Starting at 6 p.m. Saturday, 94 Colorado BBQ Challenge vendors and competitors had another challenge: Vacate Main Street and Third Avenue in two hours.
It was part of a dialed, efficient, and labor intensive clean-up effort by Town of Frisco employees and High Country Conservation Center volunteers to get the streets cleaned and reopened by about 10.
"Everyone closes everything up, but we're left to restore Frisco to normal," Frisco's marketing and communications director Suzanne Lifgren said.
The event was a potentially record-breaking one, Frisco town manager Bill Efting said. At the end of the day Friday, sales were up nearly $10,000 over 2010, which was a record year, he said.
"We think that, from what everyone was saying on Saturday, it was another record day, but we won't know until Monday," Efting said.
Estimates prior to the event called for roughly 30,000 people coming to Frisco for the event, which would have been up from the 28,000 who attended last year (attendance dropped off presumably because of wet weather and a hail storm) and on par with the 32,000 in 2010.
The crowd that gathered to watch the Motet play Thursday night's kickoff concert was larger than usual, and beer sales were very good, the town manager added.
"Attendance-wise and dollar-wise, I'd be surprised if it wasn't a record weekend," Efting said.
With so many people and so much product in Frisco, it takes a lot of people a short amount of time to get the town put back together - Lifgren estimated about 40 people work about four hours, shooting to be finished by 10 p.m. Saturday. That's in addition to long days on Thursday and Friday - on Friday, the day runs from 6 a.m. to about 10 or 11 p.m.
"It's fairly labor intensive and time consuming, but everyone has a good time," Frisco public works director Tim Mack said, adding that his department typically racks up 20-30 hours of overtime throughout the event.
After vendors close up shop on Saturday, the Madison Avenue stage gets taken down, the trash, compost and recycling get hauled away, and the street sweeper starts making laps down Main Street. Sometimes, employees find cups and cigarette butts in the flowers, and food is spilled on the streets.
"We break it all down and clean it all up," Lifgren said, adding that public works will start power washing the sidewalks to free them from grease this week.
Part of the reason town staff can get the street reopened quickly is because of the huge volunteer pool that helps at the event - county staff and High Country Conservation Center head up the zero-waste diversion effort.
"It's slightly easier because it's an all compostable, recyclable event," Lifgren said, explaining that it's such a well-attended event, town staff can put demands on vendors they might not otherwise be able to do. For instance, vendors must use compostable to-go materials.
The goal is to have 80 percent diversion for the event as a whole, Lifgren said. Event attendees typically divert 90 percent through the waste tents that show individuals where to dispose of food, paper, compostable products, glass, metal and more.
"It speaks to the type of tourism we attract," Lifgren said. "People are very curious. They ask questions."
