Welcome to the total solar eclipse report from 17th Street Barbecue!

We prepped for several weeks and were excited to welcome thousands of visitors who started trickling in on Tuesday. By Saturday, we were hopping and the excitement had reached a fever pitch. On Sunday and Monday we served close to 1,000 people on each day, in addition to pre-booked catering jobs and bulk pick-up orders. We even did a whole hog!

Faye, our coffee/breakfast/lunch/specialty grocery cafe is fairly new, and guests were thrilled to find great coffee and breakfast, right around the corner from 17th Street. There was a line out the door all day and our baristas were busy.

NONE of this is possible without a tremendous team and ours is the B E S T. They remained cheerfully flexible and never slowed down. We were on a perpetual 1.5-hour wait and, once seated, I watched our guests visibly relax, smile, and enjoy themselves as they interacted with our staff. We had lots of nice compliments about the food, but the ones that meant the most were about our crew.

We dubbed our viewing event the “Solar Eclipse in the Park” and a few hundred people joined us in our beautiful park across from the Warehouse. We also had a concession stand there during the day.

The most fun part was chatting with people about how much they love Southern Illinois. If even a percentage of them come back, this will impact tourism for YEARS to come.

Every time I look at these chalkboards, I see something I missed. I also know that during the madness, we neglected to collect towns from a few tables. Dubai (Tuesday night, not on this board), China, Japan, Singapore, Ireland (multiple parties), Germany (multiple parties), Poland, and Ecuador were represented … as well as so many states. One couple drove from Alaska with their two daughters! Tuesday was also hopping as tourists enjoyed one more meal before the hitting the road.

We’ve been strategizing for months. Based on the crowds during the August 2017 solar eclipse, we knew we’d be busy. We kept our entire fleet of Ole Hickory Pits loaded around the clock. We’re so thankful to everyone on our crew who helped us execute ~ mostly we’re grateful for Mike Mills and the systems and procedures he developed and drilled into us over the years. As he would say, “if it was easy, everybody’d be doing it!” 💛