Page 9 - MAY 2020 Barbecue News Magazine

BBQ HERO TRIBUTES
Random Acts of Que
The restaurant industry
has been devastated by
the pandemic, so as I lie
awake at night worrying
about my staff, wonder-
ing how will I protect
them, how they will sur-
vive and how best I can
lead them through this,
my grandfather’s words
of wisdom when I was
growing up enter my
thoughts. He always told
me, “make sure you take
care of family and neigh-
bors, and everything will
be alright”. My grandfa-
ther lived through The
Great Depression, WWII,
and my grandmother’s
cooking. The man knew how to survive. So I took his ad- vice from all those years ago, and “Random Acts of Que” was born.
I started at 3am with a list. Family was the easy part – there’s family, and then there’s the people you consider to be family. Some of my employees have been with me 20 years; others not so long, but I consider them fam- ily just the same. As we pivoted our business structure from dining room to drive thru and curbside only, I realized that our customers were not tipping like they nor- mally would while dining in. I enacted a service standard in the drive through of refilling drinks and giving away snacks while they waited in their cars, collecting
By: Melissa Cookston
any unwanted trash from their vehicles and even washing windows! When that didn’t work, I re- sorted to giving away t- shirts for excessive tips. Being creative is not my forte but let’s face it— desperation is the mother of invention. I have never run my parking lot so much in my life!
Secondly – Neighbors. We have so many first re- sponders, hospitals, fire departments, and police departments as neigh- bors who are on the front lines, putting their lives
at risk every day. Those are the neighbors I wanted to tar- get. I started making phone calls and asking if they would like a hot meal to possibly ease their burden just a little. I know that I can’t do much at this time, but I have food and if I can satisfy a grumbling stomach or make one person smile - just one - then I feel like we have accomplished something positive today. That’s a good day, and with these uncertain times, I’ll take a good day.
Thank you Prairie Fresh for partnering with me on this en- deavor. I’ll be feeding thousands of front-line heroes in the next few weeks and you helped make this possible.
MAY 2020
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