Chef keeps telling everyone we’re carnies now, and honestly…where’s the lie?
Sure, we’re slinging gourmet, chef-inspired snacks instead of funnel cakes and ferris wheel tickets, but the grind is real and the lessons spin faster than a Tilt-o-Whirl.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far from our short tenure on the food truck circuit:
1. “Why is truck food so expensive?” Oh friend… let us count the hot dogs.
Every event we do comes with a stack of permits and fees – from the local municipality, the county health department, and the event coordinators or promoters. (And don’t even get us started on the lack of coordination between these groups, or the mixed info you get depending who you ask or where you’ll be setting up…)
So far we’ve paid anywhere from $25 to $1,500+ (no, that comma isn’t a typo) just to show up.
And because Chef likes to make things real in numbers, we now calculate everything we do in how many $4 hot dogs we’d have to sell to cover it. Spoiler: it’s a lotta dawgs. And that’s before we even buy the – you know, food – for our food trailer.
Restaurants can order big from purveyors and score bulk pricing. Food trucks? We’re often at Costco and Aldi with the rest of y’all.
Event volume, schedules, commissary availability to receive deliveries, and oh yeah – weather – are all unpredictable, so we can’t always buy wholesale without risking huge waste. Throw in gas for our truck and generators, paper goods, and very necessary snacks for Chef, and suddenly you understand why “cheap eats on wheels” is a myth.
2. Commissary kitchens are like Bigfoot.
Everyone says they exist. You hear stories. You want to believe. But finding quality, reliable commissary kitchen space with enough storage and hours that match your prep and order schedules? Nearly impossible. If we ever come into hundreds of thousands in extra cash, we’re building a giant kitchen and sharing it with all our food truck friends. We’ll call it “Carnie Clubhouse.” Who’s with us???
Good news on this front though – we just made some very cool friends who are stepping into the local commissary space in a big way, at exactly the right time for us – so stay tuned for more on that, hopefully coming soon!
3. The hours are nuts but the rush is unmatched.
We knew it would be long days. Chef is also the inventory and vendor relations manager, prep cook, dishwasher, gas-can-filler, truck driver, maintenance engineer, and admin-in-training. While Smash (for now) holds down the one-woman marketing, customer experience, legal, finance, business ops, and “HR” (yeah right, we’d both be fired) departments.
It’s messy, it’s maddening, it’s more hours than we’ve ever put into anything – but it’s ours and that really does make all the difference. The rush is worth the grind, big time. When you’re the ones calling the shots, it just hits different.
4. Tiny tin box kitchen = relationship stress test.
It’s only been a month of food trucking, but we’ve already faced some serious nail-biters, including:
♨️ A summer heatwave with relentless triple-digit days, one of which came very close to a heatstroke incident and 911 call for Smash.
🪝 A faulty trailer hitch that popped off, sent us swerving down Northwest Highway, and left us stranded roadside until a buddy came to rescue us…and the unexpected expense of welding off the old hitch to replace it with something sturdier – worth every penny!
💸 A twelve-hour gig plus setup, travel, and teardown time (so an 18-hour day) that turned out to be a total bust.
🌪And finally, that little microburst that rolled through outta nowhere.
So yeah…it’s been an adventure already! But we’re still married and laughing our way through everything the twisted food trailer gods throw our way.
Bottom line:
Food truck life isn’t for the faint-hearted, but the hustle is worthwhile for every smile, every repeat customer – sometimes during the same setup coming back for a victory lap, all the new farm-and-foodie friends we’re making, the quality time we get to spend together, the freedom of calling our own shots, and every “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO GOOD” from the other side of our order window.
We’ll keep learning as we go, and sharing what we learn – because that’s what this playground is all about – making good food and new friends, chasing dreams, and doing something that feels real.