I'll be honest — I didn't think much about soccer as a revenue driver until about three years ago. Had a buddy running a sports bar concept out of Houston who called me during the 2022 World Cup asking if I could bring my truck out for their watch parties. "Travis, you don't understand," he said. "We're doing Friday night numbers on a Tuesday morning."
Tuesday morning. For soccer.
He wasn't wrong. I showed up for the USA-England match expecting maybe a hundred people. We served over three hundred. Ran out of pulled pork by halftime. And here's the thing — I should've seen it coming. The data was there. I just wasn't paying attention to it.
Why World Cup Math Works Different Than NFL Sunday
Most BBQ operators have their high-volume days dialed in. Friday dinner, Saturday lunch through late, Sunday football season. You know the rhythm. Your prep schedule reflects it. Your staffing reflects it.
World Cup breaks all of that.
Games happen at weird hours depending on the host country's time zone. With the 2026 tournament spread across the US, Mexico, and Canada, we're looking at more favorable kickoff times for North American audiences — but still unpredictable compared to your normal rushes. You might have a massive crowd at 11 AM on a Wednesday. Or 4 PM on a Monday. The schedule doesn't care about your typical prep cycle.
And the crowds aren't just bigger — they're different. Soccer viewership in the US has shifted hard over the last decade. You're pulling in younger demographics, international communities with deep connections to competing nations, and casual viewers who treat it like a party event rather than serious sports watching. These people want to eat. They want to drink. They want to stay for the full 90-plus minutes, and they often want to linger after.
That's a longer dwell time than your typical NFL crowd, which tends to move in waves with the game clock.
Production Planning When You Can't Predict the Rush
Here's where a lot of operators get burned: they prep like it's going to be a normal day, then scramble when the crowd shows up. Or worse — they over-prep based on hype, watch the food sit, and eat the loss when a match doesn't draw.
The fix isn't guessing better. It's building flexibility into your production.
I run an SP-1000 on my truck, and the thing that saves me during unpredictable events is the hold capacity. If I'm running briskets overnight and the morning crowd doesn't materialize the way I expected, those briskets are still perfect at hold temp six, eight, even ten hours later. The rotisserie system keeps them moving so you don't get hot spots or dried edges. That's not a luxury feature — that's what lets you adapt without waste.
Contrast that with some of the import-built cabinet smokers I've seen guys running. The temp swings alone make extended holds risky. I talked to an operator last year who lost almost $400 in product because his cheaper unit couldn't maintain hold temp during a rain delay at an outdoor event. The controller just couldn't keep up with the ambient temp drop. Southern Pride's engineering handles that. It's boring to talk about insulation thickness and domestic manufacturing — I get it — but it matters when you're trying to hold product through a two-hour weather delay or an unexpectedly slow lunch.
The Catering Angle Nobody's Working Hard Enough
Restaurants are the obvious play. Set up viewing areas, run specials, maybe do a prix fixe watch party menu. That's all fine.
But the catering opportunity during World Cup is genuinely underworked.
Think about who's throwing parties: corporate offices hosting clients, apartment complexes doing resident events, cultural organizations with deep ties to competing nations. These are groups with budgets who want the event handled for them. They're not looking for pizza. They want something that feels like a real gathering — and BBQ fits that better than almost anything else.
I picked up three recurring corporate accounts during the 2022 tournament just by reaching out to companies I knew had international workforces. One was a tech firm with a huge contingent of employees from Argentina. They wanted watch parties for every Argentina match with authentic American BBQ — their words — as part of the spread. We did pulled pork sliders, burnt ends, smoked wings. Easy high-margin stuff that travels well and holds at temp in a cambro.
The key was reaching out early. Like, two months before the tournament started. Most caterers don't think about World Cup as a sales opportunity until the first match kicks off. By then you're competing on price instead of relationship.
Equipment Decisions That Actually Affect Your Bottom Line Here
Look — I'm not going to pretend equipment choice is the only variable that matters. Menu design, marketing, staffing, location — all of it counts. But your smoker capacity and reliability set a hard ceiling on what you can capture during a surge event.
If you're a mid-volume restaurant doing maybe 150 covers on a busy night, and suddenly you've got 300 people showing up for a quarterfinal match, you need a smoker that can handle the production increase without requiring you to babysit it. The rotisserie systems on the SP-700 and MLR-850 are designed exactly for this — consistent rotation means consistent product even when you're running at max capacity and your pit cook is also helping expedite because you're slammed.
I've seen operators try to scale up on cheaper equipment and it always bites them eventually. Parts availability is the one that gets people. You blow a thermocouple on an Ole Hickory during your biggest week of the year, and suddenly you're waiting on a part that's backordered for three weeks. Southern Pride parts are domestically stocked — Southern Pride of Texas keeps common replacement components on hand specifically because we know commercial operators can't afford to wait. That's not marketing talk. That's the difference between capturing revenue and watching it walk out your door.
Menu Strategy That Doesn't Overcomplicate Things
The temptation during big events is to get creative. Special menu items, limited-time offerings, themed dishes.
Usually a mistake.
Your best play during high-volume surge events is to simplify, not expand. Run your highest-margin items that travel well and hold at temp. Pulled pork, burnt ends, smoked wings, maybe a sausage option. Things that can be prepped ahead, held safely, and served fast when the rush hits.
I actually learned this the hard way. During one of the 2022 matches I decided to do a special smoked short rib plate — seemed like a good upsell opportunity. What I didn't account for was the plating time. Every short rib order took three times as long as a pulled pork sandwich. We got backed up, tickets stacked, and I watched at least twenty people leave because the wait was too long.
Now I run a stripped-down menu during any surge event. Three proteins, two sides, drinks. That's it. The constraint actually increases revenue because we can serve more people faster.
The Part Most Operators Skip
Marketing the opportunity in advance.
I know, I know — you're a cook, not a marketer. But here's the reality: the restaurants and caterers who capture World Cup revenue are the ones who plant the flag early. Social posts announcing your watch party schedule. Direct outreach to corporate contacts about catering. Signage in your restaurant promoting the matches you'll be showing.
The audience exists. They're going to watch somewhere. They're going to eat something. Your job is just to make sure they think of you before they think of your competitor.
And when they do show up — when you've got 300 people packed into your space for a knockout round match — your equipment better be able to handle it. That's the unsexy part of capturing event revenue. It's not the marketing. It's not the menu. It's whether your smoker can produce consistent product at volume for hours without requiring intervention.
The 2026 World Cup is going to be the biggest one ever held in North America. Matches in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami — cities with massive BBQ cultures and huge soccer followings. The operators who plan now, who build production capacity now, who lock in catering contracts now — they're the ones who'll actually capture the revenue.
Everyone else will just complain about how busy it was and how they couldn't keep up.
Don't be everyone else.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#FoodService #BBQBusiness #CommercialBBQ #RestaurantOwner #CateringBusiness #BBQRestaurant #RestaurantIndustry #SouthernPride
Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.
About the Author: Travis operates a competition BBQ team and a Gulf Coast food truck, and documents his commercial cooking process for food service professionals.