The smell of freshly grilled pork ribs wafts through our school, and noses rise to the delicious scent. That immaculate fragrance is coming from none other than our school’s own Grilling Club. The Grilling Club is in their second year of creating masterpieces of meat for the whole school to enjoy. In their first meeting of 2021, they accumulated 80 people and continued to have 20 committed members for the rest of the year.
“This year, we have had the same trend where a ton of people show up. That’s kind of our strategy, I’d say: get a lot of people to come with food but have them stay because they enjoy the community, they enjoy the service,” Grilling Club president junior Eric Chung said.
Chung mentions the amount of ways they are able to advertise the club, hoping to grow their franchise wider by donating half of all profits from their events to AFAC.
“Mostly, it’s word of mouth, but we have a pretty big social media presence. We [also] sell merchandise, we have these hot dog sales, we put posters up on the school and we have videos on The Dailies,” Chung said.
Due to their wide variety of advertisements, the club has successfully generated a broad fan base by creating multiple different social media platforms. They hope to spread the word about the Grilling Club to students at our school and hopefully other APS schools as well. Junior Axel Vasquez is the elected social media manager and runs all their accounts. The Grilling Club has designed a strong Instagram account that has accumulated many followers. Earlier this year, on October 17th, their Tik Tok account was started as well.
“We are just trying to reach out and hopefully have other schools get another grill club; it could really help them out,” Vasquez said.
The Grilling Club stands by one rule: no matter the meat, they must critique. The Grilling Club is a real community, but it’s also a school club; they need substance within the club to determine the goals they want to pursue.
“My main goal going into it was to have a self-sustaining community of people who are bringing food. It’s like reaching a critical mass, or like if you bring in food once a week, or one time a year, then you’re kind of rewarded with food more often,” Chung said.
The club has certainly grown from their first year of business.
“As the club really grew, I realized the potential we had with this group, like trying to expand the community and helping people out. Giving people some real life experience—teaching them skills, teaching them how to serve,” Chung said.
Some might find other people taking their food insulting, but The Grilling Club believes otherwise. They find their passion for cooking in community wide taste-testing.
“You’re preparing it for all these people, and you know they’re all gonna enjoy it, so that’s a really good feeling when a bunch of people eat all your food and like it,” sophomore president elect Mitchell Ferguson said.
The steaks are high for the Grilling Club to continue providing for our school, consequently in just one year the club’s food has become increasingly more delicious.
“Some of the things that they have been making have been outrageously good, and they take their barbeque very seriously,” Grilling Club sponsor Curt Dorman said.
The Grilling club has a lot on their plate this year, but they are prepared for a feast in coming years as well. Some last words from President Eric Chung sum up what describes the Grilling Club as a whole, as they learn what they can really accomplish.
“I want the Grilling Club to redefine what a school club can do,” Chung said.
