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Family-owned and operated Big Q BBQ’s Sam Bradford sandwich has gained national fame and hundreds have been consumed by Philadelphia Eagles fans fed up with the way the quarterback has been acting.
The idea all started in late April when Big Q BBQ owner Drew Abruzzese was meeting with his family, cooking team and publicist Peter Breslow. The conversation turned from menu items at the Abruzzese family’s Pineville Tavern in Wrightstown to frustration with Bradford.
“We were having roundtable discussion and I complained about Sam Bradford’s attitude. He was just whining,” Abruzzese said. “That’s when Peter Breslow threw it out there – make a sandwich out of it.”
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From there, the team began coming up with ideas to make the sandwich.
“We just started putting this sandwich together, adding ingredients,” Abruzzese recalled Friday inside the BBQ eatery at the corner of Bristol-Oxford Valley and Woodbourne roads.
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By the end of the meeting, the team had come up with a mouth-watering custom sandwich that poked fun at Bradford’s attitude since Carson Wentz joined the Eagles.
- Deep-fried jalapenos (made from Big Q BBQ’s special recipe) to represent Bradford being on the “hot seat”
- Pulled pork represents the fact the quarterback will getting pulled
- Spicy Philadelphia cream cheese spread is a nod to the city
- Fresh potato roll symbolizes the fact that Bradford often goes down like a sack of potatoes
- Fried chicken, according to lifelong Eagles fan Abruzzese, is an obvious addition for Eagles fans
- Moist towelettes and baby wipes are available on the side so customers can take the “”cleaning up process to the next level”
“We built the sandwich and realized it was actually incredible. That doesn’t happen every time when you’re making something from scratch,” Abruzzese said.
Next up, Breslow and his team worked to alert the public that the sandwich would be given away for free Wednesday afternoon.
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First, Philly.com food and restaurant writer Michael Klein picked up the story and from there it snowballed from local outlets like LevittownNow.com and PhillyVoice.com to national sites like Fox Sports and USA Today. The sandwich even made Sports Illustrated, ESPN and SportsCenter, a show Abruzzese watches every day.
In the time leading up to the debut of the Bradford-themed sandwich, Abruzzese made appearances on Angelo Cataldi and The WIP Morning Team and The John DeBella Show on WMGK.
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the restaurateur said.
Once the giveaway started, customers lined up outside Big Q BBQ vying to get one of the new Sam Bradford sandwiches for free. At one point, the line was so long that police showed up to help corral customers.
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After giving away the promised 150 sandwiches, there was still a line of customers waiting outside in the cold rain.
“I saw the line of people wrapping around the building in the cold rain, and went outside and told them that we had given our targeted number away, but we weren’t going to stop just because we hit 150. They all clapped and cheered,” Abruzzese said. “By the end, we had given away 321 Bradford sandwiches.”
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Aside from customers coming from around the Philadelphia region, Abruzzese has also heard from football fans around the nation. On Friday, he received a Sam Bradford Ram’s plaque from a man in St. Louis who suggesting it be use as a serving platter.
The Sam Bradford sandwich will stick around due to it’s popularity. The $5 price tag for the sandwich will stick around until Bradford is traded.
“No, I haven’t heard from Sam Bradford yet,” Abruzzese said with a chuckle.
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Abruzzese opened Big Q BBQ last year and has worked consistently to get customer feedback and find out what BBQ fans want to eat. The restaurant, which features a drive-thru, cooks their BBQ fresh and features a variety of mouth-water sides. In addition, Big Q BBQ also offers catering.
