Need a new Smoker

Hi Theron, welcome to the CS forums.

Some clarification of your situation would be helpful. As I read your post, you now have two restaurants offering pulled pork. You want to open a 3rd restaurant serving BBQ with the expectation of serving 500 - 1000 customers a day, right?

More questions:
are you planning on keeping the two restaurants you already operate?
Do you currently produce your pulled pork at each venue, or a central commissary?
Will the 3rd restaurant produce BBQ on site, or via a commissary...assuming you have one now.

The two smokers you now have will produce about 200 lbs of food per batch. The CS 360 will provide an additional 550 lbs. per batch. I'm just not clear what your ultimate goal, or needs are.

Good,
I cook now at a central place for both of the existing restaurants from 1 SM100 12 butts each cook 3-4 times a week. The non CS smoker is not hooked up my plan is to put all smokers inside-onsite at the new restaurant. I will be keeping all 3 places. The 2 existing places will still do the Pulled P and the new BBQ place will have all the smoked items. Do I get everything you asked?

Again, so I understand correctly...you plan to consolidate the SM100 and the non CS smoker to your new BBQ restaurant, and add on SM360, which will provide BBQ to all 3 venues?

Yes,
But only pulled pork for the first 2 restaurants.

Theron

Thanks for the clarification; I'm pretty clear on your plan now. The way I see it, you'll have the SM100 available at least 3 days a week, plus the 2nd unit will give you another 100 lbs @ day capacity....assuming a 12 hr max cooking cycle. That adds up to 1,000 lbs @ week additional capacity. Add in the SM360 and you have an additional daily capacity of at least 500 lbs. or 3,500 lbs a week. All in all, I come up with 4,500 lbs of cook capacity @ week at your disposal, 650 lbs @ day.

All of the above is calculated on a 12 hr cook cycle for butts and briskets. Ribs and chicken will triple that capacity. My thinking is that you have plenty of cook power with all 3 units at hand.

Hope that helps and that I didn't confuse the living daylights out of you

Best of luck to you in your new venture!

I was waiting to see where MaxQue was headed with his questions before I jumped in.

I might consider going with another SM160 and an SM260 instead of the big 360. You should still have enough capacity, and you'll have a lot more flexibility and redundancy.

If you really need that much cooking capacity and your one 360 went down, you'd be screwed until repairs could be made. With a 160 and a 260, along with your existing smokers, if one went down you could likely cope without it affecting customers.

Well TG this is what stopped me last week from doing the order of the 360. What about cooking different things at different temps? and yep what if the 360 went out?
So I am thinking the choice may be "two" 260's and I think that will give me the same amount of cooking space as a 360. I worry the 160 and 260 may cut it a little short, And I would like to have a little more than not enough.

I don't know the requirements for cleaning your racks that touch food in SC. If you have to wash the racks daily like I do, you might want to avoid the SM260 unless your 3 compartment sinks are really big.

The 360 uses the same 18" racks in the 160 and they fit perfectly in my sink.

I ordered Two 260's today!
I have a large sink that is going in just for the racks.
If you guys would like I will post pics as the project takes shape.
Theron

Yes, please post pictures! I'm definitely a visual person. Careful Smokin, don't go there.

Logo test pic

Congrats on the purchase(s) and good luck, keep in touch and let us know how it goes.

Russ

Great purchase!

Logo looks really good, good luck, hope it all goes well.