Sometimes the simplest suggestion makes the biggest impact. Take the annual All-Member Cooking Competition, a centerpiece of the Poultry Festival that attracts teams from across the industry, which bring their best to be judged and sampled by thousands of festival attendees.
The event is not for the faint hearted. Not only is the competition fierce, contestants vying for awards given out in various food categories, as well as booth décor, but all of that cooking is done on grills in a parking lot under the Arkansas sun in June.
Watching teams wilt in the unrelenting heat gave Bart Smith of Sunbelt Rentals an idea that cemented him and his company in Poultry Festival lore.
“I first attended the festival about 12 years ago,” he said. “The first couple of years, we’d go around, and we were looking at the barbecue teams and what they were having to tolerate as far as being out on the asphalt. It used to be held a week later than it is now, but even holding it earlier, it’s a super hot, humid environment.
“At any rate, I went to the federation and said, ‘Hey, if we could provide cooling units for these barbecue teams to blow cooler air on them, would that be something you’d be interested in?’ They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes.’”
Starting the next year and for the decade that followed, Sunbelt Rentals provided a cooling unit for every teams’ setup, giving them the option of renting a second one. Smith noted that the units, the same kind used on the sidelines of early season college and pro football games, cannot fully mitigate Arkansas in summertime, but competitors are not complaining
“It doesn’t lower the temperature, but it does provide a cooler environment,” he said. “Last year we changed from Power Breezer to Spartan units, which are much easier to transport and much easier to set up while offering the same kind of evaporative cooler. Everybody is just really happy with that.”
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