A Small Town Food Truck Grand Opening

Our baby, Grillin N Chillin has now been out on a couple of "soft opening" runs.  We've learned some things, tweaked our menus, and finished the seemingly never-ending "punch list" of little to-dos.  It's time to introduce ourselves to the public.

Grillin Soft Opening #1

When we joined the local Chamber of Commerce a couple of months ago, they were very excited about our new venture.  Most of the folks in the office knew about us from operating the Black Mesa Ranch goat cheese dairy east of town for the past 15 years, but were also thrilled to find out about our new food truck business.  They asked if we would like to participate in the annual Snowflake Harvest Fest and we agreed.

Soft Opening #2

Being such a small town, the opening of a new business is kind of a big deal and the Chamber goes a little overboard with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, pictures in the local paper etc.  It's just so darned cute! We suggested to them that the Harvest Fest might be a fun time to have our official Grand Opening, and do all their hoopla at the same time.  They thought it was a great idea.

Grillin's Official Grand Opening!

Well, it was a hoot, even if the festival wasn't much to write home about.  The promised electric hook-up didn't work, less attendees showed up than expected, more food vendors were there than we had been told, and we were right across from an "underground" (IE no license, no inspections) illegal taco maker under a make-shift tent (all things we sadly would become accustomed to dealing with at festivals). We still made the best of it and had a great time. The ribbon cutting photo-op was flawless, although they wouldn't REALLY let me cut the ribbon because they needed to use it again the next day.

It is official, world... Grillin N Chillin is open for business!

Meet Grillin N Chillin - "The Bureaucracy of Life" stuff

Besides getting our new food truck (trailer, actually) physically ready inside and out, there was a virtual mountain of what Kathryn calls "The Bureaucracy of Life" - paperwork-type stuff that also had to happen.

Trailer insurance, registration (normal vehicle stuff) plus health department permits & inspections, fire department permits & inspections, business name and DBA filings with the secretary of the state's office, installing a POS (point-of-Sale) system and getting the merchants services accounts set to accept credit card sales, (normal new business and restaurant stuff) and on, and on. 

Yada, yada, yada.  Not-cooking stuff is BORING stuff to me, and I just don’t have the temperament to deal with it so, fortunately, Kathryn takes care of most of that, and does an amazing job of it too. But dealing with the health department and fire department... that's my department.

Our county health inspection was simple and easy.  The trailer had been built right and had all the proper equipment, all in functioning order.  It was neat and clean. We had our Serve-Safe certification and knew our food handlers’ stuff. Both the trailer and commissary kitchen passed with flying colors, so we paid our fees and we were done. We expected the same with the fire department. 

WHOA, not so fast, cowboy!

The fire safety inspection required me to bring the trailer to the local firehouse, (easier said than done as it is over 30 minutes away after 6 miles of rural dirt roads) and the fire marshal is a very busy man, but I eventually got it scheduled. THEN I found out he needed our fire suppression system inspection report before he could look at the trailer.  

And, where do I get that inspection done?  From "our choice" of private companies, for a fee. We found out that there was only one area company that could certify our Buckeye system and they were an hour away.  Got a new appointment, and off we went.  Well, it turns out they weren't REALLY a Buckeye dealer or service center, but they had a manual for the system and said could still certify it.

So, the woman looks at the hood, and the extinguishers, and suppression canister, and piping, and nozzles, and the activation pull, and the gas shut-off, and heaven knows what else.  All the time, flipping through the manual for reference.
  

An hour later she says, "Well, it looks pretty good, but there are a couple of things I don't think are right."

"What do you mean "not right"?"

"This pipe here" she says pointing "should have another elbow in it. And that nozzle looks like it's the wrong size.  And then you need another nozzle up there in the ducting, and once you add that, your tank is too small to support another nozzle, so you'll have to replace that too with a bigger one.  Don't think it will fit there either."

"WHAT???"

"Yup.  That's how it looks to me. That will be $200 for the inspection, the work will be a few hundred more.  And, by-the-way - I'm going to file this report with your insurance carrier, so you won't be able to get coverage until it's all fixed and signed-off on."

SON OF A BI#%H!!

We paid them their extortion inspection fee and left to try and figure out where all this left us.

My first call was to Patrick of Stradabella.  He's the guy whose company built the trailer and who I'd been in brief contact with before buying the trailer to check out its provenance.  Nice guy and super helpful.  He said it sounded like she didn't know what she was talking about.  He has built hundreds of systems the same way and never had the design questioned, BUT would call his Buckeye distributor and get the real skinny.

A day or two later Patrick calls and says that the company was less than helpful.  Yes, there should be a nozzle in any ducting, but the problem comes with interpreting "ducting".  On our system, the exhaust fan is mounted directly to the hood so there is no actual ducting (hence no need for a nozzle). This is what the engineers at the company told Patrick.  Unfortunately, they were not willing to put it in writing (their lawyers got involved apparently), so they could not supply the ruling that we needed to get our certification.  We were dead in the water.

"So. What are our options?" I asked.

"I guess you will have to get that nozzle and tank put in.  I can do it for you, if you want to bring the trailer all the way back to Phoenix".  Well, we knew we did not want to go back to the local place, so we agreed on a date and time.

Patrick and his guys are great.  They were working on maybe a dozen new food truck builds and several repairs and upgrades, but they got us right in and began the work.  While we were there, we mentioned a few other things we'd noticed (a flood light not working, a loose bracket, etc) and asked if he could look at them too. "Of course" he said.

Grillin goes under the knife

We hung out and walked the shop while they worked.  I was like a kid in a candy store.  Having never seen a truck under construction, it was fascinating to see so many at different stages of production from bare shells to ones ready to roll out the door and get wrapped.

A small part of the Stradabella shop

It was a difficult job for the guys (some of the the fire suppression stuff is the first to go in place, before there is all that equipment etc in the way) but they did a fantastic job. When all done Patrick had his Buckeye service guy come and sign-off on the repairs and then certify the rest of the trailer. We were ready for our fire marshal inspection finally!

Patrick getting it done RIGHT

New tank & nozzle almost ready to go

 I'm not going to say what the end cost for the upgrade and repairs was, but I will say that Patrick bent over backwards and went WAY out of his way to stand behind his product.  I mean, we didn't even buy the trailer directly from him!  He had no obligation to do all that work for less than market rate PLUS all the little extras we had asked him to look at.  We were amazed and thrilled.  Patrick is a total stand-up guy and his company is The Best.

Back home we made a new appointment with the fire marshal and it all went smooth as silk. Paid them their fees (of course) and we were good to go!

End of an Era

It is with wildly mixed emotions that I am posting here to announce the imminent closing of the Dairy at Black Mesa Ranch.

After an amazing 15-year run making and selling artisan goat cheeses to some of the best restaurants and resorts in the state, through Whole Foods, and retail from our website, we have decided to move on to the next thing.

Getting out at the top of our game is bittersweet. Our cheese business is going great and we sell everything we can make. Kathryn's goat herd is stunning and consistently scores in the top spots in the country, with national awards and recognitions for production and confirmation.
 

On the other hand, a dairy is a 24-7-365 business. It's exhausting and while ultimately rewarding, it can also be overwhelming for just two people. Our lives revolve around twice-daily milking and while we usually do it together, it can be done by just one of us (not fun).  We haven't had a vacation together in 15 years so, for the sake of our sanities, we need to downsize and reevaluate for the future.

The exciting news? This will allow us to concentrate more fully on our confection business, plus take on a new challenge... We are opening a new food truck and catering business! (More on this in future posts).

We expect to finish cheese-making soon and then disburse the goat herd. Guestimated final closing in early 2019 when we will sell the dairy equipment, etc.

Meet Grillin N Chillin - It's a Wrap!

When we picked up our new food trailer, she had recently been retired from life as "Quickies" (seriously? who names a food truck after a brief sexual encounter??) featuring "Midwest Food with AZ heat". She was a lightly used 2-year-old and even had some original protective plastic remaining on the stainless-steel interior.  She still needed a few equipment modifications before she could become Grillin N Chillin, (grill truck extraordinaire).

Bringing "Quickies" home.

But more than anything, she needed a new wrap. 

There are basically three options for finishing the exterior of a food truck. Paint, decals, or whole-vehicle wrap. 

• Decals can save you a lot of money, but some consider them low-rent. 
• A full paint job costs about the same as a wrap. The right professionals can do the painting really well and it looks good with certain designs. It is not appropriate for intricate illustrations, and some see it (for better or worse) as an "old-fashioned" style. Some folks are real snobs about it too. We have worked events where trucks cannot have a paint-job or a decal finish to take part.
• Wraps are expensive but there are virtually no graphics limits. They are modern, slick, and they look great. Usually. 

"Quickies" had a professionally applied wrap, but it was not great. It did not fit the look we were going for at all. Aside from the questionable name plastered all over the truck, its main color scheme was neon lime green with, what looked to us like, creepy blue & black Pac-Man-ish creatures with long lolling tongues slobbering up the sides. Kathryn says, "That wrap just has to go, and FAST!"

The Original "Quickies" Wrap

So, we set about designing our new wrap and looked for a local company to print and apply it.

We had a good idea of what we wanted to do. The name Grillin N Chillin kind of made the main color scheme and components a no-brainer.  Lots of reds, oranges, and yellows, with stylized flames, and some kind of "Chillin" graphic element.

We took photos of the trailer from every angle, loaded them into Photoshop and, through the magic of digital imaging, began sketching our ideas right onto the virtual sides of the trailer.

An Early Sketch for Grillin's Wrap

We also were developing our Grillin logo and incorporated that into the wrap design. Little by little, we tweaked and fussed it until we were happy. We showed it to some friends, and they added some valuable ideas (one even came up with our slogan "Flamin' Good Food - Flamin Fast!").

Grillin N Chillin Logo

We found a company in Show Low, AZ (about an hour from us) with many good references. We coordinated with them on making the sketches into full-sized camera-ready digital files they could send to the printer.  They sent us some sample pieces of the vinyl wrap with our main colors printed on them to proof. They looked good!

Color swatches for the new Grillin Wrap

Once I sent them the design files and paid the deposit, it was only a few weeks before we got the call that they were ready to do the install.

While waiting, we stripped the old wrap off (goodbye Quickies!!) Which, while very rewarding, was HARD WORK. That wrap stuff put up a real fight coming off, but we won eventually.

Grillin stripped nekked!

Grillin stripped nekked!

We delivered the stripped-down trailer to the graphics company, and in less than a week they had it all finished and ready to go. And she was BEAUTIFUL!!!

Grillin fresh from getting her new wrap on!

A few more finishing touches and Grillin will be ready to hit the road.

Food Truckin' - Checking out some Food Truck Festivals

In anticipation of soon opening our own food truck, we decided that I needed to do a little reconnaissance on the trucks already operating in our area. Sadly, there just weren't that many (maybe this is a good thing for us!).  There were a couple of Mexican trailers (both off-shoots of B&M restaurants), a BBQ trailer that never moves and is open only sporadically, a sandwich trailer (also from a restaurant), and another eclectic trailer from a popular coffee shop.  None of them seemed to do much with the "lunch stop" business and mostly showed up for events or were used for catering.  It was tough to check them out efficiently.  We discussed going down to the Phoenix Valley where there are hundreds of trucks operating, but that seemed like a lot of work and travel tracking enough of them down to make it worthwhile.

Then we heard about some upcoming food truck festivals.  One in Flagstaff and one in Payson (each about 2 hours away) and one in Show Low, just an hour away.  There would be dozens of trucks of all types at each, so I made plans to attend them all.
After attending...

• The Flagstaff Food Truck Frenzy (July 2018),
• the Payson Food Truck Round-up (August 2018), and
• Battle of the Bands and Vans competition in Show Low (September 2018) 

... here are some observations:

We got there before opening time hoping to chat up some vendors and made the rounds, trying to take a picture of each rig and their menu.  As the crowds got bigger, I made it a point to see which trucks had the longest lines, assuming these to be the busiest or most popular (I've since learned this is not always the case).

All the events required trucks to have a sampler special for the event (one was $5, another was $3) which I thought was a great idea as someone who wanted to graze my way through the fest, trying the food at as many trucks as possible. Not sure how the truckers felt about it.

There was a good mix of local trucks and those who came up from the Phoenix Valley at all the events. It surprised me how few people the local trucks seemed to draw.  I guess it makes sense that people want to try something new; something that they don't have regular access to.

I was even more surprised at the HUGE lines at some trucks.  I talked to some folks near the fronts of the lines and they told me they had been standing in line for that one truck for 40 minutes! 

"So, this is a great truck," I asked, "and you know it is worth the wait?" 

"No." They all said. They had never seen it before or heard anything about it!

Some trucks with long order lines also had many people milling about waiting to pick up their food.  Again, I asked, "How long they had been waiting for their after ordering?" The common answer was 20 minutes!  

That's a whole hour waiting for a couple of steamed dumplings or a lobster roll! Trucks, where the customers wait that long for food after ordering, are just TOO SLOW! I just don't get it!

Another eye-opener was the different levels of sanitation and professionalism on display from the various trucks. Some were neat and clean and organized, despite being very busy.  Others looked like a hurricane had just passed through with trash all over, grease puddles, cooks working without hair restraints or gloves, raw food touching finished food on the grill, etc.

By-and-large, there was surprisingly little openness to the trucks, which I thought was part of the allure of them - to see your food being prepared, see and interact with the chefs, etc.  With a few notable exceptions of outdoor grills and open cooking porches on a few rigs, all that one could see was the cashier/order taker either through a tiny window or at a table set up in front of the truck.

Checking out some amazing truck wrap-jobs was great fun.

I also enjoyed "peeking behind the curtain" and investigating the venue infrastructure.  How (if) there was any external power supplied to the trucks, how different trucks handled their overflow food storage, trash, auxiliary outside cooking spaces, etc.

Meet Grillin N Chillin - Equipment Changes

Having finally found and purchased our used, but like-new trailer from down in Phoenix, it was time to make it truly ours.

On the agenda? Remove some equipment, add some equipment, get proper inspections and licenses, and MOST IMPORTANTLY - get the new wrap designed and installed.

We'd signed off on the grill truck concept so, even though the menu was still in flux, we knew we'd need a char grill. We did not need the 36" griddle that was there so we pulled it out (those babies are HEAVY!!) and slid a brand new 36" grill into its place.

Out with the old...

... and in with the new!

We also anticipated doing some open-faced grilled chicken sandwiches with melted cheese and possibly some cheese crisps or gratins.  So we had a cheese melter installed.

There were still a few small things we wanted to do inside but, by-and-large we were ready to cook!  

On to the wrapping project...!