product which is what our customers look for. we did use st. john's food service. they are great people and it really broke my heart to tell our sales rep that until we reached a higher level of sales we could no longer afford to tie up funds in inventory to meet their minimum. thankfully my rep understood since we went back for years and she knows once that happens she is the only person i will call.
chicken peg really likes our local store and since she cooks it that's where we get it.
ribs that's a toss up there when we do buy them it's wally world or even winn-dixie. just who ever is cheaper. ribs don't sell well at the market and the way those are being treated is if they ask we will custom smoke them with a 50% deposit and a 2 slab requirement as they come 2 to the cryo. baby backs are treated the same way but with a 3 slab minimum due to packaging. we learned to do this the hard way just like we learned to stay out of a vegetarian entree (lot of talk and asking and when doing it minimal sales. ah well live and learn)
hope it covered everything
jack
ps. since you have a business background i sure won't insult you by explaining rotational cooking but as a funny aside the guys from hilton couldn't figure out how we were cranking out wings as fast as we were. course they only had 6 fryers and felt they needed more
We did a show early this year with the FEC-100 and CS-150. We did 1,600 sandwiches in 5 days. The state fair last year we were doing $2,000 a day with a FEC-100, CS-150 and three ranch kettles. This year cookshack will be doing all the heavy lifting at the state fair.