Chapter 8: Fieldwork: Feeding a Crowd Under Pressure

“Chef Gary, how do you get a position like this?” asked one manager from a regional hardware chain after I packed up the last of our grill equipment into my car. His question surprised me. The manager was referring to my role as a “Weber Grill Ambassador” or “Weber Grill Demonstrator.”

“Well, first you need a Ph.D.,” I quipped.

We all laughed, but the humor helped me avoid answering an awkward question. I really felt availability was the chief asset. With no formal training in cooking, I resist the “chef” title and have asked others not to apply it to me, with little effect. “But I like calling you chef,” said the manager in response, and so now I relent. Really, I still think that title implies that I have credentials that I don’t possess, formal training beyond my careful study of Weber cookbooks, familiarity with cooking various meals on my different Weber grills, and experimenting with different grill cooking methods at home. It’s true: I am a “Weber Grill Ambassador” and “Weber Demonstrator.” Yet, I still hesitate when checking the box beside “Weber-trained” on the demonstration form after each cook. Maybe it’s because I spent so much of my professional life attaining credentials like the PhD that I’m thinking the rest of the world operates under the same rigors. I know that isn’t true, as I’ve encountered many fine “chefs” without culinary degrees. Margie says I deserve the title. Still, I hesitate.

That one Tuesday in late March, I had just served lunch to eighty hungry and grateful employees from various stores in the chain for a spring training event. We stood outside together, shivering in the windy driveway between two large steel fabricated huts—one with open storage and the other with a classroom that also serves as a lunchroom.

Before this event, I had spent a previous summer “demonstrating” Weber grills, meaning I  prepared meal samples, chiefly in parking lots at Weber dealers over a weekend. Weber permits me to cook anything I want except “hot dogs and hamburgers” since the purpose of “demos” is to expand  the customer’s skills as to what they can cook on a grill. With little guidance, I had to discover what the demonstrator role entailed. I also needed to anticipate the problems I would face when I arrive at a demonstration location. Is the grill ready to fire up? Is there gas in the tank? Has the grill been cleaned? Are there charcoal briquettes or pellets available for hours of cooking? Is there a trash can I can use? Are there two six-foot tables I can borrow for a display with branded tablecloths I brought? Where’s the closest water source for ready cleanup? Finally, will you take a picture of me and the setup, so I can send it to Weber? Whew! My level of comfort depends heavily on whether the dealer has some basic setup when I pull onto the dealer’s lot.

No matter what the hurtles, though, I quickly fell in love with demos. It’s something special about traveling to new locations, talking to customers, and revisiting with Weber enthusiasts. What’s not to like about grilling with the latest equipment on a summer afternoon? With demos, I pick up new skills that spring from the pressure of producing meals on demand.

I had some early opportunities with grilling for a crowd. In early spring, one regional chain of stores train their sales personnel for the spring events that they’ll shortly be hosting. The training consists of three sections, divided between two equal numbers of employees: one group in the morning and another in the afternoon with lunchtime in between. Participants take notes for a multiple-choice test that’s given at each session. One session during each round is allocated for Weber and taught by Ryan Clauss, the Territory Sales Manager for SKKR and Associates, the sales representative agency of Weber-Stephens Products. His knowledge of Weber is deep. Ryan is my immediate boss, but it’s not a title he would apply to himself. He has a management style that is more collegial than directive. He’s always cool under pressure. I spent a week prepping dishes, pre-cooking ones with long cook times, and sealing ingredients in ways that are quick to pop open.

That first Tuesday morning was a cold day when I got up. I arose at 5:30, took a quick shower, and started pulling my overstocked refrigerator filled with marinated meat and veggies sealed in FoodSaver bags. I also had four covered aluminum pans, two filled with macaroni and cheese that I had previously partially cooked in the Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM), along with two ready-to-smoke bean concoctions. I planned to transport this slippery collection using two soft-sided cooler bags.

For that first luncheon cook, I owned a compact car with limited space. I opened its tailgate and piled the food bags into any open spaces.  In the back seat, I started layering the items in stackable long milk crates. I had to wedge the collapsed Weber canopy inside a storage bag, placing it in a crisscross position from back left to passenger side front right because it only fit in that way. Around it huddled storage boxes grouped by grilling equipment, tableware, signs, and paper supplies. Lastly, I placed the cooler bags of food into any available spaces in the car.

When I arrived at the site, it was 7:35, about 45 minutes later. I saw Ryan was already there with the store manager. After a quick greeting, I followed them through a locked area that snaked along to two steel huts: the open storage building on one side and the training classroom building on the other. We were sandwiched between the two as we quickly unloaded and stacked the milk crates of supplies along the hut exterior walls.

Participants attend three different classes in the morning; a different group attends three in the afternoon. Ryan was in charge of introducing the new Weber line at six different sessions. Meanwhile, I was in charge of getting the four pork shoulders Ryan prepared warmed up while he was teaching. After getting the tables set up, Ryan lit chimneys for the Master-Touch and Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) 18” he brought. I was still unpacking, as the wind began to kick up, tossing about aluminum pans and upending tablecloths we had just unpacked. Boy was it cold.

When Ryan left to teach his class in the store, I got the beans started in the WSM, knowing they would take at least two hours to cook. But wait! Where was the Genesis II gas grill I was promised? I just noticed it was missing. With eighty people expected, I needed at least one more grill. Fortunately, two managers checked in with me frequently, asking if I needed anything, which I seemingly always did because the last request wasn’t fulfilled: a trash can, extra paper products, and a spare propane tank. The omissions always slow the process to a halt. If I had the room and budget, I’d be carrying those items.

When I saw participants beginning to drift in, I wondered when the break between classes would be. I had forgotten to ask.

“Joe, when your employees go to their next class, will they be passing by the stand?” I asked.

“Sure will,” Joe said, handing me a schedule.

“I brought some breakfast sausage,” I said, thinking I would offer a sample.

“Sausage?” Joe asked. “Did you say sausage?”

I went to my cooler and pulled a sealed bag of smoked sausage that I’d already cooked. I also had previously opened the casing and loaded it with a breakfast sausage spice mix. I moved the two foil baskets with beans to the WSM middle section and curled the sausage like a spiral on the available space. I reasoned that any sausage that wouldn’t be eaten right away could be diced into the beans mixture. I then placed a short oak log into the bottom of the WSM and left the door open until it ignited and the harsh smoke subsided. I was beginning to see three skills I would need to develop: juggling food between grills based on available grate space, combining ingredients on the fly, and judging when food needed to be cooked. These were skills I had to gain while doing.

In about an hour, I heard participants murmuring around the corner of the corridor in which I was stationed. I pulled the steaming sausage from the top chamber and a cloud of smoke enveloped me and the tent, drifting a sensuous aroma to the oncoming participants. Transferring the sausage to a cutting board, I began slicing the long links. What a pleasurable moment. Participants passing by on the way to their next class were reluctant to take the first piece. When I conversed with them—“Come and taste a portion of what we’re preparing for lunch”—one said, “I’ll try just one,” picking up two tooth-picked pieces. “Delicious,” he said, and returned for a third. Then the crowd thought they had permission to grab and go. Anything to enhance the teaching environment—grilled food included—makes for a better learning environment.

Soon people were milling around the tent, talking about springtime grilling, enjoying food and life. One of the managers, Joe, had to remind them it was time to return to class. I needed to return to the grills. I increased the heat for the pulled pork on the Genesis II and crowded bbq meatloaf pans onto its warming rack. The absent top rack on the WSM now had the macaroni and cheese in two foil pans. I had guessed rightly that using smaller pans gave me more options for positioning food. The foil pans, however, were about a quarter-inch too long to fit inside any of the kettles. Fortunately, I could bend the sides of the pans to conform to the rounded shape of the kettle but too big to sit at any angle on the warming rack.

Next I guided the chicken breasts with green herb salsa into onto the kettle. I realized that I was out of grill real estate—no place to put the Porterhouse steaks. Fortunately, with a second wave of participants coming through, I could pull what food was done, but I hadn’t realized they were coming a full hour after the first group. Only a few chicken breasts remained. I tried sliding three of the breasts to low, indirect heat in the kettle, but the protein remained in the heat  too long and a couple pieces dried out. Fortunately, I found a small space on the WSM to place the marinated fiery vegetables. Again, quickly filling empty spaces with more proteins was essential to having all the meal come out at once.

Snapping just a few photos, I developed a rhythm, lightly bouncing among all three grills. It may have looked odd not to have all three lined up in a straight line, but it worked better for me to distribute the physical positions of the grills in a zig-zag confirguration.

Ryan just returned from his class and looked anxious. “Are you ready, Gary?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said.

Ryan immediately tended to his pork shoulder station on the Genesis while I removed the beans, macaroni and cheese, fiery vegetables, chicken breasts, and smoked mashed potatoes, placing all on the serving tables under the tent. I was even able to help serve. The heat and aroma from the smoky grills seem to overpower the wind.

Ryan Clauss is such a talented salesman. I sat in on one of his classes where he explained that George Stephen used to bring his grill show to the areas outside banks and serve food to patrons, thereby showing what a kettle could do. Clauss also talked about how Stephen showcased the variety of foods he could grill, Stephen driving around neighborhoods and setting up his grill to gather throngs of onlookers. That ancestry helps explains why Weber has the precedent to listen to customers.

At day’s end around 4, I was exhausted. I had cooked for a crowd, torn down the canopy, repacked the tables and supplies, folded all tables shut, and extinguished the ashes. “Chef Gary” even got a standing ovation from one of the classes.

I decided to stay for Ryan’s class last class. I even felt slightly elated on the walk up to the showroom, because I felt that I accomplished something monumental for me: feeding a crowd. As I looked at the participants in the last class though, I saw a tepid response to Ryan’s instruction, employees leaning against shelves and gazing at the ceiling or elsewhere in the store. Other than a few taking notes awkwardly while standing, they looked flush and distant. No one had questions. Why such passivity?

The teacher in me knew there must be a better way to connect with them, perhaps through incentives or role-playing. Those are guesses, of course. I sensed that each party was doing its best. Yet, there was no getting around that few students engaged with the products. So many times I had faced those situations in the classroom as puzzles that required solving. Here there was little opportunity for change until the next dealer training. It’s something I still think about.

I finally jumped in the car around 5:30, driving to the next town, my car packed with stained spatulas and my chef jacket smeared with red barbecue sauce. My next stop was an auto dealer to shop for what I call a Weber truck, some vehicle that makes it easier to load supplies, stack food in cold storage, and haul oversized promotional items like canopies..

A grinning salesman at the dealership offered to appraise my vehicle returned in a quarter hour to an even wider smile. “I think I can tell you exactly what you cooked today. It’s all within your car, and it’s all delicious.” I doubt if his observation led to my getting a better price for my vehicle, but it showed me one thing. The excitement that fieldwork should generate lies in expanding everyone’s experiences.