Another Good Year for Our Fair Restaurant
• October 11, 2016
updates general newsAll the final numbers are not in yet, but the preliminary numbers look like we will have another good year with our food sales at the Fair, and therefore, be able to buy lots more AmTrykes and provide lots more Scholarships.
Quite a bit of preparation goes into getting the Lubbock Monterey AMBUCS Hamburger Restaurant at the Panhandle South Plains Fair up and running each year, and this year directing of that fell to Club Member Bobby Sanders as Chairman, and Bobby went above and beyond in his role, doing everything from ordering food, to cooking burgers, to cleaning tables.
Everything started with clean up of the building on Sunday, September 18, and we were helped tremendously by one of our newer Members Jennifer Jones arranging for her employer ServPro to come out and steam clean all our equipment – probably the cleanest it’s been in a long time. Thanks to all of you who came out that day to help with the Initial Clean Up.
With the facilities cleaned and ready, the club gathered for our annual Steak Out on Monday evening the 19th, and enjoyed steaks, cooked on the grill outback by David Brenholtz; along with baked potatoes, salad, and dessert – provided by United Supermarkets, and served by members of the Social Committee. After dinner, everyone participated in a rousing game of Bingo, with numbers being called by the father/son team of Dave and Landon King. It was a fun way to wrap up the evening and some really good money and prizes were awarded to the lucky winners.
With building prep and socializing behind us, the doors finally opened to the public on Thursday evening, September 22, and the ten days of actual cooking kicked off with the Fair Committee taking care of filling shifts that night.
We had lines of folks starting at 5pm, and well into the night, ready to order the delicious burgers and fries – with most folks commenting on how good the burgers always are.
Being in charge of filling the Shifts, I have to say I got really good support from the majority of our members in filling the spots, but as always, Glen Patton takes the award for most shifts – signing up for his usual 6-7 shifts on the window – actually having customers ask where he was on the nights he didn’t work.
But the real record has to go to Member Berwyn Tisdel who signed up to help at the Fair for the 52nd time!! Thanks, Berwyn for your continued service and loyalty to our club.
There are lots of jobs to fill and it’s always good to see folks so willing to do whatever is needed – like our first-night dishwashers Cindy Gurss and Lisa Fritz. We were extra covered on compliance with the Health Department this year, since Lisa’s day job is selling cleaning supplies.
Thanks to member Tommy Boyd, we also got some great help from 3 different Student Volunteer groups. We had Slaton Soccer Parents, Slaton Ag Boosters, and the Hale Center Band Boosters who themselves took 6 of the 11 shifts available for Volunteers, even doing a double shift on our last Saturday, which thanks to the help of folks like a couple of Hale Center parents below and to Lexi Phillips (loading potato boats below) turned out to be a record-breaking day of almost $10,000 in sales. Lexi is a new member of the Caprock Club and took a shift to help out – truly showing the Shoulders Together attitude of AMBUCS.
We even had some young helpers, with Jennifer Jones’ son Jaxon helping to get orders from the register to order wheel in the grill area.
And as you can see from the photo below, this can be very exhausting work – Jennifer says this was Jaxon as soon as he hit the front seat of the car in the parking lot – know how he feels!
Kadee Harcrow took to the register like a champ, saying once she got a large order taken and placed and worked the credit card machine once, she had the process down – ably aided on the drink prep side by one of the 21 Student Volunteers from the TTU School of Allied Health.
We were running almost $7500 behind last year’s sales going into the last Saturday, but thanks to a lot of hard work by folks like Member Kenny Neher on the grill below (cooking over 350 burgers that morning!), and a great finish Saturday night with the Shift Captaining of Faisal Zeitouni (and his wife and family), and the extra effort of the second shift of Hale Center Band Boosters led by Happy and Judy Brake, we closed the day over $4000 ahead of last year’s Saturday sales!!
The Restaurant was packed from the time we opened that morning till we closed at almost midnight, and thanks to the hard work of so many of you, and the advertising of so many tremendous Sponsors (as seen on the TV screens and wall ads below), we can once again look forward to many smiling faces on AmTryke and Scholarship Recipients the rest of the year.
Sunday, October 2, thanks to the great job of the Saturday night crew, clean up didn’t take long, and everything is once again packed away, awaiting another year and another opportunity to once again make a huge impact in the lives of those in our community with disabilities.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this another great year!!
Lubbock Monterey AMBUCS
P.O. Box 53591
Lubbock, Texas, 79453
