My Food Truck Story

My Food Truck Story

Hi folks this is Sameer writing this week’s blog as Meagan is taking time off the rest of the month from the blog due to her working her butt off for Komen!

Shameless plug: http://www.info-komen.org/goto/MeaganSiddiquihttp://www.info-komen.org/goto/MeaganSiddiqui2011

I wanted to share our personal story on why we started Rickshaw Stop, our philosophy and the journey we took to get to this point in time. It all started way back in time the year was 2010 ;-) we are avid Anthony Bourdain fans, Meagan has read most of his books and I have been watching him since before No Reservations when he was a chain smoking, foul mouthed, bitter New Yorker on A Cook’s Tour. Anyways I digress (which I do)…he visited Austin’s food trucks in the summer of 2010 and we watched the episode in July. We have both grown up around families that cook whether its mom, an aunt or grandma so we were already hardcore foodies and had started taking food ventures (i.e. staycations based around food) since 2005 when Meagan lived in the Bay area (CA) for a short stint.  I had heard of the food truck scene in Austin but had no idea the magnitude until we watched THE No Reservations episode that needless to say changed our lives—we were instantly intrigued almost hooked. I think we went up to Austin THAT weekend and took our good friends the Lalla’s to the food trucks on S. Congress and we tried them all! LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT/BITE…pass the Tums please…

After that I was totally hooked. I'd wanted to start a business since 2008 when I got laid off (the 1^st time) and was bouncing around on ideas and then boom! It fell into my mouth—uh lap. ;o) So that trip changed our lives forever and we went home thinking how awesome food trucks were. The one thing that I personally loved about the food truck scene and Meagan agrees is how all walks of life order from a truck. Let me explain: when you go to a restaurant--whether it be "fancy-schmancy" or a dive--you will get the people that always go to those places. Once in a while we go to the $$$$ places for some special event but other than that we are not rich, so we can’t eat at Wildfish every day (DANG! Have you had their truffled mac & cheese?? If not you must!) At a food truck (park), the wealthy business man will be standing next to the budget wise family standing next to this…

Just kidding, but you get my point…it takes all kinds. Meagan and I are proud not to discriminate based on looks which works both ways not just for the outliers of society but the mainstream and the well off.

Back to the story…Over the next couple of months Meagan and I exhaustively researched the food truck scene in Austin & S.A., meaning, we ate at trucks ;-) No, really--it was a lot of work with the “field” research and sleepless nights of web searches while we both worked regular 40+ hour “day jobs” but it was all worth it because this work was for us and not corporate America. We went to farmers markets, watched every food truck show on TV and read all the sites and blogs we could find, plus we called a ton of food truck manufacturers all over the country.

WARNING: Sad part coming up… This past September, once Meagan and I knew we were serious about starting up a truck (still didn’t have a theme) we wanted to announce it to my (our) family. I was working the late shift that week so I wouldn’t get out of work until 11pm that Friday night. It was Eid (a religious day for Muslims) and I was going to tell my family that night since everyone was in town. I wanted to tell my Abbu (father) first and I couldn’t wait to get out of work, then while on a sales call I received a text telling me 911 call and when I did my brother-in-law told me my Abbu was having a heart attack and…man this is f-ing hard to type…dying…the very night I was going to tell the great news. Irony is a bitch. At least I saw and hugged him that morning before work.

This is my Abbu:

Once the haze of grief faded to a manageable point, I started the business plan up again and all that goes with it. Meagan and I made a breakthrough once we befriended Neil and Rachel from Wheelie Gourmet who are AWESOME people btw…Rachel gave me Cameron’s info and as they say, the rest is history!  

After the very first meeting with Cameron in October I knew it was on like DONKEY KONG! He and I clicked right away, it was weird, like we knew we were about to start something, My wife says a bromance HAHA so funny NOT! ;-P…Anyways after he told me he was going to open a food truck park I knew he was ahead of the S.A. curve and was on to something. I could see the gleam in his eyes…when a man is serious about something you know it by just looking at him.

Meet Cameron… See what I mean?

After many months we were ready to start building our kebab truck (still no name.) Cameron started on Boardwalk on Bulverde (aka 'BoB') in December and we were still looking for a trailer or truck. One day Cameron tells me there is this sweet truck sitting on this one corner, I got the number and went and saw it that day…

LOVE AT FIRST SITE!!! A 1978 Chevy Van ALL ALUMINUM!!! (Cameron didn’t know that part ;-P)

                   

It had some issues…but I didn’t care!

I made the offer and we bought it that weekend. We got it to the shop and the guys started on it right away, you can see all of the pics from the build on the Cruising Kitchens website. It took me and my buddy Fred from iDetail almost 40 hours of sanding, compounding and polishing to get the truck all shiny!

Before                                                                         After

                     

After a few bumps, bruises, cuts, scraps, sore muscles and truck breakdowns along the way (see previous blogs) we are now open and serving our delicious kebabs, samosas and baklava out of our Rickshaw Stop! Super proud moment, sound the horns!

She's not fully wrapped, but we will get that done by the end of the month. Ain’t she a beauty! Chris from Cold Fire Signs will have the truck done once we have the fascia on the shelf and then she will be fully dressed and ready for the party! 

To be continued...

Thanks for reading!

=) Deek

 

Food Trucks Helping to Find a Cure

It's a really great feeling when something you are truly passionate about aligns with the work that you do. I have been participating in the San Antonio Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure since 2000. The past 3 years, I have organized the team for my "day job" employer: Rackspace Hosting. I love everything the race represents and the tens of thousands of people who make the choice to walk or run the 5k each year make it all worthwhile. I consider myself lucky in that I have not (knock on wood) had any immediate family or friends stricken by breast cancer--unfortunately, I am in a tiny minority. :o(

When I found out that the owner of Boardwalk on Bulverde's (BoB) brother, Tyler was the president of the San Antonio of Komen, it wasn't hard for me to believe. The Davies brothers just seem like that would be something right up their alley. And when Cameron made the decision to have an event to support Susan G Komen at BoB, Sameer & I were very excited.

First, we contacted our friend, Fred Camarillo, owner of iDetail of San Antonio to see if he would be willing to donate a car detailing package for the Silent Auction that Cameron was planning. He was in! Then, Sameer went to HEB and snatched up 6 bottles of Gregg Popovich's new Black & Silver wine as our donation to the auction. Now all we had to do was serve our kebabs, samosas & baklava all day on Saturday!

At the end of the day, we (along with each of the trucks at BoB) donated 10% of our profits to Komen, and the wine & detail package brought in $100 each. The event overall raised just under $1800 total - not to shabby for being organized in less than a week!

We're hoping BoB makes this a recurring event for the park - we think everyone really enjoyed the music, complimentary *pink* beer from Freetail Brewing and the fun & games from DJ Marco. If you made it out to BoB on the 9th, you should email Cameron and let him know what you thought about the event!

For the cure -
Meagan & Sameer Siddiqui

We Don't Care What They Say, Launching a Food Truck is Hard Work!

Rickshaw Stop's grand opening was a success at the Boardwalk on Bulverde (BoB) this past weekend!

<<  Insert insanely over-the-top, grandiose amounts of cheers, clapping, standing-O's, toasting, high-fives, chest bumps, you name it, here  >>

We had SO much fun interacting with all of our customers and serving you our authentic Pakistani kebabs, samosas and family-recipe baklava! Our apologies for and aside from the 1 or 2 lengthy waits and the accidental omission of an ordered item or 2, we feel it went really well. (If you have suggestions or comments on how we can make your interaction with Rickshaw Stop better, please drop us a note at info@rickshawstop-sa.com - we are always open to feedback!)

To be completely honest, my husband Sameer and I have been working our actual butts off to get our truck launched. Seriously - we've both lost over 10 lbs in the past month due to skipped meals, tons of exercise polishing/cleaning the truck, you name it. Sameer's mom, aunt and uncle are all severely sleep deprived due to the long hours they've spent perfecting/scaling the family recipes and preparing all of the kebabs and samosas--not to mention all of their hard work on the truck serving them up to our customers. But without all 5 of us putting in 110%, our launch definitely wouldn't have gone as smoothly or successfully as it did.

Sameer & I have poured our collective blood, sweat and tears into our truck for almost 2 months now. We've suffered bruises, cuts, headaches, sore muscles, aching backs. We had our "kebab tasting" at BoB back in February with the hope that we would be able to launch in mid-March. However, once we tested all of our equipment, it turned out that our grill is a behemoth and we needed to have an industrial-strength exhaust fan system ordered/delivered/installed to suck all of the hot air out of the truck!

Once we got our "extreme exhaust fan package" installed and tested, it was time for the inspection. We knew that by having our truck's kitchen fabricated at Cruising Kitchens, we wouldn't have much to worry about--Cameron and his crew are pretty much the South Texas authority on how things need to be done inside a mobile kitchen. However, we weren't expecting the Fire Department to be personally involved. As it turns out, the mobile food truck inspections have changed in Bexar county since last year, and now they involve the actual fire department inspecting your truck. It also turns out that they are citing laws based on the Railroad for how they inspect food trucks??! (This will be a blog unto itself in the next couple weeks, I just wanted to throw this info out there for any of you who are looking to get your inspection soon--turns out the Fire Dept has initially failed ALL of the trucks who have come in for inspection since they became involved in the process.) Needless to say, we had to go back to the shop and have Cameron make some adjustments to where/how our propane tank and fire extinguishers were located/mounted/labeled before they would pass us. (These are things that would have easily passed last year.)

Now, I will attempt to catch you up to where we are today in an easy-to-read, bulletted time line:

• As soon as the truck passed inspection on Friday (whoo hoo!), Sameer dropped it off at Coldfire Signs to have as many of the graphics installed as possible before 5:00 pm.
• We picked up the truck to drive it to Boardwalk on Bulverde where we were going to park it and stock it for our opening day on Saturday.
• At Wetmore & Thousand Oaks, the truck started acting "funny."
• By the time Wetmore turned into Bulverde, Sameer looked like he was driving a hydrolicked-up truck from a Cheech & Chong movie--it was bouncing up and down and up and down--The clutch had completely gone out.
• As the truck pulled into the entrance of BoB, it totally died! Turned out the battery wasn't being charged in addition to the clutch going out. 
• Disclaimer: Our truck is a 1978 Chevy with what we're assuming to be over 500,000 miles that hasn't received any real TLC until we bought it, so these things are bound to happen.
• Here's an awesome video of the guys from the other trucks jumping in to push our truck out of the driveway where we could charge up the battery: 

So to recap, the night before our big launch, our truck pretty much died 50 feet from the finish line. But never fear! Scott from 210 Customs jumped in and was able to charge the battery enough to get it started and pulled into our spot at BoB. Here's a video of us pulling the truck into our new spot:

• Saturday, we were able to launch on time and we served food until 9:45 that night!
• Sunday, we started on time once again and served until 4:00 pm with the other trucks with no major issues to report. :)

So, now you are as caught up on our Grand Opening Weekend festivities as we are. I hope our experience doesn't scare you away from your dream to own your own mobile food truck. :) We have honestly loved every minute of the at-times stressful, challenging process. But this is OUR business. It's here because of our internal drive, ambition and love of the concept. We have a passion for introducing the people of San Antonio to a cuisine they probably have never had the opportunity to try. We love talking with our customers and getting to know them. In fact, the next time you're at BoB, stop by and say hi! You don't have to buy anything--but chances are, you'll walk away with at least piece of baklava or some samosas. Our food is just something you've gotta try. :)