05/15/2024
Only once have we done a cook without opening up for preorders beforehand. It was the first ever cook in the front yard in Jonesborough TN in early summer 2017 which is pictured here. We had done competitions and catering events for about 6 years up to that point, but never any retail sales.
When I told my wife I wanted to sell ribs in our front yard one Saturday she shook her head and laughed at the idea. What ended up happening that day while I was out by the road smoking those ribs was unexpected and pretty cool. Cars kept pulling in and handing me twenty dollar bills to save them a rack. By 2:00 when they were ready, all twelve racks were spoken for but people were pulling off into the driveway, the yard, and the neighbors’ yards expecting to get a rack. One guy who had missed out suggested I send him a text the next time we did this and several others followed suit. The next week preorders were born.
We usually post on Wednesdays that preorders open up at 6:00. These last couple weeks you probably missed out on a few items if you didn’t check out by 6:02. For this final cook here in Siloam Springs we are running it back to the very beginning. This Saturday will be first come, first served with no preorders accepted. We don’t know how early the line will start forming and we don’t know how many people will be in it, but we do know that the weather forecast looks great for Saturday morning and we want to go out with a bang and give everyone a fair chance to get their final fix.
We’ve got a couple of ideas for Saturday morning that we’re ironing out and we’ll post about those and some logistical things as well in the next couple days. For now though, if you plan to get your Trav’s fix one more time it may not be a bad idea to set an alarm pretty early on Saturday.
