This content details the rapid success and operational strategies of "Goody Soul Kitchen," a food truck that achieved significant revenue within months of launch, highlighting lessons learned in entrepreneurship, niche market identification, and operational efficiency.
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This food truck pulls in
$22,000 a week and this guy started it
just seven months ago. Yeah. So I
remember just seeing my first customer
and I was in the truck like shaking like
I don't even know how to cook. So
roughly how much did it take to get
started? So we spent a,000 for the
trailer. Get out of here. $1,000 for the
trailer. Yeah. Yeah. We actually um used
a platform called So open at night we
had about 120 people and your viewers
can copy my playbook if they need to.
Let me get this straight. You're only
spending 10 hours a week on this
business? Yeah. How? Wait, so if you're
working 10 hours a week and the truck's
making $22,000 a week, right? Mhm.
That's like $2,200 an hour. Oh, I never
thought of it that way. Who else is in
the wrong business right now? I'm out
here in Texas to uncover the secrets of
one of America's fastest growing food
trucks. So, we just come from a lot of
poverty and honestly, I was just never
hit anything. I couldn't get a job due
to my past, so I was kind of forced into entrepreneurship.
entrepreneurship.
Tell us a little bit about Goody Soul
Kitchen and what makes you guys special.
Okay. So, Goody Soul Kitchen, we are the
only late night soul food spot in
America. So, nobody else sells lamb
chops, fried chicken, fried catfish
after 12 a.m. Gotcha. And how long ago
did you start? 7 months. No background
in food. Never worked in the kitchen. I
mean, your menu is pretty
straightforward. Give us a quick snap. I
know we'll dive into that a little bit
later. So, it consists of four proteins,
four sides, a cornbread. We kind of
dissected the business and we walked
around to a bunch of food trucks and
we're like, "Nobody wants to wait 20
minutes for food." So, what we kind of
did, we were like, we're going to figure
out how to get you guys soul food in a
wispan of 5 minutes and it's fresh food.
Awesome. Tell us where we are. What's
the plan for today? So, right now we're
at Restaurant Depot. We usually do our
shopping on Mondays and Tuesdays and we
usually go in here, spend our money,
take our food to the prep, and then we
prep our food out on Tuesdays and
Wednesdays and get ready for the work
week on Thursday. Tell us a little bit
about the shopping experience. You don't
often do what the chefs do. What's kind
of the funky quirky part about that? So,
when I'm doing it, you know, I'm like
real strategic, real strict on it. Like
I'll look at our numbers. I'll sometimes
cut that. But when your chef goes in
there, they're just like, I'm getting
what I need for the next eight days.
We're not even open eight days, right?
But I don't blame them. Like I said,
these guys are good at what they do. So
I kind of let them, you know, do their
thing and stuff like that. But I just
try to really keep the budget where it
is, but sometimes you can't get around
that with them. So why this place? I'm
just curious. Give us a couple snippets.
You've got everything you need here to
run the food truck. Yeah, everything. So
most likely except for the lamb. That's
the only thing that we don't get here.
But um I love restaurant. Like I said,
it's one of those places where the
pricing is not that bad. Coming here,
the people help you. People make sure
things are like put together for you and
stuff like that. And I just love it.
Like you get everything here. We
literally source everything from here.
That's awesome. How much are we spending
on a typical, you know, week before
opening hours? We started out back in
September was spending only like 800
bucks and we were like, "All right, we
thought that was a lot." But now we're
up to that 3,000 to 4,000 uh dollar
range. How many people does that feed
day one? Uh approximately probably a
thousand cuz we do three a night. Oh,
you're right. You're talking about the
whole week. So, um yeah, around 300
people a night. Let's talk about your
experience. Do you come from an
entrepreneurial background? So, I didn't
come from an entrepreneurial background.
I've seen a lot of people doing their
own business and stuff like that, but I
never understood what was going on
growing up. So, you know, I was just
like, okay, I thought that they were
either inherited or somebody gave it to
them. Yeah. So, as far as building
anything, I never had any experience or
anything like that doing it. What did
you learn? What what resources of
getting into it not knowing anything?
It's no plan B. You know,
entrepreneurship is you jump out a plane
and you build a parachute on the way
down. Yeah. Especially when it came to
the food industry. Like, I know nothing
about it. All right. Well, let's head
out to the prep kitchen and show you
guys how everything's done. Yep. Cool.
All right. So, this is the prep kitchen.
Yeah. Curious a little bit about food
prep in general. How much is done here
as opposed to the trailer? Okay. And
what do you pay for the kitchen? Just
curious. So about 90% of the business
starts here and then the next 10% is
just being at the truck preparing the
food and stuff like that, handing it
out. We did start out at 25 an hour and
we're typically here probably about 15
to 20 hours a week. Mhm. And then we pay
a monthly fee just for like storage and
stuff like that, too. So it averages to
be around like 3,000 a month. All right,
let's do some fried chicken prep. Yep.
Here are the things that we kind of put
in there. We got a lemon pepper. We got
a Cajun seasoning, a mantra chicken. We
going to go again with some hot sauce.
And then we going to go with some
mustard. So later on uh day one, we're
going to talk about ask you for like a
step-by-step blueprint on getting
started, right? But before we get into
that, give us just a quick breakdown on
startup costs and how do you how you
spent the money and where. Okay, so our
$1,000 was spent on just basically
closing docks and stuff like that on the
Clickly thing once we which is the
trailer purchase. Yeah, the financing
side of things. Tell us in 30 seconds
what is that? Cuz $1,000 for a trailer.
I mean typically they're what 80 60
grand sometimes for around that. Our
first one was it came out to be 43.
Okay. and then they financed 100% of it
and we have to pay a thousand for basic
closing costs and stuff like that. Click
lease is a like a really good tool that
like entrepreneurs should take advantage
of. You got good credit. If you had 680
credit score, they'll give you the
trailer for as little as, you know, $0
down. And then after that, we went on to
financing the food with a uh Gordon
credit card. We filled out that credit
card application. We got that on the
net30 and they gave us a $5,000 line of
credit for the food also. So, we took
the money that we did have saved up. We
spent a lot of our money on marketing in
a roll out. Take me back to day one.
First day of opening. How much did you
guys make? What what what was going
through your head at that point? It was
It's always exciting when you um when
you see something come, you know, the
light. But um our first day was about at
2,600 almost three grand, huh? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We had a really good line of
stuff like that. Soft opening type
crowd, family, friends thing. It was
cool. And you did sort of a trial before
the opening date. Oh, that was our
tasting. Just tasting. That was the
first thing you've ever done, right?
Yeah, it was a nice event. Um, we we we
invited a bunch of content creators to
get a bunch of eyes on the business.
That's something that contribute that
contribute to a lot of our success.
People seeing it, people asking
questions, people thinking like, hey,
what is this? And then just having like
late night soul food, you know, people
seeing that's coming, you know, so
they're like, I just want to try this
and try it. That's awesome. Guys, if you
want to hear incredible insights from
entrepreneurs like Dewan here, make sure
to like and subscribe. You know, we
greatly appreciate it. All right, so
chicken's done. This is usually what
marinates at least a day. Yep. And you
guys do this on a Monday, Tuesday. a
Tuesday. So, we're going to marinate for
Wednesday, then open up on Thursday. For
sure. All right. What's next? Show us uh
the sauces, maybe. Yeah. Our famous
honey jerk sauce. Cool. Let's go check
Take us through your month overmonth
revenue. Okay. So, when we first
started, we were seeing anywhere between
that 4,000 a month range. No, just
barely breaking even. Yeah. But again,
we were just starting. We were trying to
figure out, you know, flowing flows and
things like that. Mhm. And then going
into around like December, that's when
we start seeing that 7 to 6,000 a month,
I mean, a week, I'm sorry, range. And
then, um, after that, now we're anywhere
between like 80,000 a month right now.
Wow. Incredible. I mean, profit margins
that you guys have been able to achieve
are absolutely phenomenal. So, stay
tuned to hear more about that. Let's
talk about bringing in new customers.
What did you do? Share with us some of
the experiences you learned. I would say
just to tell people to do a roll out. A
lot of people don't understand what a
rollout is, but I'm like, you know, get
on social media, start posting. This is
coming. Start building that
anticipation. Throw a taste in. And even
if you in a community to where you're
saying, "Hey, I don't feel like people's
going to taste this food." Get on there
and get on your Facebook group and put
together a taste and a free tasting and
have people try the food. After that,
the next thing I would do is get on
social media and start posting the food,
right? So, what we do is for every
single truck that we do roll out, we do
a food shoot. We cook all the food, then
we basically take pictures of the food,
and then we post it on social media.
another gym is to where it doesn't cost
a lot of money, but run run ads behind
your uh food to where you can get on
Instagram and spend about five bucks uh
five bucks a day and just run some ads
on just basically getting people to see
your food. All right, take us through
the first couple months, right? What was
life like? What where was your head at
as an entrepreneur, as a business owner?
What were some of the biggest challenges
you were faced with? Month one of three,
it was us just figuring everything out,
like failing, failing, failing, failing,
failing. We had to take a step back and
look at what we were kind of doing,
right? right? Cuz we were just running
like chickens with our head cut off just
to get open. And I remember being in it
just like soon as we would close, I
would be I would have so much relief
like I just got through another day.
When I hired that consultant and once I
did that, everything just streamlined.
So the consultant came in after 3 months
of chaos essentially after 3 months of
chaos and fixed our recipe books, fixed
our staffing, told our staff how to
actually clean things and stuff like
that. And then from there everything
just kind of like took off. Another odd
thing was we never had a problem getting
customers. Like we always had customers.
We just needed to figure out how to feed
the customers. So, at that point, I was
like, "Okay, I got to figure something
out." Yeah. All right. Day one, you
ready for some blitz? Yeah, let's do it.
All right. So, what's a successful food
truck concept you wish you had come up
with? Pizza. What's the best part of
owning a food truck business? Freedom.
What's the worst part of owning a food
truck business? People. If you could
serve any entrepreneur at your truck,
who would it be and why? Keith Lee.
What's the most expensive quote unquote
fun thing you've ever bought and how
much? expensive fun quote fun thing I
ever bought. Is that the car? Yeah. Is
that the Bentley outside? Yeah. Yeah. I
hate that car, but All right. What's one
co quote you live by? John 13:7. For
what you do not know now. Later on, you
understand? Amen to that. [Music]
Oh, hey, sorry. Uh, you got the chicken,
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What other systems you want to mention
that you've implemented here in this
kitchen that streamline everything in
the business? Um outside of, you know,
the PAR system that we have in place to
make sure that, you know, it's it's
easier for our chef to transport things
onto the truck. I will say the prepping
process. Mhm. We typically prep
everything on one day. So now it's not
hindering on the staff and like burning
them out during the week too. So that's
um something that we kind of put in
place too to where all of our stuff is
prepped down and situated in all in one
day. How long does the prep take for the
chef? Maybe that's a question for him.
But Tuesday, Wednesday prep, Thursday
open, please say. No, we prep on one
day. So they're probably here 8 hours, 9
hours. Not bad. I mean, just give it a
full day and then you're ready to rock
and roll. Yeah. For the weekend. Mhm.
Well, I'm excited to go check out the
food truck, make some food. Let's head
out there.
How long did it take you to go from
idea, actual food truck, and do you need
to be a chef to get into this industry?
Honestly, you don't need to be a chef,
right? I did a food truck. It took me
about 2 weeks to come up with the idea.
It was at the point to where I was like,
I told you I was done with tacos, bro. I
was done with tacos and I'm like, we
need some type of food where I can eat
on a late night. I can go get something
that's good. Brought the idea to my
friend. He said, let's do it. And from
there, we rode. That's awesome. Yeah. I
hope you guys are inspired by what he's
saying because it's obvious that anybody
and everybody can get started. Yep. For
those that want to go from idea to food
truck with minimal capital. Mhm. Give us
a step-by-step blueprint. What would you
do? Oh, first, like I said, I would look
at a deficit in basically the area that
you in as far as food deficit. Our niche
was, you know, late night soul food. It
was something where we like, okay, we
need food at this certain amount of
time, right? The next thing I would do
is I will find the capital. That's kind
of like the easy part if you understand
it. If your credit is good over at 680
or that 700 mark, go out to your local
banks, find the capital, go out to the
guys who build the trailers and ask
them, do they do in-house financing? A
lot of these guys actually will rent
these trucks out for you, too. If you're
somebody who can't find the financing or
don't have the credit, they'll rent the
truck out to you as also. Okay. Um,
after that, you know, I will source a
chef, have that chef source out my menu,
and then have that chef also source out
my employees. And once I'm done there,
then my job is just to get the marketing
side done and then go from there. Why
did you actually go with a trailer as
opposed to a food truck? My thought
process was this, right? I never like to
connect two things to where my business
can actually shut down. So, when you
have a food truck, if anything breaks on
that truck, you're shut down for that
day. And I was like, I didn't want to
get involved with that. Now, the trailer
is a little bit more work cuz you do
have to hook this thing up, empty
everything, and move it, take it to the
commissary when you need to take it.
But, however, it's more suitable for the
long run. If my truck does break down,
just go get a U-Haul, still pull this
thing, it'll still operate. Well, on
that note, what is your maintenance cost
then for the trailer as opposed to what
the truck could have been? Well,
honestly, these these propanes, they run
me $170 a week. They come out and, you
know, they change it for that. But
again, we really never have a lot of
breakdowns. So, no maintenance besides
the re, you know, the propane that you
besides the propane. Yeah. Anything else
is like kind of small maintenance stuff
out there. A maintenance company does
charge us $125 every time they come out
just so they can make their money, but
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All right, let's order. I think we're
all hungry. What's the bestselling item,
by the way, here? Um, we're pretty much
known for our crack fried chicken.
That's like the huge jumbo wings. The
macaroni and cheese is really uh also
good. I like the southern fried cabbage,
but the collar greens kind of get
everybody too sometimes. All right. Um
so if I'm you, I'm getting the chicken,
man. All right. We get one chicken,
please. Fried fried chicken. You got it,
my friend. With two sides. What would
you like with that, my friend? Collard
greens and then uh camera guy. What do
you want? Mac and cheese. Mac and
cheese. All right. Let's do mac and
cheese for the camera guys.
Perfect. And uh can I add a good goodies
juice onto your tip? Yeah. No, I'd love
to try. Do you guys actually make this
yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. It's all in
house. What is it? So, this is going to
be our house lemonade today. It's kind
of got like an orange kick to it.
We like to vary the flavors. So, come
back and check us out for sure. Well,
yeah. Especially like what 95° out here
right now. This just goes down so well.
For this heat. Yeah. Question for you as
far as what's the average ticket price
then when people order? I mean, people
it's usually around that 28 to $30 mark.
So, you're definitely on the more
expensive side for food trucks, right?
That's that's pretty obvious. Talk to us
about the pricing strategy. It was on
the expensive side when I first started,
but then as you kind of run the model
and you see things like that, you notice
that you're not getting food like this
at the 12:00, right? So, you got to pay
a little bit more. And then outside of
it, we also look at our location and we
did studies of basically the average
income around here, too. So, we are
downtown. We are like near like a lot of
uh clubs and stuff like that too. So, we
do understand that, you know, these
people tend to have a little bit more of
a higher income. Any pricing strategies
for others in other markets? Maybe
serving different kinds of food? What's
the best way? Definitely location,
definitely time. Always look at your
timing. Like if you're someone who's
basically open 7 days a week and you're
open between that the healthy hours of
11 to like 9:00, then you can't really
price that much cuz everybody else is
open during that time. But if you're
someone who's looking for, you know, how
to get the prices up a little bit more,
I would looking at that midnight crowd,
you know, from 12 a.m. to probably that
3:00 a.m. crowd, and that's when you're
able to, you know, hike your prices a
little bit. But also checking out your
location. Like, well, before we got
here, we studied this location. So, we
not we didn't also just look at it and
say, "Oh, we want to move here." We also
look at and look at the medium income
and look at the income of the residents
and stuff around her too. How much are
you spending on marketing today month
seven and how has it evolved compared to
day one? We really don't spend a lot of
money on marketing like outside of our
roll out and outside of that plan right
there that we had in you know we just
really strategically understand how to
work social media to our best advantage
and we also cross utilize you know
services between other influences and
stuff like that. So our marketing budget
right now is set at 200 a week but that
200 a week could be put in between new
uniforms for employees. Let's just say
we we got some yard signs out making
sure that you know we got some posters
and stuff like that out. But you know
the way we try to strategize on social
media is our marketing department is you
required to post four times a day. The
next thing we do is we work on that reel
that one master reel a day. Right. And
that master reel usually go out on our
Thursdays which will bring that crowd in
if we go viral on that uh that Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. Gotcha. Right. So
we focus on that and we also watch our
professional dashboard on our Instagram.
We make sure that it stays over half a
million people viewing the page at all
times. Mhm. When it starts to drop below
that, that's when we know we got to
start to do some other things. Yep. And
so, no Facebook. You haven't mentioned
that once. No Google PPC, no Yelp, none
of that stuff. No, just Insta. Instagram
and Tik Tok. Gotcha. All right. Well, it
sounds like the chicken's done. Let's go
give it a shot. Gotcha. Yeah. You're
like, where you get a doll from? We got
an order ready for up flip. That's right
here. All righty, my man. Check this
out. What do we got? Come close. We got
We got that crack fried chicken, mac and
cheese, and collard greens. Our staple
right here. We're going to finish it
with that crack seasoning. Okay, let's
do it.
Yeah, look at all that love. Half of
it's going on the floor, but that's part
of the seasoning
process. Everything gets seasoned your
goodies. We finish off with a little
parsley. Okay, absolutely
perfect. Love myself some fried chicken,
my friends. Thank you so much. Here you
are. All right, here's a closeup. Look
at that mac and cheese. Looks bomb.
Yeah. Damn. I wish you gave me a bite.
What kind of cheese are we using here?
Oh, that's a smoked Luna. That's a
cheddar. That's a shark cheddar. Oh,
yeah. One of the cheesiest mac and
cheese I've ever had. Yeah. But you you
can't have too much cheese in mac and
cheese. Yeah. Yeah. What's the rent at
this location? What's the story? How did
you get this place if you're willing to
share? Okay. We paid 1,500 a month and
then our security deposit was $3,000. So
that gets us uh free electricity and
then we also get water too. I get I got
this location in a weird situation,
right? Um, I used to rent this building
out. Like I used to have a a sports bar
where I got into a bad business deal and
then I end up having a relationship with
a landlord and told her I was starting a
food truck and she was sketchy at first
like you already failed on that
business. So why would you do another
one? I'm like I'll be back to start
entrepreneur man. Exactly. And then
that's how that's how I got this
location. I think it's a very, you know,
lucrative location especially on a
Friday night on a Saturday night. It
gets really packed around here. On that
note, talk to us about what you look for
in new locations. Now, from the things
that I look for now is like free rent
because a lot of these guys will give
you free rent. A lot of these uh bars uh
sport I mean sports bars, beer gardens
and stuff like that, they will give you
free rent and give you free electricity
as long as you bring the food. So, I
kind of didn't know that, but now that
I'm shopping around my next food truck,
a lot of these guys are offering just
completely free rent and they're just
saying, "Hey, just pull up, cook good
food, handle a large volume of people,
and you guys can stay here for free."
So, you're looking for busy places,
open, super laid, uh beer gardens, more
of just like bars and stuff like that. I
stay away from food truck parks. The
reason why I stay away from those
because it's too saturated. I don't want
to be where near anybody else or doing
anything with anybody else. Makes sense.
So, I kind of stay away from those guys.
Talk to us about how childhood shaped
your mindset today as an entrepreneur.
My childhood growing up was like pretty
rough and stuff like that. So, it was
like a little different than like the
normal child, you know, when it came to
growing up. As far as like I was just
speak on like the support system like I
didn't have a lot of support when I did
a lot of great things. So, it's shifting
that over to entrepreneur. I don't need
a bunch of people clapping for me to get
something going, right? I'm typically
able to build a business from the ground
up and get it going and get it to, you
know, where I need to get it to without
a bunch of support and a bunch of help
doing it. Yeah. You're not afraid of
failure. I'm not afraid of any of that.
I mean, growing up, how often did that
happened that kind of shaped your
resilience today? You're like, whatever
happens, whatever, I'll get through.
Yeah. I mean, ideally, as weird as it
kind of sounds, I never really failed at
anything. Like, I was clear in
basketball 2011. I was really good at
football. My parents just never seen me
play sports. So I wasn't as other kids
would have their parents walk them out
on senior day and stuff like that. I
never kind of had that, right? So my
coaches would kind of be that support
system and stuff like that for me. So it
wasn't to the fact that I'm not scared
to fail. It was just to the fact that I
always operated at excellent, you know,
and did big things. I just never really
had support in doing it. So I'm able to
do a lot of things behind closed doors,
too, and not showcase it to the world
and stuff like that and take my
accomplishes and still be humble and
stuff like that, too. All right. With
all your success today, do you think
money buys happiness? No. What does it
buy for you? Convenience. freedom. My
happiness sits in, you know, the being
able to impact others to do bigger
things and stuff like that. Seeing
people grow and just, you know, seeing
more of my kids just grow up and not
have to worry about a bunch of stuff,
too. So, true. Effort, my happiness lies
in that. Talk about your leadership
style and how it's evolved over the last
couple years. Anything you want to
highlight? This business has definitely
grown me a lot, you know, as an
entrepreneur. Um, you're dealing with
people. I'm dealing with a team of five.
I'm dealing with people who work really
long hours, you know, so I got to have a
sensitive subject to where, you know,
sometimes they're tired. I try to be
more of an ease guy. Hey, if there's a
problem, come to me. Try to be solution
based to when, you know, when I first
came in this thing, I'm just like
either, you know, you're doing a job or
you're not, you're getting fired, right?
But you you start you start to realize
you can't fire everybody, right? Because
you need people to run this business.
So, understand the delegation side of
things, too, right? If you got somebody
good, you need to pay them. A lot of
people get in the industry and they say,
"Hey, well, you know, they want to put
their ego aside and say they want to use
their ego and say, "Well, I can just
find another chef." It it doesn't happen
that way because once you get another
chef, your food cost uh fluctuates and
then your food tasting fluctuates too.
So, you want to keep the same exact prep
guide and the same chef as long as you
can and that's the secret to keeping
consistency in your food. Mhm. How was
the learning curve for you? We were like
thrown in the fire. Like I said, when we
started this business, we started with a
chef and he kind of like walked out on
us. So, it was me and my partner Jessica
and you know, we kind of just were
thrown in the fire and we kind of just
fell forward. You know, people don't
understand what it takes to go into this
business model. Even though it's a food
truck is way harder than a restaurant.
And I don't think people understand
that. It's a lot of moving pieces here,
right? You go from here, you go to a
prep kitchen and then you go to a truck
and then you got to work on storage.
When in a restaurant, you go from here
to a restaurant, everything's there. You
can cook it and get it out like that.
So, I was invested in it. So, I had to
really keep it the flow or I was going
to lose the money. But ideally, I
understand it. If you could change one
or two things about your journey, what
would it be and why? If I could change
one thing, it would be, you know, more
of hiring like the chef, understanding
the industry to where chefs do come in
and consult you. Like this guy I got
behind me, Aaron, he basically will come
in, build out a menu, hire your staff,
train your staff, go to your prep
kitchen, sex your prep up, and do all
those things for you for a small price.
Right. When in the beginning, I was just
failing and just failing, just failing,
just failing. So, I finally figured out,
wait, I can hire somebody to come and do
this part. And after that, everything is
streamlined. Can you score a jackpot
from the get-go as far as hiring the
right chef or you going to go through a
couple hires and find go through a
couple hires? But the thing is I think
that a lot of people should understand
the consulting part of it cuz even when
I did hire him to come in and do
consulting, you know, he still trained
my staff and everything like that. So I
was just able to just go in there and
just manage them at that point. He he
was our consultant chef in the
beginning. Then he came back and was
like, "You know what? I like the way you
guys are I like what you guys are doing.
I like how your journey is going. I want
to come and join and join forces with
you guys." So, why are you open only a
few days a week? And then also
location-wise, you're stationary. I
always thought of food trucks being all
over town. Yeah, the four days a week
thing, like I said, it came in the
beginning of where we had to only stay
open four days a week cuz we couldn't
kind of figure out to get open 7. But
outside of seen anticipation, it keeps
building up and the phone rings. It
starts ringing probably on Tuesday like,
"Hey, can I put in an order for Thursday
or this?" And we get like the pre-work.
I'm like, "Let's not open up more days.
Let's keep it that way, you know, and
then keep every uh body like just
basically waiting." So, the key word is
anticipation. Yep, I like that.
Anticipation and then um why we don't
move our location because first and
foremost is way too much work. But then
also building that consistency in this
location and that that consistency in
the crowd actually coming out like once
you type something in after a certain
amount of times in Google, it links that
address to your food truck. And it's
convenience like you know people love
convenience. Cool. I'm excited to find
out kind of how you capture that
location. But we'll talk about it when
we get there. A little challenge for
you. Imagine you have to start a new
food truck. New concept, new everything.
Marketing is the question. What would be
your approach? Give us a step by step.
What you would do with a hundred bucks
to your name? I have my iPhone. The
first thing I'm going to do is get on my
product, take pictures, get those
pictures out. I'm going to spend
probably 25 on just ads probably to get
it rolling for the first two to three
weeks on Insta. On Insta, I'm going to
spend another 30. I'm going to take that
30 and get uh yard signs. Yard signs.
And then I'm going to probably, you
know, work my magic of what I do know
behind, you know, social media and stuff
like that to get myself on a schedule.
And what that roll out schedule looks
like is I'll start out with the first
two weeks getting each product photo
taken at least posting two times a day
and then getting that one reel a day for
each thing that's going out. What
that'll do is I want to make sure that
I'm getting my product in front of
people's faces and I'm rolling this
thing out the right way. That's what I
would do with 100 bucks. That'll get you
four. You have amazing reviews on Google
by the way. And so what's your
philosophy on customer experience? The
customers always right. There's a
million places in the world they can
eat, but they sit up here and eat with
us every single weekend. So, it's like I
appreciate that more than anything. You
have their trust. Yep. And they're
always right. If they tell me that this
chicken didn't come out this way, we'll
refund you. And we do a model where we
refund and we give them a free meal. So,
we don't make them pay for their next
meal. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, it's stuff like
that. And then, you know, we just always
they're right. We're catering to them
and that's what we're here to do. That's
cool. You have high expectations.
Doesn't seem like you do that very often
because the food is delicious. Yeah. As
far as the remake. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
But it happens. How do you ensure
consistency and quality service
especially when you're not there? Yeah.
So, we operations, like I said, like a
lot of our components in our business do
come from a restaurant staff. So, we
have like a real head chef. We have a
recipe books that everybody follows. The
training part of it, I'm not too
hands-on with that. Like I said, I
delegate that out to my chef instead,
things like that. But he just makes sure
that everybody follows the recipe book
to ensure the consistency in the food.
The customer service aspect is something
that I am that I am involved in. So,
basically, that's a um intense twoe
training. We get them on there, we train
them for two weeks, then we leave them
on there by oursel for a week just to
see if they can uh handle everything and
stuff like that. And then from there,
that's how we pick our that's how we
pick our people. That part is very
important because that's the first guy
and the last guy that the customer sees,
right? And so that guy in the front,
he's the person that we really spend the
most time on to make sure that he's
compensated well and stuff like that,
too. Mhm. What's the most common mistake
you see new food truck owners make all
the time? I mean, honestly, starting a
business and not looking at it from the
bird eye view of you're not supposed to
work in the business, right? A lot of
these guys come in it come in the
industry and they think that, you know,
they're supposed to cook there every
single day and be there every single day
and just stay there all the time, right?
And what what happens is you'll see them
six or seven months later and they're
still in the same exact uh position
because they don't start the business
from the outside. You always want to
work inside the business. So, at first
is understanding that why are you doing
this? Do you want to cook or do you want
to become a business owner? The next
thing is is um marketing. Like a lot of
people don't spend a lot of money on
marketing, presentation, and
understanding that what your brand looks
like is probably what your food will
taste like. Understanding your audience,
understanding your location,
understanding that you don't have to
jump around in all these places to
actually make money. Our our biggest
thing was, you know, branding out that
location, staying in that location, and
using that location, right? But if you
Google another truck that keep on
moving, your customer base doesn't know
where you are. So they end up you end up
getting lost like everybody else. I'm I
remember there were times where I ate
food and I'm like where's that truck at?
Never found it again. So you fired and
hired a lot of people. Yeah. Uh what
kind of traits characteristics do you
look for now? First of all, we run like
a family atmosphere. So we try to keep
eagles out the way. A lot of chefs that
do come in this industry, they are
really ego driven and sometimes they
want to do things their way, right? When
in reality it it doesn't work that way.
It's like we have a recipe book, we have
something that we put together and this
is what we got to do. So the people that
we kind of look for is is the ones that
are hungry, people who don't have a big
following and stuff like that, but
they're still in their upbringing in
their career cuz we believe in, you
know, investing in them and pushing them
to the next phase and the next level and
stuff like that. I always say, you know,
the only qualified person on your team
needs to be the chef. Everybody else can
just be people that you can build on.
The team that we got now is a solid team
that I think can run a restaurant.
That's awesome. So your plan is to open
more food trucks, which is pretty cool.
How are you doing things differently now
with all the mistakes you made, the
things that you know, can you give us a
quick snapshot? Yeah, I mean, honestly,
this time around, you know, since we
have the financials to go out there and
go get the consultant and stuff like
that, we brought in a whole consulting
team in the beginning. Um, and they
basically built the the business out
start to finish as far as cooking the
recipes, letting us know, you know,
hiring the staff and everything. So,
they basically did all that in the
beginning for us. Sounds pretty easy, I
guess, when you've built up the capital
to kind of expand in other ways. Yep.
So, once we did that, then we're doing a
whole new concept, too. So, we decided,
okay, uh burned buns. So, it's more of
like ogis and um brisket, cheese steaks,
and things like that. You know, kind of
an easier option to get food out
quicker. That's cool. We didn't we
didn't want to put no more soul food on
the food truck. Wait, so that's going
away from food truck and becoming a
restaurant. Yeah, goodies are being a
restaurant by this December. Gotcha. So,
for those visiting Houston Yeah. towards
the end of the year. Don't look for the
food truck.
Cool. As a serial entrepreneur, what are
some traits that you've noticed that
really make serial entrepreneurs stand
out? First, I want would like to say
they're insane, right? Insane. Insane
people, right? They're insane. They're
very delusional to these ideas. When I
first started RNR Junko, I started that
thing with a pickup truck. People
thought I was insane going around
picking up all this stuff and putting on
a little dump truck and just rolling
like that. Right. The same thing with
the food thing. They're like, "You're
going to start this thing. You have no
idea what you're doing." Sometimes you
got to be that delusional, right? So,
um, delusional, insane, um, very, very,
very, very strategic, very strategic and
very opportunist. You know, they're
always looking at the glass half full.
Then you got the guys, you know, who
come in the industry who just try to
calculate everything, but you can't
calculate something that you don't know.
So, we I kind of learned to never plan
for the things I don't know and kind of
just figure things out as I as I go.
Hey, before you go, if you have a
business idea or are still searching for
one, this is a quick reminder. We have
partnered with Brandon Vaughn, who's
built 12 multi-million dollar businesses
to give you his exact blueprint for
free. So, if you want to claim free
access to that, make sure to click the
link in the description below. And if
you're interested in more food truck
episodes, make sure to check out episode
225. Like and subscribe and we'll see
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