Local food truck favorites Guerrilla Street Food and Seoul Taco have both opened up brick-and-mortar locations in St. Louis over the past couple of years. Now, both of these culinary powerhouses are in the process of debuting restaurants in the Chicago area in the near future. We asked Brian Hardesty, co-owner of GSF, and Seoul Taco’s David Choi, just how their food truck experiences helped them develop their brick-and-mortar concepts, and why Chicago beckoned them.
“It was the best decision ever,” Hardesty says about starting out the operation on the food truck as opposed to a traditional restaurant. “If I could open a restaurant by having a food truck first every time, I’d do it. There’s a built-in audience already, and you get to try and fail. We got to try a lot of stuff out (on the truck) and had four years to figure out any problems. In every way it was beneficial to the restaurant.”
Choi says running the Seoul Taco truck definitely helped him figure get the first restaurant up and running.
“Initially, I think for the first year (the truck) really helped propel our first small brick-and-mortar,” he says. Once they grew out of that space and moved into bigger digs in the Delmar Loop, Choi says he was able to figure out what footprint to follow for subsequent locations. He says he also took the Seoul Taco truck to the Chicago area to test the waters.
"We did some events there, in the suburbs and in the city,” he says, adding he got great response. “That’s what gave me the confidence to open up there.”
Hardesty and Choi have different reasons for choosing Chicago for their next eateries. Choi says he chose Chicago as the next step in the Seoul Taco evolution because he has family in the area and visits frequently, and also because it’s a great food town. Seoul Taco also opened a location in Champaign, Ill., last month and Choi says Chicago seemed to be a natural progression from there.
Hardesty says GSF was attracted to the Chicago area because “outside of California, Chicago has the largest Filipino population in the country.” Proximity to St. Louis wasn’t a big factor in the decision he says, as much as the fact that Chicago is a vibrant city that has a great built-in audience. Eventually, Hardesty says he’d like to have seven or eight GSF locations in the US and abroad, including a possible store in the Philippines.
“I think it’s going to be cool to see that regionality come out in the store in Chicago versus the store in St. Louis,” he says. No space has been picked as of yet but Hardesty says he’s hoping to sign a lease and have construction started this year. He’s not planning on bringing the truck up to Chicago on a regular basis, but will probably do a series of pop-ups around town instead, and chances are he won’t start a food truck operation there, at least initially.
“We’re not going to focus on a food truck in Chicago unless business demands that we need to have one as well as a restaurant,” he says.
Choi (right) says a second Seoul Taco truck will be hitting the streets in STL soon and may make the trek to the Windy City at some point. “It’s just a matter of figuring out the logistics and the licensing process,” he says. As far as the Chicago Seoul Taco, Choi it'll be up and running by June 1.
