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.