Posted on May - 13 - 2010
Memphis festival’s a heaping helping of barbecue with a side of business
Photo by Brandon Dill // Buy this photo
After spinning a prize wheel at the Reser’s Fine Foods booth, Minnesotans Dough and Shirley Grant (right) enjoy their winnings: a potato salad cup and a free drink cozy Friday at the 2010 World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest at Tom Lee Park.
Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest
Today: 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
Tickets: $7 at ticketmaster.com, $8 at the gate; children 6 and younger are admitted free
Online: memphisinmay.org/bbq
A hand-painted sign on a handmade bar read “Here for the Party.”
It’s a fitting motto for the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, or “barbecue” as Memphians call it simply.
With the many thousands who pour into Tom Lee Park, the festival is clearly one of the biggest parties on the Memphis social calendar.
But look a little closer among the flip-flops and untucked shirttails for an introductory handshake or a business card exchange.
Who said the festival was all play and no work?
“Most of the great stuff — a lot of information exchanges — happen here as opposed to the meetings,” said Bryan Smith, general sales manager of Lexus of Memphis. “We often rehash the meeting here and
talk about best practices.”
“The meeting” is an annual meeting of Southeastern Lexus dealers. For the past two years, Lexus has coincided the meeting with the barbecue festival, which brings in dealers from Florida to Texas.
“People come from all over the country and all over the world to come to this event,” said Louie Schaaf Jr., manager of UroCenter, a urology specialty surgery center in Memphis.
Schaaf said the health care industry is close-knit and that the festival has always been a great place to make key connections in it.
Schaaf was one of dozens socializing Friday afternoon inside the Hog Wild-sponsored tent that overlooked the Mississippi River. Classic rock and laugh-riddled chatter mixed into a rowdy din as they ate, drank and talked, sometimes about work.
Business interactions inside the tents are somewhat clandestine, covert. But a long stretch of Riverside Drive is dedicated to hopes of public, overt business interactions.
There, corporate representatives hope to get festivalgoers interested in driving their cars, shopping at their grocery stores, eating their pickles, sleeping on their mattresses and watching their television shows.
“If there was any weekend for us to be in Memphis, it was absolutely for the barbecue festival,” said Jodi Arden senior marketing manager for the TNT network.
The station is readying to debut “Memphis Beat,” a detective show starring Jason Lee.
But make no mistake, the business talk never, ever takes precedence over the festival’s “Here for the Party” vibe.
“Everybody knows what barbecue in Memphis is what it’s all about,” Schaaf said. “It’s all about the smoke and the camaraderie.”
– Toby Sells: 529-2742
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