Article

Restaurant on wheels comes to life in a double-decker bus

Converting a double-decker bus into a mobile restaurant was a three-year project for Billy Lavelle in Carson City, Nevada. The bus features an upstairs dining room supported by a downstairs kitchen. The first floor also serves walk-up customers.

April 17, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

When Raley's offered him early retirement in 2015, Billy Lavelle thought the time was right to put his retail and foodservice experience to use in his own business. He had the funds to start a business, along with 36 years' experience with Sacramento, California-based Raley's, doing every conceivable job, from janitor to store manager.

Lavelle installed tables on the bus's upper level.

He knew food trucks were popular and he loved the food business. When he saw pictures of a double-decker bus serving as a mobile bar in the U.K., inspiration struck him. He envisioned a restaurant on wheels that not only served walk-up customers, but an upstairs dining room where customers could relax and enjoy a unique dining experience.

The concept for Bus Boy Mobile Cuisine in Carson City, Nevada took shape in his mind: a double decker bus with a dining room on the second level supported by a kitchen on the first level that also served customers outside.

"God just put it in my mind," Lavelle said. "It's unique. It's different."

Little did he know it would take him three years to bring his idea to fruition.

A three-year project begins

Building a food bus is not a simple process. Lavelle knew a double-decker bus serving food would be challenging from a regulatory standpoint. Local governments already had their hands full regulating food trucks. A bus with inside dining, he realized, wasn't something local officials would be anxious to deal with.

Nonetheless, he persisted.

Lavelle researched double-decker buses and came across a company in San Diego that imports buses from London. He purchased a 1988 Leyland Olympian bus for $25,000 that is 36 feet long and 15 feet tall that can hold 95 passengers. The bus has a Cummins L10 diesel engine and came with an odometer reading of 20,088 kilometers (12,482 miles), having previously been used for public transportation in the U.K.

Lavelle designed the kitchen on the first floor. In his tenure at Raley's, he had managed kitchens for delis, bakeries and specialty foods. He had also designed and manages a kitchen for his church. 

He presented his plan for the mobile restaurant to Carson City city officials, including the fire, planning, building and health departments. He even flew in a fire protection engineer from Las Vegas to meet with the local fire marshal to determine the materials to meet local fire code rules. The plan called for two electric fireplaces — one in the upstairs dining area and one on the first level — and a fire escape on the side of the bus.

The city required him to have a base for certified potable water and a place to dump gray water. The city approved the commercial kitchen at Calvary Chapel, which Lavelle operates on a volunteer basis for the church, as his kitchen depot.

"The city for the most part has been really good about helping me get through what I had to get through," he said. "Everybody was at the table. It made the process a lot better."

The reason the project took more than three years is that as the economy began to improve in 2015, the contractors he needed had limited time for him. The 4- by 8-foot kitchen on the first level had to be custom built, except for the oven, fryers, griddle and charbroiler.

A custom-built kitchen

Lavelle selected the kitchen appliances, which include an oven with three independent cooking chambers, two deep fryers, 36-inch flat top grill, 48-inch charbroiler, three-compartment sink, a freezer, refrigerator, produce sink, hand-washing sink, hood, counters, shelves, and a dumbwaiter that transports the food from the kitchen on the first deck to the dining room on the second.

The dumbwaiter manufacturer, Powerlift Dumbwaiters of Georgetown, California, videotaped its installation since it was the largest one they had ever built. Positioned in the center next to the stairway, the dumbwaiter prevents the possibility of accidents while hauling food up the stairway. The waiters take the food from the dumbwaiter and deliver it to the people at the tables, which have LED lights as well as overhanging lights.

There is no fountain beverage dispenser. Iced teas, sodas and bottled water are available in single-serve containers.

There is a digital menu board inside and another one outside for the two different menus the bus offers. 

Billy Lavelle receives moral support for his project from his mother-in-law, June Holland, and his wife, Laurie Lavelle.

Lavelle uses the Touchbistro POS. For special events, he sometimes has an employee take orders on an iPad. There is both an outdoor order window and a pickup window on the first floor. Customers receive receipts that serve as pickup tickets.

A 14-foot refrigerated trailer for food storage attaches to the bus. For sites that don't provide their own restrooms, Lavelle tows a restroom trailer with his pickup truck. 

In addition to the bus itself, Lavelle invested about $500,000 in the project, most of which he covered with his own funds.

Part two of this two-part series will explore how Lavelle introduced Bus Boy Mobile Cuisine to Carson City and the community's response.

About Elliot Maras

---

Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.