Main fundraiser photo

Raising funds for Charity BBQ

We are Michigan Custom 'Que, an avid group of cookers dedicated to providing great bbq to veterans, the homeless and charitable organizations. "Serving those who have served us"

A little about us.
 
We are a group of BBQ enthusiasts. I love to BBQ, but my family can eat only so much. So I had the thought of donating excess bbq to the homelss. I did not know where to turn so I asked the deacon of my church for such a charity. He told me about PBJ Outreach. They are based in Plymouth and go to the Cass Corridor every Sat morn and distribute food and other items.
 
I belong to a large BBQ forum and asked if there were any members in the area willing to help, and I found some!!
 
My plan was to cook some pork butts and make pulled pork. Then vacuum seal it and put it in the freezer. Once we had enough food, I gathered it from all the members and we took it to the church kitchen and heated it and took it on a Sat morn.
 
That went well so I went searching for others to help. It has not been easy. But I found the Michigan Veterans Foundation in Detroit. They have an annual 2 day party and we cooked for them on a Saturday, this time we took our smokers there and cooked overnight. We fed about 300 people. It was real nice since they have a full kitchen and staff to help.
 
Our next event was just a few weeks ago, a fundraiser for PBJ Outreach and the Plymouth Church if Christ. Since this involved selling and feeding the public the heath dept had to issue a permit for it and was to inspect it before we could serve it. We had to cook all food onsite so it was another overnight cook.
 
That went very well and we sold almost 300 tickets.
 
I have a smoker that is built on a trailer. The smoker was actually custom built and donated to me for this effort. The man who built it lives in Tuscaloosa Ala. He found out about my effort through the BBQ forum and had to help. I was overwhelmed by his generosity as this is a $3500 smoker. And I have never even met him! Another member of my group has a trailer smoker, plus other members have smaller cookers.
 
Since we are just starting out, we are not a 501c, we do not carry insurance as the larger events had their own. We need to look into this for liability issues. My wife is a paralegal and is going to get us the 501c very soon with the lawyers she works for as I know nothing about this.All funds raised go directly to feeding our Vets and the homeless BBQ food.
 
Myself and another member have NSF ServSafe food handlers certificates. We also belong to the Great Lakes BBQ Assn who has been very supportive of our efforts.
 
We would love to help feeding the volunteers! I would think it would be a precook-drop off kind of cook, although we could plan some kind of onsite BBQ but of course that would require more planning.
 
 
We also have a facebook site my wife just started, you can see pics of our cooks there
 
Michigan Custom 'Que

Organizer

Brian Agee
Organizer
Dearborn, MI

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