Each year, from May to about October, Manitoba Pork Council's grill teams travel to various community events within a 150 kilometer radius of Winnipeg.

Manitoba Pork Council special programs coordinator Susan Szoke says events have ranged anywhere from 60 people served all the way up to one thousand and last year the grille teams traveled to a record number of events.

Susan Szoke-Manitoba Pork Council

The product we serve is pork on a bun so it's a sliced smoked pork loin and we serve that on a white or whole wheat bun, it's the clients choice and we also bring a variety of toppings, assorted barbecue sauces, pickles, peppers, ketchup and mustard and that's essentially our signature product.

Last year, for example, we did 227 events and just to give you a sense of how the program has grown.

That's basically triple of what we started with ten or 11 years ago.

I believe last year we served approximately 29 thousand pork on a bun in total so, as I say, the individual events vary from small to extremely large but overall the program has basically tripled in number since it started off.

Most of our customers are repeats I would say.

About 50 percent of our clients are repeats or word or mouth and we also have a fair number of new clients as well.

Szoke says the teams travel to several types of events including those where clients are charged on a per serving basis as well as charity events where organizers will request a sponsored barbecue, usually to raise funds for their charity.

She notes to qualify for a sponsored barbecue the charity must be health related and requests are evaluated on a case by case basis.