Independent Operators
How a food truck is driving an enhanced in-house dining experience
A growing Atlanta breakfast bar brand deploys a food truck to help support its brick-and-mortar success.
March 28, 2022 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
What should a restaurateur do when wait times for in-house orders are increasing and take-out orders are exploding?
For Gocha Hawkins, head chef of Gocha's Breakfast Bar, the answer was easy: Set up a food truck next to her Cascade, Atlanta location, one of her two breakfast bars in Georgia.
The Atlanta store launched in 2019 and her Fayetteville bar opened in January 2020. The food truck, which operates the same hours as the Atlanta location, is 22-feet long and wrapped with an image of Hawkins' face and a logo.
The truck menu is the same as her restaurant menu, offering specialties such as shrimp and grits, Impossible burgers, chicken and waffles and "Better Than Yo Momma" biscuits — all from Hawkins' recipe book.
The truck is proving valuable in meeting the growing take-out restaurant workload and helping to reduce in-house order wait times.
Hawkins' culinary success comes after nearly three decades in the beauty industry, as a hairstylist to some big names, including Beyonce, Drake, Serena Williams, Nicki Minaj and Kandi Burruss. She also consulted for the cheerleading squads of the Orlando Magic, Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons and the Atlanta Hawks.
She's planning to launch Gocha's Tapas Bar this spring in Atlanta, offering a menu boasting shishito peppers, stuffed crab mushrooms, cauliflower tacos, lobster rolls and Impossible slides.
The tapas bar will be located at 5829 Campbellton Road SW, featuring an interior space of over 1,500 square feet and a 2,100-square-foot patio.
Food Truck Operator reached out to Hawkins in an email interview to learn more about the food truck inception, lessons learned in launching a mobile restaurant and her advice to other restaurateurs considering the same strategy.
Q. What inspired the food truck element to your business and when did it launch?
A. There were many factors. Being that our flagship location is only 2,000 square feet and the kitchen is less than 700 square feet, we would get overwhelmed with to-go and take-away orders. The food truck was to enhance our guest experience of excellent service and minimal wait times. We made the decision to purchase a food truck to mainly focus on to-go orders and to-do events around the city. The food truck would give us an additional kitchen, which was needed. Before I opened my brick-and-mortar location, I wanted to start with the food truck and go to different night clubs and offer breakfast. However, a friend talked me out of it! Now, here we are 3.5 years later.
Q. What was your process in getting it going? Did you have one made custom or buy one and retrofit? Were there any specific features you wanted in the food truck?
A. I purchased the food truck brand new with only five miles on it. I did not want to make a huge investment on something used — and inherit someone else's problems down the line. I had it custom made to mimic the brick-and-mortar's current kitchen layouts. I have everything that was in both locations. It's really the brick and mortar on wheels!
Q. Were there any challenges in getting the food truck up and running, such as equipment or permits?
A. Getting the truck was fairly easy. It wasn't as cheap as I was thinking but definitely nothing more than filling out paperwork as I have had to do for all my locations. We had some challenges early on with small things, such as overloading the electrical system, not knowing when to refill propane tanks due to no gauges telling us, learning how to drive it, when to change the oil on the generator and how to secure everything when driving. Those have been the biggest challenges but those were not hard to get resolved.
Q. How are you handling truck staffing? Are you using employees from the physical location or is it a dedicated truck-only team?
A. At this time, we are pulling from our flagship store of employees while trying to figure it out as much as we can due to the employee shortages. Our fo
od truck is extremely demanding and requires five people to run effectively. We do have a dedicated manager just for the food truck.
Q. Any tips or advice you can give to other future food truck operators? Lessons learned, or is there something you would have done differently?
A. If I had any advice for future truck owners it would be don't skimp or rush over the things needed toward your investment.
Please make sure to get what you need to run it successfully and ask questions when getting it built. Get a temperature-controlled grill.
Make sure you have enough insurance to cover your equipment and truck just in case something happens that you are not expecting.
Photos provided.
About Judy Mottl
