Burgapalooza 2017 Part 2 - Service

This is Part 2 on the story behind Burgapalooza 2017, we hope you enjoyed Part 1 focused on the preparation. This post is dedicated to Service.

Come Saturday morning our team was prepared and ready for the day ahead. We knew it would be fast, chaotic, hard and we had a lot to prove! I can’t even say the team was fresh and well rested, if you’ve read Part 1 you would know that Josh Tim and Richard were operating on 3 hours of sleep.

In the burger game the person on the grill often “stays ahead” by constantly cooking patties so that as they come of the grill the chefs assembling burgers have a pattie to grab and don’t have to wait. On a crazy service like Burgapalooza this was extremely important to stay ahead.

Come 11:55 there were no people inside the festival so we hadn’t started cooking yet. In the distance we hear someone on a megaphone and Tim quips “Is that someone geeing the crowd up” with that the doors open and a STAMPEDE of burger lovers rush in the doors to start their eating frenzy.

Tim immediately goes to grab patties from beneath the grill, bends down and sears his head straight onto the BBQ. Day 1, burger number 1 and immediately burns a straight line across the middle of his forehead. He had no time to complain, look for burn aid there was an immediate queue of people 30 deep that was only getting longer. After a few “ahhh fuck me” & “fuck this” patties were grilling and service had started.

Our burger for the day had a few components that needed people to be fast and on top of everything. Patties and bacon off the grill and hash browns from the fryer made for a very tricky operation, not too mention being in a park with a brand new set up made for one of the hardest services in Burger Head history.

There was a non stop queue the entire duration of the day, at one point we fell behind on burgers by over 80. We were going as fast as we could but it wasn’t quick enough.

Tim had the shit end of the stick being on the grill the entire day. The set up had him over a hot grill for the day, 0 wind meant smoke was in his eyes for several hours straight, the back of the deep fryers were facing him that pumped heat out, next door was a kebab stand that had the back of their machine do the same as the fryer, all of that compounded with the burn on his forehead ended up in Tim close to collapsing half way through dinner service.

Josh and Richard called his old man to come get him. He had a quick rest for a few hours, regathered him self and met the boys at Penrith that night for more prep.