On 13 June 2021 our Club again undertook feeding the mulititude (i.e.) 7,000 entrants in the MS Brissie to the Bay bike ride to help fight multiple scelerosis. This is a sausage sizzle with some real logistics to make this work. We start on gathering the labour force necessary for 11 hours on a Sunday morning in the depth of the Brisbane winter. Fortunately our rallying cry was answered and after the team was assembled we started to plan the supplies necessary and the routine to implement.
Now we’ve done the catering for MS Bike before but in 2020 the ride was cancelled due to Covid 19 restrictions and in 2018 it rained so we had no recent information on likely numbers and therefore product volumes necessary. So we contacted the event organisers to learn they had closed registrations at 7,000 entrants. Previous number of registrants had been in the order of 6,000. So a little bit of extrapolation and a guess in the dark and the shopping list was prepared. Then came the roster and then the equipment list and finally filling the gas bottles.
Saturday afternoon the bump in team assembled to pack the equipment and purchase the produce then 4.30am the following morning deliver and assemble the equipment in Musgrave Park.
One thing we did not plan well was obtaining a credit card/eftpost card reader as its tough for the riders to carry change in lycra. Thanks to Tyro Bank we obtained the reader at the last minute and a good thing we did as most of the sales were made using the card reader allowing us to make a donation to MS in the order of $1,000.00 and have a similar amount to apply to our other projects.
Like all our projects we all found time to have some fun and enjoy the company. Many thanks to our volunteers and support from Stones Corner Rotary and Brisbane River Rotary.
