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!