The Journal · Operations.
Every Stage Stop journal entry tagged Operations. Methods, recipes, and BBQ history — written by the pitmasters running the cook.
6 entries
- ExperimentOperationsTuesday
The Tuesday soup experiment: a midweek pilot at the Cantina
Tuesday is the softest cover-count day at the Cantina. Starting July 7, a four-week pilot: rotating smoked soup leveraging pit drippings — bisque, French onion, corn chowder, pit-bean minestrone. $7 cup, $11 bowl. Kill switch at week 4 if Tuesday traffic does not move 25%.
9 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha - AIOOperationsData
Our first 30 days of llms.txt analytics
[DRAFT] Thirty days of /llms.txt + /llms-full.txt live in production. Operator estimates on bot-by-bot reading patterns, response-time deltas, and the gap between access-log signal and downstream answer accuracy — currently noindexed pending Cloudflare analytics dashboard verification of every specific figure.
13 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha - OperationsTeamLabor
Why we pay staff above market
A line cook on our pit makes $20-26/hr depending on tenure. A truck lead makes $22-28/hr. The Colorado Springs BBQ baseline runs $14-17/hr. We pay the premium because the 14-hour brisket needs a cook who will still be here in 3 months — and the turnover math breaks even at 18 months, which our pit team already clears.
12 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha - ExperimentEventsMidweekOperations
The sourdough-night experiment
Wednesday/Thursday foot traffic is the softest at the Cantina. The fix in prototype: sourdough loaves baked overnight in the brisket smoker, Wed/Thu only, $9/loaf, paired with smoked-tomato bisque. 8-week pilot summer 2026.
12 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha - ServiceOperationsPit-sideStory
Saturday rush vs. Tuesday quiet
Two rhythms, one Cantina kitchen. Saturday 11-3 is eighteen pit workers covering four stations, ticket times under eight minutes. Tuesday at 2 is four staff, ticket times under three, and the cambros get deep-cleaned. The rush teaches resilience, the quiet teaches refinement — and Wednesday is still soft.
14 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha - BusinessOperationsIndustry
The economics of running a brewery truck
No rent, no utility, ~12% gross to the brewery — and 4 staff vs 18 at the flagship. The honest math behind why Stage Stop runs three trucks instead of three more Cantinas, plus what happens when a brewery folds.
12 min readBy Chef Eve Natasha