FEC750

Probably you will get more help by going down to the Pros only and the FEC forums.

This forum is for small home,traditional electric units.

I've heard the Oyler is a fine unit,for experienced cooks,that intend to commit the time to learn bbq and do the cooking.

First question will probably be," are you going to be the fulltime operator" and pretty much stay with the Oyler all the time"?

Are you going to have another operator,available to work the oyler-when you can't be there.

Do you have support to teach you the techniques with the Oyler?

You might call sales and ask to have fast Eddy contact you.

He developed the FEC,cooks comps,and sets up restaurants with them.

He could answer many of your different questions.

Plapen,

Welcome to the forum.

For an FYI, because your asking about opening a joint, I combined both posts and put them here in the Pros forum. Not only will they give input on the FE, but also opening a joint.

I'm a little worried, when you say you're not experienced in restaurants and minimal backyard experience in BBQing, what do you want to open a restaurant?

When you say joint, what are you thinking?

What do you want on the menu? Reason I ask is you need to understand the timing of the meats and temps. If you'll be doing large cuts with small cuts, etc.

Is a state like Texas where they seem to have Q on every corner, why Texas, why now?

You wanting to open up in Dallas, a suburb?

We'll certainly help every way we can, cause if you have a dream of opening a Q joint, you should go for it.

The best advice I'll give you is very much approach it as a business and look very very closely at the financials. You won't get rich from BBQ or a new restaurant and under financed restaurants are probably the #1 reason for failure.

Oylers are great units and in Texas, they are a lot of them.

Have a read through the pros forum there's lots of helpful info.

As for the Smoke ring. Keep in mind, with an FE you'll get plenty. The smaller FEC100 you just have to learn what wood to use and the right way to get it, but in the 750, it is burning 3 firepots and there is plenty of wood burning to create the smoke ring. and you know, that SR has nothing to do with how good the Q is right? It's just an indication of the nitrates in the smoke curing the outside and giving it the same color of a cured ham or hotdog (pink).

Ask away, we'll help all we can.

Smokin',

Thank you for your assistance in placing the request for info into proper forum-also, for asking questions. First, I do NOT want a restaurant in the big sense of the word. I want a "joint"-maybe 6 - 8 tables inside & some seating for outside during good weather. My focus-if allowed by the market area-would be a primarily to-go operation, and primarily for lunch, although dinner might be required. Hoping that this approach, plus paper plates/plastic table ware, no (one wait/counter-person?), would hold down the start-up/running costs.

I have no valid reason for wanting to open a food-service operation other than it has been a long-term dream. Not sure a proper analogy, but I had no experience in business before getting an MBA in Finance and then spending 35 years climbing the ladder, i.e., "if it feels good-and one does not expect to become rich-then do it."

Why Texas, why now? Primarily because my other half will not move from Dallas. Looking at spot in Farmers Branch (suburb of Dallas), on a major street (40,000 cars daily). Other food businesses on the street (within 1/2 mile) are Sonic, Burger King, 2 independent Mexican restaurants, and Wendys-all of whom have full parking lots from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Also, a large high school two blocks down from location. No BBQ in a 3 mile radius and that one is not on a major street.

Envision brisket, sausage, ribs and (maybe) chicken & butt. Left to my own choices, there would be neither chicken or butt, but understand that the market will dictate the menu to a large degree. Sides of beans, potato salad and coleslaw. Not thinking about deserts, but who knows what market will demand.

On cooking, still very much in the learning stage, but seems that loading/cooking the briskets and butts would be done from evening (6'ish p.m. - 7/8'ish a.m.) and then load ribs & chicken 7/8'ish a.m. until lunch time. Hence my very great interest in finding a smoker that will truly tend itself through-out the night.

Hope I have provided enough insight to allow everyone to assist me in my quest. Again, thank you very much for your help in this matter.
Tom Goodson

Have to agree about butts in your market.

Chicken is cheap and can be a one night a week special-to draw folks to try you out.

You can scatter sausage in above chicken ,cooks easy and holds well.

The forums have had bbq places that try to give away pork,one day a week,etc and people won't take them for free.

You might want to find someone with an Oyler and ask to spend the day/night with them.

Watch the amount of time/effort required in the total process.

On the other hand,we use FEC s for comps.

We like to put our big meats on about 8-9 PM and then go to the motel.

We come back around 7AM to get the ribs going,and put the chicken in around 10 ish.

We leave the cover on and cook in the pouring rain and high winds.

For cleanup,we throw out the foil from the floor of the cooker,and top of firebox.

Gets rid of any grease and the tiny amount of scattered ash.

Load the cooker and head home.

Hope this helps a little.

I think Tom and Smokin' have covered your bases, but for the record, and based on principle, I want to object to any thought of forgoing butts on the menu. Any plan that does not include real pork BBQ is flawed beyond repair. Any region that would allow such a joint to succeed, much less prosper, is clearly backward and not deserving of your efforts.

While the above reflects my true feelings as a North Carolinian, I must try to be politically correct and allow for differences of opinion, no matter how misguided they might be.

Seriously, if your plan does come to include butts, I'd consider using a CS model for the butts and briskets, and then going with a smaller FEC for the chicken, sausage, ribs, turkey, etc. In other words, things that will benefit from higher temps. The CS won't give you a smoke ring, but it will be less expensive to operate than the FEC and about as "set and forget" as you can get.

There are a lot of threads that deal with people that have gone with this combo and have been pleased, so you might want to consider it.

Many thanks to Smokin', Tom, and Todd for their great feed back. If you guys, or anyone else on the forum, have more insightful commentary it will be most gratefully received here.

For instance, anyone who might provide counsel on the various aspects of a "start-up" BBQ operation would find me a willing student of your hard-earned experience.

In fact, along those lines, there is an issue I am struggling with regarding menu items. I much prefer a potato salad made with mayo and bread-n-butter pickles (with a touch of mustard for color only). However, my wife assures me that people eating in a BBQ joint will rather have a mustard-based salad.

My question, "how does one go about establishing the correct recipes?" I guess my concern is that if you start with the wrong recipe, then the customer who does not like it may not come back-ergo, a lost customer.

Thanks for letting me ramble on.

My personal thoughts would be to cater first before you do a restaurant. The flavor profiles of any restaurant are a challenge and you have to serve to the masses and what they'll buy BUT you also want to be different.

For me, I'm not a fan of PS so I can't really tell you. Same issue with slaw. Both have so many varieties you could go nuts.

Make the que the best you can and go from that.

IF you seriously want to get into it, get an FE100, start catering small. You need to put more time into your BBQ flavors as that's what they'll be paying the most for. Sides will come.

Do a survey and start eating at all the Q within say 10 miles, what you competition will be and be VERY serious about rating them and getting comments. Take a few friends, take your wife.

What do they like, what don't they like.

For ME, sauce is the #1 thing to worry about. When I ask people about restaurants they like (people, not Q guru's) they always mention the sauce first.

then of course you have beans. In Texas it's pintos (but not for me, I like the navy style beans)

For the menu (we're in TEXAS Todd...)

Brisket of course,
Ribs (Spares or BB)??? think quantity and food costs)
Sausage (go with the Hill Country texas style sausage)
Butts should definitely be there, texas or not, there is so much to do with them)
Fries/Potatoes (do a stuffed baked potato for lunch/dinner)
Chicken (1/2's)?
Dessert? Market usually demands cobbler around there

You going to have to come up with something to get people in there and keep them in there and the time/effort/flavor of you Q may (or may not) do that. People are fickle.

Catering allows you to develop a following, control your costs and get it down before you open a restuarant. You won't have long from opening to do that, so do it before you open.

Want some free advice? take the time to read through this and other Q forum Pro sections. You're not the first and there are LOTS of free lessons, stories and much more information. Lots of good info out there.

Smokin' is dead on target. Catering can allow you to narrow down you recipes and adjust to cooking in bulk. If you look back at some of the threads in the pro section you'll see that I also make it a habit of giving away a couple of freebies at most of my caterings. These freebies let me try out new ideas and also offer an opportunity to up sell a new item next time.

I work with a fair number of restaurants, mostly on menu development issues, and I tell the owners that the only opinion that matters less than mine is theirs. A lot of times they get their back up over this statement, but when we do a group tasting and 10 out of 12 people rate their mothers recipe as "terrible", they get the point, or they don't and they suffer the consequences.

I don't want friends and family to be the testers usually (although it's fine to include them if you want, you need 12-20 complete strangers to do the bulk of the rating), so we advertise on Craigslist for testers and pay them, usually $25 each for 3 hours. You recruit about 18, 12 show up, and a few hours later you have some unbiased feedback for $300. It's cheap insurance that you're not sailing over a cliff.

We usually have 10+/- different things for the group to try, maybe with different versions of some items, and then we ask them about particular parings of foods (ie, yellow potato salad w/ribs vs mayo pot salad, vs either one with pulled pork or brisket). We also ask about which items they would like to see on the menu, and have them rate the likely hood of purchasing if the item were available. You could list the meats you would be willing to offer and have them rate their desirability, so you don't cook a bunch of brisket when all they really wanted was a pulled pork sandwich.

Try to get people that match the ethnic makeup of your likely customer base too. That will effect your choice of sides and maybe even the choice of rubs you might use. Around here, what I might take to a church BBQ in the city(white, middle class) will be quite a bit different than what I might take to a rural black middle class church or a church made up mostly of Hispanic folks. I'm not concerned with their race at all, but there are some pretty clear cut differences in what they expect foodwise and I want to make them happy.

Gentlemen:

Thanks for your feed back. I did think about the catering route, but guess maybe was to anxious to get-r-done! However, I agree with all aspects of what both of you are saying about the value of catering to determine the what, who and when of varying foods items-and recipes for same.

Absolutely love the idea of Craig's List. This certainly solves the issue of friends and hoping to get a real, no-holds barred feed back on the product.

Finally, I am learning to use the forum archives. Spent nearly 6 hours over the week end searching for discussions. Now the big issue is using the right words, descriptions to uncover what I need. Thanks again to you for your continued input.

Great idea on the Craigslist "focus group" Todd!

Playpen
I would suggest that u take the time to eat at several of the more successful q restaurants in your area to see what sides and etc they are serving. Taste and what is normal on a plate varies very much from area to area. In NC it can change in very short distances.

Most successful new restaurants will serve very similar menus that people in that area have come to expect in sauces and sides. A widely different type of sauce or menu will have some rough sledding trying to get established.

Just my 2 cents for fwiw

Herman

quote:

Originally posted by Plapen:
Finally, I am learning to use the forum archives. Spent nearly 6 hours over the week end searching for discussions. Now the big issue is using the right words, descriptions to uncover what I need. Thanks again to you for your continued input.

Appreciate that.

Don't worry about asking the same question, we just like people to ask the simple questions first, because when you've been on line 10 years, there's LOTS of valuable data out here.

But...

ask away, we're here to help.

Smokin'