When SLM tackled a question about tipping food truck workers, Angie Saville, the namesake owner of Angie Burger, was quick to add her thoughts on the subject, via Facebook. She noted that for her truck, the tips would be split between the workers, with the truck’s operator, herself, not taking any. She noted that a customer tip of roughly 10% would be a suitable one, pointing out that workers are generally paid a set wage by the truck’s business entity, rather than having them rely on tips for income.
Still, she stressed, tips can go a long way in helping keep a steady core of workers. To date, her truck’s been on the road only since April, and the first weeks were dominated by a crew of friends, friends of friends, and family. But with this initial time frame now passed, and the truck starting to find some regular destinations, she’s staffing up a more traditional crew. Finding that crew’s been one part of a huge allotment of learned items. (After some misadventures with Craigslist, it’s onto the referral hunt.)
A week ago, she invited us along for a typical lunch shift. This one took place at 1303 Spruce, on a downtown St. Louis parking lot that Saville’s planning to use regularly this summer. It’s just a few blocks from Busch Stadium and is even closer to the Scottrade Center, but her lunch clientele on this day came almost-exclusively from the nearby Robert Young Federal Building, with folks who walked less than a block for the half-dozen variations on burgers that her truck offers.
Ticking off a litany of things that she’s learned, one obvious one struck as particularly funny.
“I had to learn to drive the damned thing,” she said. “That was scary as (heck).”
The truck used to belong to the sushi-and-tempura slinging Chop Shop STL, from which Saville bought the vehicle. She’d just come off a stint, herself, on the now-defunct Shell’s Coastal Cuisine, which was only her second restaurant job; the other was brief, only a month of working front-of-house at the Lemp Mansion.
After attending multiple colleges, working a vast array of government jobs and even spending time in Japan as an English teacher, she found herself drawn to cooking. The combination of an available truck and a signature burger recipe “I’d been messing around with at home” (including garlic, eggs, bacon bits, cheddar, a dash of bread crumbs, and a splash of Budweiser)—to say nothing of her subsequent win at the Bud & Burgers Championship here last summer—was all the impetus she needed to proceed.
She says, it took “three months to clean the truck,” which delayed opening. New gear was brought in; she’s still looking to upgrade her oven. Licenses and paperwork were sought and signed. A skeleton work crew was pieced together.
Joining her early on was Jason Rabelow, who had worked in the industry, but on the distribution end. Working the assembly station on the truck is his debut kitchen job.
“The first day, we were really thrown into things,” he remembers. “Of course, we had expectations and some were adapted into what actually happened.” Since then, he says, things have moved into “streamlined, quicker, better ways” of doing business.
A talkative sort, Saville, a few months into her run with the truck, offers a variety of thoughts relating to her current, intense learning curve. As someone new to the operation, she’s relied on other truck owners for input. She’s now able to offer a bit, as well, especially to consumers. Here’s a list of some hard-earned takeaways:
Menus change. There’s not a lot of room for error in ordering for a truck. When Saville sold only two grilled portobello mushroom sandwiches in a week, a mentor reminded her that the truck “wasn’t named Angie Mushroom; it’s Angie Burger.” Gone was the truck’s vegetarian option, though not from lack of trying. The market spoke.
Don’t call for a truck unless you’ve got numbers. Saville says that she gets calls regularly from area businesses, who wish to book the truck for a lunch visit. Some of them are the smallish side, though, and “having 30 people who work for you” is not a big enough inducement to fire up the truck. The sheer numbers needed just don’t lend themselves to a trip. Because…
It all adds up. Trucks may have to charge a bit extra because of the myriad costs that along with the delivery method. Food and labor costs are the starters, but there are lots, lots more. Trucks can be gas guzzlers and require maintenance like all vehicles; they even benefit more than average cars/trucks, through warm, indoor storage during the winter months. Again, a cost. Municipalities, of which St. Louis enjoys dozens, charge differing tax rates, which keeps accounting interesting. And most everything brought onto the truck is there for single use; utensils, napkins, paperboard boats, all are one-use-only buys.
Booking can equal wrinkles. Because Angie Burger got off to a late start to the spring season, Saville’s been playing catch-up in booking the summer and fall, lining up some events through the Food Truck Association, while hustling others solo. Even with organized, well-run events, though, issues can occur. In one case, already, she was an event and that town’s police had all of the trucks move across the street; since Angie Burger’s grill was actively fired-up, she waited just long enough to be the last truck moving. By the time that the truck pulled around, all the new space had been taken. A day’s revenue was lost that quickly and randomly.
You get what you’re offered. Saville feels that food truck patrons have mostly figured out the process. Angie Burger offers tots, not fries, though the occasional person will still ask for the latter. And food truck food isn’t necessarily hyper-fast food; items are cooked-to-order and a big wave of patrons at once can back up the process. That said, even a few weeks into the game has Saville saying that “we’ve got our ticket time moving a lot faster.”
Saville tries to keep up with social media, in order to let you know where she’ll be on a given day. Find her via Facebook and Twitter.
