Trent Weitzel can remember flipping through his Guinness Book of World Records as a child, wishing he could be among those honored for doing strange or wonderful things.
“I always wanted to break a world record, but I didn’t want to grow my fingernails out really long and my eyeballs don’t pop out, so I couldn’t do stuff like that,” Weitzel told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
But after a conversation with Rep. Ocean Andrew, R-Laramie, and the rest of the folks with the On the Hook Fish and Chips food truck, the Laramie-based owner of Weitzel’s Wings (also known as “Double Dubs”) found that his dreams of breaking a world record might actually be more possible than he originally believed.
In 2023, Weitzel and his team plan to attempt to break the world record of the most chicken wings sold in 24 hours.
Josh Allen
If he does, it won’t be the first time Weitzel has been in the national spotlight. Because of his friendship with former University of Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen, he’s received notoriety because Allen has said it’s the best wings on the planet.
And when you live in Buffalo, the chicken wing capital of the world, and you are endorsed by Buffalo’s favorite Bill since the Jim Kelley days, that endorsement means a lot.
Lots Of Wings
The “Double Dubs” crew are set to try to break the record over a 24-hour period on July 29, 2023 at Frontier Park during Cheyenne Frontier Days. The target is to sell 55,000 wings.
It will be National Wing Day, so Weitzel thought it would be a great time to attempt to break the record and celebrate the glory of the chicken wing.
The current record holder is the Village Casino in Jamestown, New York, which sold 40,210 wings in 24 hours in 2018. The casino has actually held the record for selling the most chicken wings since 1982, when it first broke the record by selling almost 30,000 wings.
“The guys from On the Hook wanted to try and break a world record, but after they ran the logistics, it was almost impossible for them to do,” Weitzel said. “But for us, it’s totally doable. We do wing festivals where we’ll sell 25,000 to 30,000 wings, so what we’re going to try and do isn’t all that different from things we’ve done in the past.”
His Plan For Victory
Weitzel said the rules to break the record are that there can only be one food vendor serving the wings (Double Dubs), the contestants must be in one location (Frontier Park) and that the food can only pass over one serving table.
He will have Red Bird Farms supply the chicken wings and Shamrock Foods is offering Weitzel a semi-truck trailer where he and his team can serve the wings during the long July day.
Double Dubs will serve wings covered in one of Weitzel’s two award-winning sauces, barbecue or buffalo.
“The preparation for this is going to be kind of hard, so that’s why I wanted to try to break the record a year from now,” Weitzel said. “I’m gonna need 27 people to run the trucks and help me switch out oil, because we want the quality of the wings to be great, even while we’re trying to do this. We’ve just gotta get our ducks in a row.”
Cheyenne Frontier Days is a perfect location for Weitzel and his team to attempt to break the record, since it draws tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people to Frontier Park every year. The total attendance for 2022 was almost 265,000 people.
Weitzel just hopes he can get enough people to come out and get some wings and support a Wyoming-owned business.
He also hopes that by getting national exposure earlier this year on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” this will also attract more attention to his attempt to break a world record.
“I always like to push the limits,” he said. “This is definitely a personal goal, but also, I wouldn’t be able to do this without my cooks, my waitresses, my window crew. It just wouldn’t be possible. So I’m doing this not only for me, but for them, too.”
