NATCHEZ — With good luck, Archie Willett’s full refrigerators will be empty come Monday.

Willet, owner of Pig Out Inn, has been working since Monday to stock, prepare, cook and store food to feed droves of hungry Great Mississippi River Balloon Race festival-goers this weekend.

“We make everything homemade, so we get started early,” Willett said.

Willett said being located adjacent to the festival grounds is a blessing, but he is also glad he has 15 years of experience to fall back on.

“With the size of our place, there are only so many people you can fit in here,” he said before the weekend began. “We’ll have three or four hours when people will be waiting to get a seat. It’s not a bad problem to have.”

Willett and other restaurant representatives know, weather permitting, there will be lots of mouths to feed.

Fat Mama’s Tamales owner David Gammill was expecting to serve up to 15,000 tamales this weekend.

“We started Monday working on inventory management and making sure food orders were at least in line with last year’s (orders,)” he said. “We also have to mentally prepare the staff and go over what went well last year and what didn’t work as well.

“Basically we just get ready for another rodeo.”

At Pig Out, Willett said Thursday he expected to go through four to five times as much food for the three-day balloon race weekend as he would over a normal three-day period.

He said 200 racks of ribs would be ready, up from 50 on a normal weekend; and 1,200 buns were standing by, up from 700.

He also expected to serve up to 40 gallons of potato salad.

“On a normal weekend, we’d probably go through about 10 (gallons,)” he said.

Gammill said all those hungry folks are thirsty, too. Fat Mama’s was ready to mix up 1,000 gallons of margaritas.

To make sure all the orders get filled in a timely manner, restaurants also ramped up staffing for the weekend.

“We’ll run wide open for three days,” Gammill said. “We are prepared to handle basically anything.”

Gammill said he planned to have up to 10 employees at the restaurant from open to close Friday through Sunday.

Willett said it will be a tight squeeze behind the counter at Pig Out.

“On a normal weekend we might have three to four people working,” he said. “This weekend we have eight people up here.”

For some popular spots, food and drink aren’t the biggest concern. Nancy Best at Bowie’s Tavern said their first preparation is making sure there is room for the crowd.

“We start two or three weeks out working on our table layout, figuring out where to place the extra bars we’ll open and planning the extra seating,” Best said.

She said Bowie’s plans for crowds three times the size of normal during balloon race. She said they planned to open up two additional beer bars and one more full-service bar.

The pub also extended its hours and is opening today, a day it is normally closed.

“We’re opening early on Friday and Saturday and opening at noon on Sunday,” Best said. “We are doing whatever we can to accommodate our visitors.”