Brandon Styll checks in with Landon Lyon, president of the Nashville Food Truck Association and owner of six trucks including Kona Ice, Doxy's Pizza, and One Spudtacular.
Brandon Styll checks in with Landon Lyon, president of the Nashville Food Truck Association and owner of six trucks including Kona Ice, Doxy's Pizza, and One Spudtacular. With events canceled in the early days of the COVID-19 shutdown, Landon explains how the association pivoted overnight to bring trucks directly into Nashville neighborhoods using contactless ordering and pickup. The conversation covers how the neighborhood model works, the realities of running a food truck (commissaries, prep, deliveries), and how Restaurant Depot and Sysco disruptions are complicating sourcing. Landon also speaks to the cleanliness standards food truck operators have always maintained, pushes back on the Hollywood image of the business, and shares how neighborhoods can book trucks through onespud.com or info@bookfoodtrucks.com.
"No one invented the idea of putting trucks in neighborhoods, but as we shared experiences we decided that was probably going to be the best way to go."
Landon Lyon, 03:08
"It's not as easy as they make it look on TV with all the food truck shows that just show a truck pulling up and pulling over and then there's a hundred people in line. That's Hollywood."
Landon Lyon, 06:07
"Wash your hands, don't touch your face, change your gloves frequently, bleach and wipes. If this is new practice, then we've got bigger problems."
Landon Lyon, 10:47
"Whoever survives this chasm, however wide it is, I think we're going to come out on the other side better."
Landon Lyon, 14:04
00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville Restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Here we go again, Nashville Restaurant Radio. This is your host, Brandon Styll. Happy to be here with you today. I wanted to give you a quick update as to what's happening in the world of food trucks. So I brought in Landon Lyon and this is a quick 15-minute interview. Hope you enjoy. Landon, you're the president of the Nashville Food Truck Association and you own six food trucks. Yes. I've got a four-cone ice truck, so two ice, a Doxy's pizza, and then our newest is one spectacular food truck, all things potato. Nice. How are you doing today, man?
01:02Oh, pretty good. It's a very hectic times, a very neat situation in the food truck world now. I can imagine that. So as president of the Nashville Food Truck Association, what are you guys doing right now? Well, we're scrambling. We've gone through all these events, have canceled, and we've kind of re-situated things and now we are focusing on neighborhoods. So we're taking food trucks to the neighborhoods so people can observe social distancing, stay in their areas. We're putting trucks, you know, at the clubhouses or whatever, some central location in the neighborhood, doing online ordering and payment. So we're doing contactless service and they get text when the order's ready. They come out to the truck. We send them their boxed and packed food and they go on their way. Wow. So that sounds incredibly safe and efficient.
02:02So we've all had to pivot here. So when you first decided that, hey, let's pivot. And since we have all these events that have been canceled, what did you have to do? Who came up with the idea that we've got to do text messages? We don't want to touch payment. How hard was it to get all that set up? It wasn't difficult. I'm not a web designer or app designer, but there have been apps in place that we've used for online ordering. So basically, we just stopped taking cash and it's actually, I've enjoyed it actually because it kind of speeds up the system of the process. Yeah. So while the events canceled, everybody panicked. I called an emergency meeting with the association members and then we opened it up to other food trucks in the area that ones that weren't in the association. And we just met to brainstorm some ideas. I've been doing neighborhoods, like setting up events sporadically just to fill in the calendar for the last few years.
03:05So I shared with everyone my experience on that. And we've had neighborhoods that have booked trucks. So no one invented the idea of putting trucks in neighborhoods, but it's just kind of as we talked about it, shared experiences, decided that was probably going to be the best way to go. And even when we had that meeting, it pointed out, you know, everything was changing on a daily basis, an hourly basis almost, there's always some new official on TV telling us how things were changing. So, but as of right now, you can want this safer at home initiative or order and essential services or food services consider food trucks or if it's the model of carry out, we started using the hashtag we are carry out. So three trucks aren't done in. So we've always had the experience and take out and delivery. So this is actually something that we are knowingly we're building towards the whole time.
04:07I was going to say, I think this is almost fortuitous for you that all of the people that would typically be dining in now really kind of need your service. How many food trucks are there in Nashville? Just total. The association, we have roughly 75 members. They're probably another 40 or 50, maybe not quite that many, they're running around that aren't members. You know, as you expand outside of Nashville and you take in the mid state region and there's no telling. So it's probably 125 different food trucks running around. What is it? So you've worked, I assume you've worked inside a brick and mortar before. I have. Right. So, you know, you get married to the building. That's the thing. I love the food trucks. If I don't want to work, I don't schedule the truck. But if you have a restaurant, you got to be open. So that's what kind of led me this way. Well, I was going to ask you that. So the kind of the dynamic of the food truck chef owner, how is that different? Like, because you deal with those people all the time and I'm sure you've dealt with plenty of chefs who are the brick and mortar type chefs.
05:12Are these brick and mortar type chefs who have the same perspective as you that they just want to be able to work when they want to work and don't want to be married to a building or is it a different style of entrepreneur? I'm not dealt with restaurant chefs as much as I know a lot of people who were restaurant chefs that now have food trucks and they seem, they're used to the long hours. They're the ones that I see their calendar and they're like, they're doing lunch, they're dinner and it looks like they're trying to throw a breakfast in there. They definitely, they come in with, looks like they're doing 18 hour days. It's a grind. It's a hustle. You're out there just going crazy. Yeah, you've got everything you have to do in your own kitchen. Like in your commercial kitchen or commissary, then you duplicate that on the truck and it's you have to clean the truck, clean the kitchen, load the truck, unload it. It's a lot of things, a lot of double the effort and then you have to drive, deal with the traffic to get to an event and it's not as easy as they make it look on TV and the whole, all the food truck shows that just show a truck pulling up and pulling over and then there's a hundred people online.
06:20Yeah, that's Hollywood. I want to, I want to jump into real quick the commissary aspect of it. You got to think if you want to buy food, Restaurant Depot is now closed. I know a lot of food truck people go to Restaurant Depot. If you want to get a delivery from a broad line person, it's hard, you can't just deliver it to a truck. You have to have a place for, to set up an account for them to go deliver it to. How do these commissaries work? There's a lot of, a lot, there's a few commercial kitchen commissaries set up and people, I I'm fortunate that I rent an old, a former restaurant, turned it into my commissary, so I don't have to deal with some of the problems that other trucks deal with. But from what I understand and my limited experience with the commercial commissaries, it's just, everything is just a la carte. You know, you're paying several hundred dollars to park, you rent the kitchen by the hour, you rent your little cage to put your dry goods in, you rent refrigerator space.
07:20They just, yeah, it easily costs six to eight hundred dollars a month at the truck at a commercial kitchen from what my colleagues tell me. So for those listeners out there that are kind of, that are following, I think just to kind of put it a little different terms, there's a big building, it's got 20 docks on it and trucks can go park at those docks and right at the dock, there's a cage where you can keep kind of dry goods, some of your supplies, if you have to go boxes, plateware, cutlery, whatever it might be, and then there's a bigger walk-in cooler that you can have your own cooler there on the dock or you can rent a space in the walk-in cooler. Then they have like five makeshift, well, they're not makeshift, they're actual kitchens that you can rent by the hour to go in and prep your food, so you can schedule from six to eight o'clock in the morning, but it may cost you two hundred dollars for that time slot and you have to go in, prep all of your food, put it all together, and then clean the entire kitchen to be out of there for somebody else to be in the kitchen by nine o'clock and start their prep, right?
08:23Right, and then I'm sure there are prompt, just like everything else, I'm sure there are peak times that everybody wants to have it, so you're trying to fight scheduling and yes, it's a big mess, it's, I'm very glad to have my own, I don't have to share with anybody, and I don't have to work around anybody, so it makes it a lot easier on us. So one of the people out there to understand that it's not like Hollywood, it's not just a hey, we're going to turn the key on, we're going to drive to a cool park somewhere and just serve food for the next couple hours, there's a ton of prep work, there's a ton of setting this stuff up, where you're going to get your food delivery, reaching minimums, then if Restaurant Depot was open, you'd be able to just go there, get your product and leave, it definitely presents some logistical issues right now. Absolutely, and with Restaurant Depot being out, I think that Cisco was, I think they're back in operation, but they were right there by John 15 Airport in West Nashville, Tornado went through there, I know they were out for at least a couple weeks, I'm assuming they're back online now.
09:27From what I understand, Cisco is still offline, they've strategically aligned with some of their other opcos, DCs, I think they're working with Louisville, Memphis, Central Alabama, they're just kind of everybody, they're kind of pulling together as a team and I know a couple guys over at Cisco and it's definitely been a challenge for them, but they're all hustling super hard, this is just a tough time for everybody. It's strange looking back because at the time I would have thought the Tornado was a knockout punch and it was just kind of the jab and then coronavirus over the top. It's been brutal for everyone. So let's talk about safety real quick. When you're in a food truck, one of the things I've seen a million times on social media right now is everybody's posting, we're washing our hands every 15 minutes, we've sanitized this area. What are some things that the people in the food trucks that are running food trucks right now are doing to ensure that their food is safe, that they're serving the general public?
10:34Everyone is doing everything, things we've done all along. I think a lot of these posts, I think it's mainly to make people feel better, but like gotta help us if we weren't already doing these things. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, change your gloves frequently, bleach and wipes. So it should be the same as we've been doing a little extra cleaning. If this is new practice then we've got bigger problems. Which is a shared sentiment I think and one of the points of the podcast is to get people who are restaurant workers who understand that dynamic of washing your hands all the time. Just always having dry, cracked hands is a thing. You can tell somebody who works in the hospitality industry by their hands. But also I want to reassure the general public that if they're listening or they find this podcast and they go, oh we have a food truck in our neighborhood, I wonder what they're doing to ensure safety. I just want to reassure everybody that yes, everybody's doing the things that they need to do.
11:35Food trucks in particular are hypersensitive to the clemency issue because for years they were known as roach coaches and people called the hot dog carts dirty dogs and all that stuff. Food trucks have evolved from a time in our lives that they were looked down upon. They haven't always been considered cool or a hip thing to do or a fun thing to do. They used to be known as roach coaches so food truck owners are very sensitive and hypersensitive to the clemency issue and I believe go above and beyond the measures just because of the history. All right. Good stuff. That's something I feel like I knew but I wanted to get it out there for everybody else to hear. So let's grab a little more information about your particular truck. The website is onespud.com, right the number one and then spud.com. So how do I get the number one spudtacular food truck to my neighborhood?
12:36If you go to onespud.com there's a book the truck there's contact forms you can just fill that out that comes to me and just fill out as much information as possible I'll contact you and we'll do our best to set it up and if you want trucks in your neighborhood regularly as much as I'd love onespud to be there every day you might want a little variety and that can help you set up rotate other trucks too. I've got lots of friends with trucks and we're all working together to bring trucks to the neighborhood so just contact me there or you can email me at info at bookfoodtrucks.com that's a little side thing I do as far as booking events I've been doing that for years. So info at bookfoodtrucks.com. Yes. Excellent. Anything you want to say man anything you got out there I just wanted to get a quick food truck update anything else that you want to communicate to the restaurant world? Hey we're all in this together I'm glad to see that so many restaurants are able to adapt with the this ago model and the delivery model I think it's going to be big for the third party delivery companies I don't know that's a little tougher for food trucks on the margins and I'm not sure how restaurants always do it we're all in it together we're just trying to feed people keep people give them a little sense of normalcy and I think whoever survives this chasm of however wide it is I think we're going to come out on the other side better.
14:10I think so too little known thing about you too I'm going to give you another plug probably don't want to so where's this going well what part of town do you live in? I live just west of Nashville around the Bellevue area. I'm actually in Cheam County just across the line. Okay so weird but I'm a Bellevue in as well. And you do something that's similar to a podcast right? I do. No Facebook love. Do you have a alter ego of some kind? An alter ego wow going deep some people call me the beef. Oh beefy so some people call you the beef. We have a Facebook group called Bellevue Beef and Beyond and it was just to start off just kind of beefing about stuff griping just kind of light-hearted complaints it's just silly anyway so we started doing a show we do that sometimes it's basically like you're sitting at a bar and there's that kind of obnoxious high top in the corner drinking a little too much on two-for-ones and getting rowdy that's us and my friend squeezy it's beef and squeezy so we sit there have a couple drinks and then some people watch it on Facebook kind of like they're the next table over in the bar.
15:39So I do want to plug that because I've watched it I've communicated with you on it and I think it's so it's so fun because I live in the community which is kind of some of my idea for the podcast but for the city of Nashville in our restaurant community just a way for us to servers sitting at a bar talking about what happened in their their day what can we be the voice for the entire city restaurant community to come here and listen but I love what you do for our little corner of Nashville and I like to represent when I have people on the show and want to represent what part of town they're from because I want people to know that hey Landon lives in West Nashville he lives in the Bellevue area and that's where the Kona ice trucks are which I know everybody loves the Kona ice trucks when it gets a little bit warmer yeah it looks like it's getting warm now I'm not sure when this will air but in the next few days it's actually where they're showing it's going to be pretty hot so website over to another server the website is actually down but the email still works so if you want to book a Kona ice truck in the next couple days to come by your neighborhood that's konaice.com konaice.com kona-ice.com sorry okay perfect well cool man well thanks for taking a few minutes with me today and I hope that everything works out really well for you and just thanks for spending a little time with Nashville Restaurant Radio well thank you sir good talk to you Brian all right buddy so there it is Landon Lyon thanks for stopping by Nashville Restaurant Radio today just as a disclaimer you know you get these food trucks coming out your neighborhoods which is a super idea just to help support your local business owners as well as bringing hot fresh chef made food directly to your neighborhood this isn't a reason to have a social gathering this is not something that you want to have food trucks come to your neighborhood and everybody gather on the food truck to get food you can place the orders online you pay for the orders online they will text you when your order is ready you come out one by one and you get them these are crazy times we live in people
17:43but it is a really neat ingenuitive way to get food out to you I hope you enjoyed that conversation please leave comments underneath on the actual podcast app you can look and see all of Landon's food trucks and how to contact him to do whatever you need if you own a food truck and you want to join the association I'm sure he can help you do that as well thanks for listening today guys stay safe out there love you bye