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Training for Budding Restaurant Owners
Training wheels: Food trucks, carts provide on-the-go training for budding
restaurant owners
NEW YORK — Putting the cart before the store was the right recipe for ice cream
maker Buck Buchanan.
Back in 2001, Buchanan was a stay-at-home dad using his training as a chef to
give cooking lessons to supplement his wife’s income. Boredom set in and he
decided to start a gourmet ice cream cart. Later, he added a truck — and drove
to concerts and sporting events to sell his cold, tasty treats. In March, he
opened his first Lumpy’s Ice Cream shop in downtown Wake Forest, N.C.
“My thought was to build a clientele, build a customer base, so when I actually
opened the store, people would flock to it,” Buchanan says. After about five
years, “people started hollering and screaming on Facebook: ‘I love your ice
cream, but I can’t get it anywhere.’”
Buchanan waited until he was sure he had enough customers to support a store. He
found a spot in the city’s downtown, which is being revitalized. The location
has a parking lot. That’s great for customers who have to travel to the store
from far away.
“The goal is to be the ice cream king of North America,” Buchanan says. But he
wants to be sure first that there’ll be even more demand for Lumpy’s chocolate,
vanilla and specialty flavors like Jamaican Joy — which includes pineapple and
raisins soaked in rum. In addition to the cart, truck and store, Lumpy’s also
sells ice cream at parties and special events and to restaurants and stores like
Whole Foods.
Lumpy’s is part of a small but growing trend spawned by the proliferation of
food trucks and carts in cities and suburbs across the country. Entrepreneurs
who thought it would be cool and lucrative to sell gourmet tacos, barbecue, ice
cream and other food from trucks are opening stores and restaurants to build on
their success. They’re proving that taking an idea and trying it out on a small
scale — and in this case, putting on training wheels — is a prudent way to start
a company.
The experience of running the cart and truck also taught him a lot about how to
run a business, Buchanan says. “We grew what I called smart. ... We’d get a new
contract and we’d figure out how we’d work the contract. We wouldn’t grow any
further until we figured it out. You never want to promise something and not be
able to deliver.”
Food trucks and carts have been around for generations. Most are sellers of hot
dogs and ice cream bars or are canteens on wheels that bring staple breakfast
and lunch items to factories, auto repair shops and other businesses. What’s
different about the mobile food vehicles that have cropped up in cities and
suburbs the last few years is that these serve trendy fare like Korean barbecue,
Jamaican jerk chicken and cupcakes. They travel from one spot to another, often
congregating in high-traffic areas like downtowns and state government
complexes. Some have websites or Facebook pages so that hungry fans can find out
what day and time they’ll show up.
Street food has flourished in the weak economy as people seek inexpensive meals.
Some want treats like cupcakes and ice cream that are different from what they’d
find in a supermarket.
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