It takes a lot of pluck to attempt a world record, especially if you want to sell the most buffalo chicken wings in the history of mankind.
That’s what Trent Weitzel and his Weitzels Wings army have been training nearly a year for.
In the past 14 months, Wyoming’s Godfather of buffalo wings has been featured on the Food Network’s smash hit show “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” and is the reigning world National Buffalo Wing Festival champion.
Now the Laramie-based owner of a growing food truck empire aims to set two new world records: selling the most buffalo wings in eight hours and selling the most in 24 hours.
From about noon July 28 through the same time July 29, he needs to sell about 25,000 wings in eight hours to claim that record, and more than 42,000 for the 24-hour crown.
The Weitzels Wings crew — aka Double Dubs — will have four trucks at Freedom’s Edge Brewing Co. in Cheyenne each capable of frying up thousands of wings an hour, Weitzel said.
“We can do it. I know what the trucks can do,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Every single truck can do 3,200 wings every hour. If we’re doing that for 24 hours, we’re close to 70,000 wings. Now, we don’t need that many for the record, though.”
A Year Of Prep
Serving up more than 42,000 buffalo wings over 24 hours sounds impressive, but it’s even more of an undertaking considering all the details that go into that.
First, there’s making sure to get your hands on tens of thousands of chicken wings. When Weitzel first announced the record attempt at the end of last year’s Cheyenne Frontier Days, supply chain issued made that a concern, along with all the oil and other ingredients.
Weitzel said he began buying wings nearly a year ago, and the forward planning has paid off.
“Since we’ve been planning and preparing this past year, it’s been pretty easy to get stuff,” he said. “My food supplier knows we’re doing this and has been good making sure the chicken wings are available.”
Then there’s all the extra hours ahead of time making huge batches of his award-winning sauces for the wings. For the record attempt, he’ll sell two kinds: a traditional buffalo wing and barbecue.
The Rules
To be official world records, Weitzel said there are some specific rules that have to be followed. They include:
· It happens at one location, Freedom’s Edge at 1509 Pioneer Ave. in downtown Cheyenne.
· It’s done by one vendor, which means it’s a Double Dubs-only thing; no teaming up with other outlets to pump out the record.
· All the food has to pass over one table. Weitzel said they’ll have a 10-foot table in front of their trucks to make sure the wings can get served fast enough.
· The wings have to be bought by customers. The record is wings sold, not wings given away (which would be much easier to achieve).
To that last rule, Weitzel said while he has to charge for the wings, it’s going to be a huge bargain for lovers of great buffalo wings.
“We’re definitely going to do this at a lower cost. We don’t want to make any money on this event,” he said. “We’re going to do a lower price. I think it’s going to be under $1 a wing, maybe under 80 cents a wing.”
Power With The People
The real challenge isn’t cooking up and serving 42,000-plus wings in 24 hours, it’s attracting enough people to come buy them all, Weitzel said.
“Just having the people be there to go through the line and purchase our wings,” he said, adding that he’s optimistic.
“If I get 1,000 people to order 50 wings, that’s not out of reach,” he said. “I know I could sit down and eat 36 of them myself.”
That the plan is to set the record on July 29 isn’t an accident. That’s National Wing Day.
“It would be cool for Wyoming to have another world record,” Weitzel said. “I don’t know what other records we have, but we have to have the record for something.”
If he’s successful, Weitzel will have won the Super Bowl of buffalo wings competitions, been featured on national television and have sold more chicken wings in a day than anyone in history.
How does he top that?
“I always like to push the limits,” he said, “so I’m going to keep pushing the wing culture, the wing world.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
