The Texas BBQ Forum

The organizers of the Shotgun Fred BBQ Showdown asked me to look into how People's Choice and Backyard Contests are organized. Can anyone give me any helpful advice I can take to them? They are leaning heavily to having the People's Choice be a "blind" contest since the majority of the teams are from out of town. Thanks for any advice y'all can give.

The only experience I have had with a people's choice was done like this. The organizer went around and asked twenty four random folks if they wanted to be judges. If they said yes he gave them a chip with a number and said to meet at a place at what ever time. The ones who returned had their number put in a hat and he drew 12 out. These were the judges. They all tried a little of everything and ranked everything from first to last overall not by category. If there was ten things 1st was 10 points 2nd was 9 and so on. The scores were added up and high score won. The tie breaker was say you turned in beef and chicken one was double points for ties. If still tied how you placed in compitition gave bonus points but only for tie breaking purposes. Hope I explained this in a halfways understandable way.

The peoples choice in Bedford uses Poker chips and tickets - The tickets will get you a sample from all the competing teams and when the person finds the sample they like best - they drop a poker chip (or hopefully 2) in the teams bucket. Teams then turn in the chips and they are tallied up.