These last two weeks have absolutely flown by. It seems like just yesterday when Thunder filled the sky with an awesome fireworks display. Thunder over Louisville, with its untold number of people attending, is the official kick-off event for the Kentucky Derby Festival and just the tip of the iceberg for the foodservice operators in our area.
What follows Thunder in our town can only be described as organized chaos. There are very precise orchestration and strategic planning for this massive event and it all seems to happen at once. Two minutes of horse racing is the result of 12 months of crucial planning and execution. As a major supplier to the foodservice operators in our region, Dine Company gets it done for our clients this time of year…year after year after year. 
Dine Company’s delivery vans are all over this city dropping off entire van loads of plates, silverware, glasses, you name it. The big trucks are dropping off equipment, installing equipment and hauling off the old equipment to boot. Each morning our trucks are loaded with the needs and dreams of our clients. We drop their orders off neatly, efficiently and completely. We install the equipment they need NOW and we service the equipment they already have to make sure it’s operating at optimum efficiency. We even installed a complete restaurant in these pre-Derby weeks. A whole restaurant!
Preparation is the key element to this whole thing…you have to know what you are in for, you have to look at the big picture and you have to glean from past experiences to make it all work together… Try not to make the same mistake….if you run short on oyster dishes EVERY Derby, contact us and order them early. If your Chef ALWAYS surprises you with the way he has been rigging a certain piece of equipment to work, but it definitely can’t handle Derby volume, call us for an upgrade or replacement piece. Take notes and then save your notes from Derby Week. Compare and contrast. Track the weather. Track ticket times. Review last year’s reservation book. Look back to see how your “special” sold. All these “little” things will help us work together as a team to have the next best Derby ever. These little things help you build a game plan to help facilitate the “big picture” plan.
Luck has everything to do with the horse race, but absolutely nothing to do with executing your game plan during crunch time!
This isn’t Dine Company’s first rodeo, and definitely not our first Derby!
