Bob Martin feeds the Chattanooga Lookouts crowd. Then he feeds the people who could not buy a ticket.

A minor league ballpark, a kitchen manager, and what happens to the hot dogs when the crowd goes home. Four years of it, and a $500 award he says he did not do it for.

16 September 2026

A bearded man in a black T-shirt, cap and black gloves leans over steel trays of cooked burger patties in a stainless-steel stadium kitchen, smiling at the camera
Bob Martin in the kitchen at Erlanger Park, with the patties.
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9

Bob Martin runs the kitchen at Erlanger Park, the Chattanooga Lookouts’ new ballpark, and on game nights, once the last burger has gone out to the last fan, he looks at what is left and starts wrapping it, because it is going to the Chattanooga Homeless Coalition, and some of it is going with him to the camps.

He has done this for four years, and it was his own idea. “This was something he just decided to do out of the goodness of his heart,” says Dan Kopf, the Lookouts’ vice-president of marketing, who then gives the number. “He’s going to donate tons, literally tons of food after every game.”

A small single-storey red-brick building with a rusted red metal roof and white-framed windows, under trees
Pep’s Grocery in LaFayette, Georgia, which Bob and Cindy Martin ran before the ballpark.
Photo: Joanna Jackson, RE/MAX Real Estate Center, via WTVC

The Really Big Burger

Before the ballpark there was Pep’s Grocery, a small red-brick building in LaFayette, Georgia, which Bob and Cindy Martin ran and which people called the home of the Really Big Burger, a name it appears to have earned, going by the newspaper cutting in WTVC’s report. Then he ran the kitchen at AT&T Field, the Lookouts’ old ground, and now he runs the one at Erlanger Park, where the burgers and hot dogs come through on game days and a good number go back out the other side.

Cindy Martin knows what it sounds like when he arrives at a camp, because she has heard it. “He yelled out, ‘I got footlongs!’” she says. “I hear these two guys in the background: ‘Hey, Bob! Hey, Uncle Bob!’”

A woman with long white hair and a white blouse, seen at the right of the frame, speaking outside a building with a grey metal wall
Cindy Martin.
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9

Martin’s own explanation is short. “Those are my people,” he says. “For somebody to bring me a hot dog when I was living on the streets, heck yeah, I’ll take a hot dog.” The report does not say when he was on the streets, or for how long.

The award

WTVC, the ABC station in Chattanooga, and the McMahan Law Firm, which sponsors the award, turned up in his kitchen on Sunday with a $500 Pay It Forward award. “I don’t do it for the money,” he says. “I do it because it’s the right thing to do.” The next day he was back at Erlanger Park, wrapping and loading food for the coalition.

Bob Martin, white-bearded, in a red Lookouts cap and red shirt, talking in the stadium kitchen with shelves of stacked boxes behind him
Martin, mid-surprise, in the kitchen.
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9
A man in a grey polo shirt and lanyard pushes red and blue plastic crates into the open back of a car in a gravel car park
The crates. This is what the leftovers look like on the way out.
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9

His last line is the one to keep. “It’s criminal to have people hungry in this community, or anywhere in this country.”

He yelled out, “I got footlongs!” I hear these two guys in the background: “Hey, Bob! Hey, Uncle Bob!”Cindy Martin, to WTVC

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Written from the reporting of Kim Chapman Whitfield for WTVC NewsChannel 9, Chattanooga, 14 September 2026. The photographs are frames from WTVC’s report; the picture of Pep’s Grocery is Joanna Jackson’s, shown in that report.

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