I hope you’re reading this early, so you can watch “Good Morning America” and see the Rendezvous featured yet again on Feb. 22 as part of Tory Johnson’s Deals & Steals.

The ABC show airs in Memphis from 8-10 a.m. and while the contents of the special deal are secret until it’s announced, we know this much.

“We’ve done different packages each time,” Anna Vergos said. “The one thing is that to be a deal, it has to be at least 50% off.”

The legendary barbecue restaurant has been featured on the show four times during COVID and has also held secret, online only sales on the website, gmadeals.com. They’ve done different boxes, including a traditional rib and shoulder deal, one with barbecue nachos that included Pancho’s cheese dip, and once included Dinstuhl’s cashew crunch in the deal.

The national attention couldn’t have come at a better time, Vergos said.

Restaurateurs cook up ways to help out-of-work employees

“Back in April, it allowed us to hire people back and keep paying insurance,” she said. “And it seems like each time they ask it comes at the right time.”

Rendezvous staff has set up a shipping center in the upstairs space once occupied by Erika’s restaurant, and they were worried that the recent weather could cause burst pipes and a sprinkler system malfunction that could ruin the packaging.

But they came through it and are ready to start shipping the new deal.

“The first one was overwhelming,” Vergos said. “We’d never had to deal with that sort of demand before — we sold like 18,000 or some crazy number one time — so we really worked hard to streamline our practices.”

Don’t delay if you want to order, because they generally sell out fast. FedEx will deliver it to your house, even if you live in Memphis.

The Rendezvous voluntarily closes its dining room

“Good Morning America starts on the East Coast at 7 a.m., so they start selling then, and then we’ll see more at 8 a.m. when it airs in Central Time, and if it’s selling out, they’ll hold back some product for the West Coast,” Vergos said.

“This has made a big difference for us. And I have to say that FedEx has been an amazing partner. They really help us out on this GMA deal and Tory Johnson has been great. I don’t know why they have been so kind to us, but we’re grateful.”

So Youth Villages Soup Sunday will not proceed as it has in years past, because we all know we’re not putting a couple of thousand people together in one spot. But it will proceed nonetheless and that’s a story that’s coming this week.

You’ll be able to order from about 20 local restaurants this weekend if you want to dine out, and a portion of your money will benefit Youth Villages. If you want to eat at home, there’s also a premier package, a big fancy dinner from Hog Wild, and five more modest packages available from local restaurants such as Huey’s, Ciao Bella, Babalu and others. We’ll give you all the details this week.

If you’re planning on attending the Le Bon Appetit cooking class series scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 23, well, you have a free night. The class has been pushed back a week because of the city’s boil order.

Kelly English, the founding chef of Le Bon Appetit, said it didn’t seem like a good idea to have people boiling shrimp in possible contaminated water, so get out your calendars, scratch off Feb. 23 and fill it in for March 1 instead.

Le Bon Appetit @home launches online cooking classes

Speaking of Kelly, he’s my guest on Sound Bites this week, which you can find online here later today or listen to on WYXR 91.7 at 11 a.m. Thursday. We talk about the upcoming series and then go straight to a food that we both believe is critical for any Southern get-together: Cream cheese.

And speaking of boiled water. Yuck, right? I can’t stand the taste of it. I keep hearing about people seeing dirt in the bottom of their pans after boiling and I’m thankful I haven’t experienced that, but my goodness, it tastes so bad.

Here’s why. Boiling removes contaminants from water, but it also removes air so it’s sort of like drinking flat Coke. I read that one remedy is to oxygenate the water by pouring it back and forth between containers, so I tried and perhaps there was a marginal difference. I even used a wine aerator because I was desperate, but that was going to take forever and besides, I couldn’t tell a difference between that and the pouring between pitchers.

Hopefully by now you’ve managed to get some bottled water or even better, we’ll be told to resume using water straight from the tap. Until then, do as Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division suggests and boil your water for 3 minutes.

Yes, the CDC recommends boiling for 1 minute, and yes, you can use purifying tablets like you’d take camping. But why not just follow MLGW directions? My daughter lives in Austin and they’re being told to boil water for 10 minutes, so is 3 such an inconvenience?

Keep this in mind: We’ve never had a boil water alert in Memphis before, so let’s be thankful for that, be understanding if officials are overly cautious, hope we never have another, and cross our fingers that spring is coming.