How would I cook for 500, or 1000, people?

At a local park in the town my son lives in, they had a barbecue contest yesterday. For a $10 cover charge, for adults, you got in and got all the free “samples,” you could want. I think they plan on making this an annual thing, but yesterday was the first one.

You first went through a pavilion where they provided paper plates, a small bag of chips, water and some…....baked beans.
Baked beans….they were just heated up, canned beans. So many people tout that they’re bringing “baked beans,” or even at restaurants that have baked beans on the menu, and they open up a can of Bush’s bakes beans, heat them up, and they’re good to go. Makes me want to cry!

I have a baked bean recipe that was handed down from my paternal grandmother, in Texas, who died long before I was born, 1941 or something. I’ve tweaked it along the way and man, I get those bubbling, in my cast iron pot, on a campfire or in a smoker, or even just in the oven and people’s mouths start watering. It takes about 30 minutes of prep, and a few hours of slow cooking.

As we made our way from smoker, to smoker (all of which provided their personal ideas of smoked pulled pork, some was great, some not so great) I thought, “I can’t be the only one who has a great recipe for baked beans. Why can’t we have a baked bean contest along side of this in the future?”

I thought maybe, to get started, I could provide the free beans at the pavilion next year and advertise for the following year.

Then I’m wondering how many people would I need to cook for? Hundreds? How in the world could I do that? I don’t have a specific recipe. I have specific ingredients, but I just put in whatever looks like the right amount. But that’s for a relatively small batch, for <50 people.

How could I translate that to hundreds of servings?