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...!

Meet Grillin N Chillin: Buying our First Food Truck

It has been more than a month from our last lead, but eventually, Craigslist came through again. This listing was for a 16' "almost new" trailer crammed full of useful equipment. The owner had just lowered the price from $80k to $60k. Still well above what we wanted to spend, but I called the owner, anyway.

He told me lots about the trailer. It had been custom made for him in 2016 (less than 2 years ago) by a well-respected local (Phoenix) builder for $95,000(!!). Food Trucking was just something he had always wanted to do, but now he wanted to go back to his old job as a banker. He needed to cash-out his investors and could not carry. Another deal on it had just fallen through at $60k.

I told him we had cash but that his price was out of our budget.  He asked if we would be more interested if he could drop the price "significantly".  I said "Maybe" and that I would like to come down and see it. He said "sure" and we set up a time for a few days later.

In the meantime, I connected with the trailer builder Pat from Stratabella in Phoenix, who confirmed all the information the owner had given me.  He seemed genuinely nice and was very helpful, saying he'd be happy to check the trailer out and could do any modifications we might want to have made, when the time came.

We met as planned at the storage yard where the trailer was being parked. One tire was very low, but the outside looked in solid shape. 

He opened it up, and I was impressed. Lots of like-new equipment, plenty of refrigeration, good layout. 

I poked around, asked lots of questions and told him we were 100% serious and ready to buy, had been looking at other possibilities, but were also in no hurry.

He seemed eager to sell and kept pressing for an offer. I told him that his asking price was fair, but just not in our budget. I really liked the trailer, but it was out of our league. He still kept pressing, so I finally told him our budget was $40k. He looked like he would be sick. 

"You can't do any better at all?", he asked.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we can".

(Sigh) "Well, I'll talk to my partners and let you know what they say."

So I left, a little shell-shocked that we were still in the running for this unit, and headed back to the ranch.

The next day, the trailer owner called. He said his partners just could not come down to our price. (I was not surprised). BUT, he said, if you can come up to $45k, we have a deal. (from $80k to $45k? Ok, now I WAS surprised!!)

"Wow. I don't know if we can swing that." I told him "Let me see if I can get Kathryn to go for it."

She said, "Yes". We'd already discussed the possibility of coming up a bit more, both realizing what a great deal it was.  When I called him back, told him we had a deal IF they could do it for $44k and he accepted!  So we made an appointment to go complete the purchase and take the title a few days later.

The transaction went fairly smoothly (banks can be so fussy to work with), and by noon we were the proud new owners of an awesome little almost-new mobile food kitchen. The whole search and purchase had taken less than 6 weeks!  I guess it was just meant to be.

On my way home with our new food trailer!

The Hunt for Our First Food Truck

The search started slowly. Just exploring the market, seeing what was out there. In all honesty, we'd only seen a few food trucks up close and needed to learn a lot more before committing to this new venture.

We'd been to a few food truck rallies and chatted up the owners, but they were usually too busy for much more than a short exchange. None of them had invited us inside for a look. 

We had decided that a trailer would work best for us. We already had a good towing vehicle in my F-350, and the thought of buying someone else's truck mechanical problems was not appealing. 

So, we started looking at online classified ads and regularly checked in with Craigslist. What we found was not encouraging. 

We found lots of old, really beat or empty shells of food trucks/trailers priced at about what we had hoped to spend for a turnkey rig. Most of the ones that looked good enough to consider were in the $75k and up range. Time for an expectational adjustment.

We found an ad for a local food trailer for sale, contacted the owner and made an appointment to see it. He said it was a 16-footer, which was in the size range we were looking, and that he wanted $45k, also in our range. We were excited!

Unfortunately, the trailer was cramped and in rough shape (service window falling out, plumbing not working) and had limited equipment included in the price. He also said that it was his partner who wanted to sell (he was reluctant) so maybe they wouldn't sell.  Fine by us as we could avoid telling him we really weren't interested, anyway.

Then there was a 21' trailer in Chandler with some equipment (already sold), and another 14' one that was basically the shell of a food trailer ($21k), no thank-you!

The next opportunity came in a Craigslist post. A newer (5 years old) 20' trailer, bright yellow and nicely outfitted, asking: $65,000. It was in Las Vegas, but we could travel for the right deal. Unfortunately, it had also been sold when I called.

The hunt continues...