There are fewer BBQ competitions happening all over the country and Champion pitmaster Christie Vanover has a hunch why that is.
I’ve been hearing a lot of concerns from competition barbecue teams about the fact that there are not very many barbecue competitions anymore, that they’re all kind of fizzling up.
So does that mean that competition barbecue is dying? I say no, and I’m going to tell you why.
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Barbecue teams aren’t wrong to be concerned. It’s August right now, and there’s not another competition on the West Coast until December, when I’m hosting the BBQ Jackpot here in Vegas. So that’s quite a gap.
And in the Southwest – where it’s really hot right now in June, July and August – September, October, November, December are beautiful times a year to hold a contest and there aren’t any.
So what’s going on? Is barbecue dead? You know, that was my initial question.
Well, here’s why my answer is. No! So I decided to host a barbecue competition, the BBQ Jackpot in Vegas. I opened up registration last Friday. It’s sold out in 90 minutes. We had room for 57 teams. We had to downsize it to 44. I’ll get into that a little bit later. But those 44 spots sold out in 90 minutes.
So there’s definitely an interest in barbecue, so much so that I went back to Bass Pro Shops, the location where we’re going to hold this competition, and I asked them if they could give us some more room and they said yes.
We got more room. I opened registration back up and it’s sold out in five hours. So now we have 79 teams from 17 states and Canada, and I’ve already got 4 or 5 people on the waitlist.
In addition to having all of those teams signed up so fast, I also have over 80 certified barbecue judges who have also applied to judge the contest.
So is competition barbecue dead? No way. If I got 80 teams and 80 certified barbecue judges to sign up for one competition in basically less than seven hours, competition barbecue is alive and people are hungry for it.
Organizing a BBQ Competition
So why are there no barbecue competitions? Well, now that I’ve been helping to organize the BBQ Jackpot, I think I know the answer. I’m going to be really transparent about how this whole process has worked.
First off the KCBS sanctioning body has been great. The reps have been awesome. Jim Palmer who’s the official organizer. He’s been tremendous. He’s helping train me as a new organizer. All of that has run really smoothly. So no hiccups there.
Expenses
But what it comes down to is the cost. So here’s where I’m going to be transparent. Let’s first talk about the expenses and the revenue and how that kind of all shakes out.
So when you run a barbecue competition, one of the first things that you have to do is sanction it with a sanctioning body. I chose KCBS because I’m a lifetime KCBS member and I believe in KCBS. So I chose KCBS. Their basic fees are $400. That’s for 50 teams or less. If you add another 25 teams, it’s like $200 extra dollars.
So we’re at that like $600 price point. That’s really not too bad.
But there are also fees associated with it because you have to pay for your reps. So you do have to pay for their lodging for their travel and then for some meals. That can add up, depending on how many teams you have. If you have more than 50 teams, you’re going to need two reps.
So now you’re paying travel and lodging and meals for two reps. Plus I’m paying for the organizer as well.
That plus the KCBS fees, plus you do have to pay $15 per team that’s registered to KCBS as well. That’s again, that’s pretty normal. SCA has a similar kind of philosophy. You have to pay per team also, but those expenses for the BBQ Jackpot are going to be around $7,000.
Okay. So that’s my starting point of expenses. Then we have to add on on top of that. I need a judge’s tent. And now I need a huge judge’s tent because we have 80 teams. So I need a 40 by 60 tent. In Las Vegas, the first quote that I got for a tent with the tables and the chairs to accommodate all the judges is $5,000.
I’m really hoping I can find a better quote. I’m working on getting some, but still $5,000. Okay, so now we’re at $12,000. We’ve also got to get dumpsters, you know, ash cans, porta pots. That adds on another $2,000 to $3,000.
So now we’re at $15,000 plus trophies. That takes us to about $16,000. Then you’ve got some other expenses that you’ve got to throw in there. The permits, all of that. That’s another $1,000 or $2,000.
So I’m already at $18,000 in expenses. And I haven’t even mentioned the prize purse yet.
Revenue
The only revenue that you’re pretty much guaranteed to cover all of these expenses are the entry fees. Now, the location that I have at Bass Pro Shops could have actually accommodated 125 teams with 18 by 18 spots. And I’m selling those spots for $300 per team.
If I would have been able to sell 125 18 by 18 spots, we would have brought in a revenue of about $37,000. I talked about the $18,000 in expenses. That means I could have had a potential prize purse of $20,000.
But there are a lot of teams who want more space on an 18 by 18. And I get it because I’m one of those teams. I have my trailer, my drums, my tables, my family. I like to go a little bit bigger, be a little bit more comfortable. So for this competition, I am offering an 18 by 36 and an 18 by 45 space.
Here’s what I have learned as an organizer that I didn’t fully think about as a team. So if I were to sell an 18 by 18 space for $300 and an 18 by 36 space for $350, which is what the entry fees are, I’m actually losing as an organizer, $250 in revenue by giving that one team two spaces, because otherwise I could have sold the two spaces for $600 instead of the one space for $350.
That’s something that I didn’t really think about before as a team. I just thought, well, it’s $50 more. I’m paying for a little bit more space, but really, I probably should be paying that organizer more than that because by me paying less but taking up the spot of two teams, I’m actually reducing the prize purse for teams overall because the organizer doesn’t have the revenue that it originally hoped to generate to up that prize purse.
Same goes for those larger spots that are 18 by 45.
How to make it balance
So here’s a dilemma. As an organizer, do you raise those entry fees for those larger spots, which might make it a little bit more challenging for teams to be able to afford?
Do you reduce the team space sizes and require teams to fit into an 18 by 18? That’s a challenge because teams like myself would probably not go to a competition if I couldn’t bring my trailer, especially if I was traveling to it, unless I happen to be flying to a competition.
So it’s kind of that balance of making sure you have the space that teams want, which might be larger, but still collecting the revenue to cover the expenses and to still make a lucrative prize purse for the teams.
Because I’m not able to bring in 125 teams at $300 per team. The prize purse is only going to be $8,500 at this point, and with an $8,500 prize purse, I will be lucky to break even and may even lose money or have to pay money out of pocket to make this happen.
And honestly, as a promoter or as an organizer, that’s not a successful business. There’s not a return on investment for my time.
I am having a blast, and I’m really excited to host this contest, and I’m thrilled that all the teams and judges are so excited as well. But the question is, is this sustainable?
Is this what’s happening to barbecue? Is this why we’re not seeing more competitions? Because the people who are organizing it are either losing money out of pocket or just barely scraping by, comparable to the amount of hours they put in to make a competition happen.
It’s just not, you know, a good return on investment of their time. So personally, I think that’s what’s happening.
Sponsorships
Now, of course, there are ways to offset revenue, and that comes down to sponsorship. And I am working hard to get sponsors because if I can get that sponsorship revenue, I will be able to increase the prize purse because I do want to make this really rewarding for the teams.
But with sponsors, they’re also looking for that public interaction, not just the team interaction. And that’s one of the areas where competition barbecue has struggled for years. Some organizers have tried to do people’s choice. So that way the championship teams can interact with the public.
The public can buy the food, the sponsors can be involved. And there’s that really nice public interface with the consumer. But a lot of competition teams don’t want to do people’s choice. They want to focus on their four meats and they want to win grand champion. And I can’t blame them. I don’t really do people’s choice that much anymore myself.
So to make up for that, sometimes organizers will bring in vendors, you know, food trucks or other barbecue people who want to come and sell food. And while that’s nice, the public’s like, yeah, but I really want to taste the championship barbecue. I can go down the street and get the barbecue at this restaurant any time. So it’s that double edged sword.
You want to give them food to sample, but they really want to come and sample that winning barbecue, that championship barbecue.
How I hope to make it all work
So what I’m trying to do is bring in some sponsors who can set up an area and do some demonstrations and provide some samples to the public.
So there is that public interaction. And then if any of the Pitmasters want to go, maybe on Friday or even after the competition and do a demo themselves, you know, that might be something that could happen so that the public is interacting with the actual pitmasters.
Or perhaps there’s pitmasters who aren’t competing this weekend, but they’re actually competitive pitmasters maybe they come in and do some demos?
I don’t know, I’m still brainstorming all of that so that it can be something that’s rewarding for the sponsors, rewarding for the public, and again, bring in that extra revenue to offset this so that it can be sustainable for 2025 and beyond.
So if you’re a competition barbecue team out there and you’re concerned that there just aren’t any more barbecue competitions happening or there’s fewer and fewer, I just want you to think about that now from an organizer’s perspective.
Since I’ve actually had a chance to kind of put my feet in those boots, so to speak, and kind of walk in the shoes and see what that’s like, you know, when you’ve got to make your profit and loss statement balance out.
You don’t want to be too expensive, so there’s a barrier of entry for teams, but you want to make it look good enough so that there’s a good prize purse. But then you’ve got these expenses that you just have to deal with.
Like, I mean, a $5,000 judges tent is a lot of money that I wish I could just hand over to the prize purse.
But, you know, the only other option would be to get a conference room. But the turn-in distance would be so far away that the teams who come and compete by themselves, it just wouldn’t even make it possible for them to walk that far. So, you know, a lot of challenges.
I’m excited about doing this competition because it’s going to help me learn about things that we can hopefully overcome.
And then who knows, maybe over time I’ll have some best practices that I can share with others so that we can keep barbecue competitions growing and keep it alive.
Because teams are hungry, judges are hungry. We’ve just got to make that profit and loss balance for the organizers so that it’s worth their time.
So if you’re wondering why there’s not a competition happening on the West Coast or other parts of the country, that’s my hunch is that it’s just a lot of work for maybe not balancing out, maybe having expenses greater than the revenue.
What’s your solution?
So I don’t know the answer. Is it raise the entry fees? Is it lower the prize purse or is it really just depending on those sponsors and hoping that those hit? You know, I don’t know. So we’ll see over time. I mean, I still have like 3 or 4 months until the BBQ Jackpot on December 7th at Bass Pro Shops in Las Vegas.
But yeah, I want to hear your take. Whether you’ve been an organizer, whether you’ve been a team, what are your thoughts on the fact that those who take up the larger spots aren’t really paying a balance of what the smaller spots, you know, like per square footage is? Should we raise those fees? I think I would have, as a team, been willing to pay $400 instead of $350.
But, you know, I didn’t want to make the prices too high for you guys. So I don’t know, just thoughts that go on in my head. And again, I just wanted to share this experience of organizing the BBQ Jackpot as it’s kind of happening live. So you can guys see my take on this since I’ve been a judge, been a cook and now working to be an organizer.
So, yeah, just a little bit different perspective I wanted to share with you.
No podcast next week
That’s it for today, though. I really don’t have any more updates because I’ve been just knee deep and and getting registration going. I will let you guys know that I will not have a BBQ Tips podcast next week because I’m actually flying to Key West, Florida.
I’m going to be competing in the Bear and Burton’s Key West Invitational. It’s going to be so much fun.
We have two all ladies teams competing. I’m on the Grills Just Wanna Have Fun team, which is me. It’s also Susie from Hey Grill Hey. It’s Leslie, the Barbecue Princess. And then also Leslee from the National Turkey Federation.
The other all girls team is Grills Night Out. And that’s made up of Brooke from the Shed, Robin from Grill Girl, Amy from Rum Runners Barbecue and Sunny Lynn from Moodswing Barbecue.
So it’s going to be a great time. We’re going to go deep sea fishing, we’re going to go lobster diving, and then we’re going to be serving up turkey and tri tip and I think some Manhattan steaks.
All sorts of fun stuff right there on the beach for the VIPs who are coming out. And if you guys want to come out, be sure to go to the Bear and Burton’s website. I think they have just a few tickets left if you’re in the Florida area, but it’s going to be a blast.
Again, no podcast next week since I’ll be in Florida, but the week after that, when I come back, I’ll talk all about my experience.
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