Let’s start with what an average week for Ryan Stamm looks like.
As vice president at the George Webb Corporation, he has a lot of responsibilities. He’s in constant communication with the restaurant chain’s marketing team, the company’s suppliers, franchise owners and more.
So, what happens when you throw an extra 100,000 patties and buns and ketchup and mustard and pickles and more on his plate?
As you can imagine, it gets a little hectic. But he welcomes it.
“It is positive. It is fun,” Stamm said July 22. “And we try to make sure that we soak in as much of that fun as we can, because it’s a lot of hard work. But it’s also such a unique experience for everybody that we want to make sure that we have fun while we’re doing it.”
That unique experience is a longtime George Webb promotion — free burgers if the Milwaukee Brewers win 12 games in a row. The Brewers can achieve it July 22 by beating the Seattle Mariners.
A tradition that dates to the 1940s, when George Webb predicted 12 wins in a row for the then-minor-league Brewers, it really became popular in 1987 when the Crew won 13 straight. It was then that prediction became a promise: If the Brewers win 12 straight, everyone gets free burgers.
Since the 1980s, it’s happened only one other time, in 2018 in the playoffs.
So when the Brewers won their 10th straight game on July 20 — capping a series and season sweep against the Los Angeles Dodgers — the alarm began to sound at George Webb’s headquarters in Waukesha.
There was a very real chance this was going to happen — and they needed to be ready.
Stamm jumped into action, spending most of the next day on phone calls with a bevy of people — from franchise owners to product distributors and vendors to others on his team — to make sure they could handle the influx if the 12-win mark was hit.
“We look at our inventory. They look at their inventory,” Stamm said, “to make sure that we’re ready to give away 100,000 hamburgers.”
If the Brewers do beat the Mariners, George Webb will announce the date of the giveaway, something that Stamm said will have been decided in a meeting hours before the game’s first pitch.
And while it won’t happen the next day, Stamm said the goal is to get burgers in hands as fast as possible.
“We’ll definitely do it within a week or so of the 12th win,” he said. “We want to give everyone the opportunity to know when that giveaway day is, because people love to stand in line and kind of take in that whole experience.”
The 100,000-burger prediction is similar to the number George Webb gave away in 2018, but Stamm said they’re ready in case they need more, beef price increases be damned.
In 2018, the company also notably handed out 100,000 free burger vouchers, something that could very well happen again this year.
“There were definitely some advantages there to kind of limit lines and make sure people had a chance to get the burger,” Stamm said.
It’s something George Webb has prepared for. Something Wisconsinites are ready for. And, at least based off their last few weeks, something the Brewers — most importantly — can do.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Brewers are a win away from 12 straight. Here’s how George Webb is ready to give away 100,000 free burgers
Reporting by Jack Albright, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
