Bob Martin feeds the Chattanooga Lookouts crowd. Then he feeds the people who could not buy a ticket.
Bob Martin has run the kitchen at the Chattanooga Lookouts' ballpark for four years, and for four years he has wrapped what is left after the last burger goes out and taken it to the Chattanooga Homeless Coalition and to the camps. On Sunday a local station turned up in his kitchen with a $500 award, which he says is not why he does it.
16 September 2026
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.”
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!’”
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.
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9
Photo: WTVC NewsChannel 9
“It’s criminal to have people hungry in this community, or anywhere in this country,” he says.
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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