Saturday, 23 October 2010

Weekend Cooking: How to Feed 1800 hungry Runners

"Weekend Cooking" is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.  Join other foodies for their food related posts.  You are invited to add a link to your current recipe, cookbook, restaurant, movie or other related review.


As I have mentioned previously, my neighbour hosts a number of running races throughout the year. RunWaterloo.com . Last Sunday was a biggie, "The Oktoberfest" with over 1800 runners.  Participants could chose either a 5k or 10k route.  Note that the families of the runners are also welcome to join in the post run snacks, meaning that we are feeding much more than 2000 people.

At the end of the race they are offered 'refreshments': fresh fruit, bagels, hot dogs, sausage, pizza and soup.  The pizza is courtesy of Little Caesar's Pizza and the mullugtwany soup was donated by Classic Indian Cuisine, both of Waterloo, Ontario.

The following photos were taken minutes before the runners finished and came inside to eat.

 A double food line starts at this point.  Note that we have tableclothes even though they are plastic.  The floor is covered in plywood as there is still ice in the arena.

 The bananas are cut into three pieces before serving.
 Bagels are under plastic to keep them fresh.  We had to slice seven huge boxes of them.
 You can see the many dozens cases of pizza boxes under the tables in this and the preceeding photo.
 At least 2400 hotdog rolls.
 Freshly bbq'd hotdogs (1500?) and 800 sausages.
 500 litres of soup.

Orange gatorade, 1000's of cups.

It was an exhausting couple of hours, but lots of fun.  I did mange two bowls of soup and took home my cinnamon raisin bagel.

6 comments:

Rikki said...

Working in the hospitality industry I know how much work this is, and how gratifying when an event like this is over and everybody is fed and happy. Great post.

Beth F said...

Holy cow, what a job! I'm so impressed with how organized everything looks. Wow.

bermudaonion said...

That's a lot of food! I hope the runners were hungry.

JoAnn said...

So that's what preparing to feed an army looks like!!

Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness) said...

Wow, that's just crazy. I'm totally impressed with how organized that all looks.

Anonymous said...

What a cool post - I liked the behind-the-scene look, and it's amazing how organized, clean and fresh everything looks.

Wonder what the place looked like after the runners were done ;)