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How Do I Serve 250 Burgers and 150 Sausages in Two Hours From One Trailer?

by Mark Settle
(Manchester)

White 14ft single-axle catering trailer serving burgers to families at a UK school sports day

White 14ft single-axle catering trailer serving burgers to families at a UK school sports day

Hi all
I have been asked to cater for a school event that requires me to serve 250 burgers and 150 sausages at a sports day. Obviously this is going to be difficult in my 14ft trailer that has a 4 burner grill and 2 Bain Marie's that are both 3 sections. I need to start supplying the food at around 12pm and serve as fast as possible. I cannot do all this on a 4 burner griddle. Any ideas would be really appreciated.
Thanks
Mark

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Nov 02, 2026
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by: MobCater

Mark, a school sports day is one of the best paying jobs going, and you are right that a single 4 burner griddle will not keep up if you try to cook everything to order. Four hundred items in two hours is more than three a minute, so the trick is to get most of the cooking done before the first child reaches the hatch.

Start cooking at around 10am, two hours before service. Once burgers and sausages are cooked through, they can go into your bain maries and be hot held, and the legal line for hot holding is 63°C or above. Probe every batch as it comes off the griddle, make sure the core reaches 75°C, and write the times and temperatures in your SFBB diary. A splash of stock or a bed of fried onions in the burger trays stops them drying out. With six sections across your two bain maries you can hold well over a hundred pieces at once and keep topping them up from the griddle all through service.

The sausages are the easy win. Cook them beforehand in a commercial oven in a registered kitchen, or ask whether the school will let you use their kitchen, then bring them back up to 75°C and keep them hot. That leaves the whole griddle free for burgers.

If you still need more capacity, hire a second griddle for the day. Bear in mind that any extra gas appliance has to be installed and checked by a Gas Safe registered engineer before the event. It is not something to rig up yourself on the morning.

Speed at the hatch matters as much as the cooking. Keep the menu to burger, cheeseburger and hot dog, and nothing else. Split and count the buns the night before, and put the sauces on a separate table so people serve themselves. Ask the school to sell tokens or take pre-orders so nobody is handling change, then have one person on the tokens while another just builds and hands out. It is also worth asking whether classes can come up in staggered groups rather than all at twelve on the dot.

Every busy day I have done taught me the same thing: a queue that moves fast earns more goodwill than a perfect burger that takes five minutes. Plan it that way and two hours is very doable.

Good luck with it

David

Disclaimer: Food safety rules are updated from time to time. Always check the latest FSA guidance and speak to your local EHO for the most current requirements in your area.

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