In the summer of 2022 Mile High Cheesesteaks was contacted by southwest airlines to come and feed all of their employees. Business catering is what we do for most of our events so when we received their email, we were prepared for another average 50–100 person lunch. We asked them to clarify their guest count and their answer left my coworkers and I in shock. They wanted us to feed all of their employees for the entire day at DIA, 1,200 of them. I’d say before this our biggest business catering was probably in the 400-500 person range, so there was a slight panic amongst us when we started thinking about how to accomplish this mighty feat.

Our Gameplan:

Southwest requested that we’re there from 7am-6pm, a long day for sure but amongst our busiest festival season we were all used to the long days. As the manager of our inventory, my biggest worry was, how are we going to get this much food, and where are we going to put it? It is important to remember that Food Truck Avenue runs 6 other trucks and concepts besides Mile High Cheesesteaks. With limited refrigerator space, I knew it was going to be a nightmare fitting enough food for this event, as well as the other 5 trucks that were going out that day. I went for the higher risk route, but in my eyes, it was the only way it would work. I asked our food distributor if they could deliver our food order late at night the night before the event. This was risky because what if I didn’t order enough? What if the driver accidentally spilled a bag of onions, or we got shipped the wrong brand of buns? But I put my faith that everything would work out and I stocked every fridge on every truck as full as possible, as well as the fridge inside. I knew I could do this because the other trucks weren’t going out until later in the day, so we would be able to empty everything before they got there. We were as prepared as we could be, the only thing left was to go and do it.

Event Execution:

My Coworker Kaleb (one of our best cheesesteak makers) and I showed up to DIA at about 6am, we went through security and were escorted in our truck onto the tarmac! The look on his face as we were driving our food truck through a line of commercial aircrafts was hilarious, this was definitely not our normal venue. We parked and immediately started working about as fast as we could for how early it was, chopping onion, sautéing green chilis, mixing up garlic aioli, and then right before we were slated to open, we cooked enough steak for about 25 sandwiches. 1,200 is a super intimidating number, so we were both anxiously prepared to have a 40+ person line for the whole day. And when we opened our window, that’s exactly what we got. Since we were so prepared, the line moved really fast. We served probably 120 people or so in our first hour, Kaleb continuously cooking more steak, and me assembling sandwiches and handing them out. After that first hour though, the line completely went away! We were so confused, it turns out that as big of a number as we were there to serve, without our large time frame there wasn’t always going to be such a long line. Of course, in the prime hours like 11-1 and 4-6, we were about as slammed as possible. We have been busy before, so it really wasn’t so bad. Surprisingly the more difficult hours to make it through were the slower hours. They were never slow enough to where we could really take an extended break, there was a person probably every 15-30 seconds or so. But it was enough to where all we could think about is how tired we were. You get stuck in a loop making the same small talk with each customer, asking them the same questions about their sandwich. For them they’re only having that conversation once, so it’s very natural. But I had that exact same conversation 1,200 times in a row. It was enough to drive me crazy by the end of the day.

When 6pm rolled around Kaleb and I let out the biggest sigh of relief, we had actually done it. We both sat down for a bit and drank some sodas to try and give us a little bit of energy, when we looked around and realized how much of a mess we had made of the truck. The last thing we wanted to do was spend another hour cleaning up a bunch of cheese sauce and steak bits, but again this was our busiest season, someone else had to take this truck out the next day! We powered through and got it all done, made the drive back to our commissary in Englewood, parked the truck and went home. I think I said about 3 words to my roommate before passing out in my bed for the next 14 hours. When I woke up the next morning though, we were heroes! The lady in charge of booking us was so pleased and we got so many great reviews about how delicious our food was and how short the wait times were. We got another text saying that they had given us the biggest tip in company history. They also booked us to come back with 2 trucks every week for the rest of the summer! It may have been one of the harder shifts I’ve worked in my life, but it ended up being so worth it. Every time I end up working another Southwest gig they are so nice, and it gets easier every single time.