Interview with a Food Truck Owner
Last week I visited The Fat Duck Food Truck – a Vancouver based food truck specializing all things cooked in luxurious duck fat. I decided to sit down with Tavis Olsen, Fat Duck Mobile Eatery’s owner. Olsen has worked in the restaurant industry for more than two decades. He grew up with Fijian and Chinese parents, exposing him to a world of different flavours and cooking techniques. It all makes sense when you sample his food, because it’s something difficult to classify – not exactly Asian, not straightforward West Coast.
Q: In your own words, how would you explain a food truck to someone who has never experienced this style of dining before?
A: The modern day food truck is truly a mobile restaurant, not just fair food or carnival food or concession stand food anymore; people are serving full blown means like you would serve in a sit down restaurant, just a little more casual and outdoorsy than the typical restaurant.
Q: What is the story behind the name of your food truck? A: It’s actually was my wifes idea, she was like “hey half your menu is duck in some form anyway.” So together we kinda just played with ideas that where duck related until we arrived upon The Fat Duck.
Q: What is your professional experience before opening Fat Duck? A: My first business partner and I, and also our third partner now, we all met working at Trevor Bird’s Fable. We all worked there for different periods of time, but each for quite some time. We met up there, it’s a great restaurant, a great place to learn, but we just kinda' wanted to get out on our own. So our experience was fine dining, a background in local sourcing, preparing everything in house, everything from scratch. That’s our background. Formal training? I don’t have much formal training, I’ve learned most everything from working in different scratch kitchens and some not scratch kitchens.
Q: Why did you choose the mobility of a food truck rather than establishing a brick & mortar restaurant? A: For our experience, it all came down to starting a food truck is a lot cheaper than opening a full blown brick and mortar restaurant. A lot less debt to get ourselves in, and to get ourselves out of and we figured it would be a great stepping stone. We figured we would have this be our stepping out point, and eventually grow into a restaurant - which we’re actually planning on doing before the end of this year. A food truck was a great way to get out on our own, build a customer base, get our food out there, people trying it people talking about it, giving us feedback on it, making sure what we’re doing makes sense, and doing it in a way that’s not as risky financially.
It's a very good avenue for talented chefs that may not have the financial means to open up a full restaurant but have enough to back a food truck, gives them the opportunity to take ownership and make their own food. There are a lot of restaurants out there where even as a head chef, you don't have a whole lot of say in the menu. Or even if you do, all the pressure is on each item to sell well, less about the creativity and more about making the dollar.
Q: How are the challenges of a food truck different than the challenges of a traditional sit-down restaurant? A: First, the weather plays a much larger role in your success. With a food truck, you live and die by the rain clouds, literally. Secondly I would say just the logistics of having a kitchen inside a mobile vehicle. Kitchen equipment isn’t really designed to be jostled around and bounced around all the time. You have fryer oil in a hot fryer, not really designed to be moving around or shook up. You have to be careful about that. On top of all the kitchen equipment that can break down, a lot of us have older trucks that also break down. It seems like there’s always something that needs to be fixed, more so than a restaurant. You can have all your kitchen equipment working great, but if you can’t get to where you need to go it doesn’t matter.
Q: What should visitors expect from the truck? A: Come with an open mind, be adventurous and be willing to try something new. A lot of the trucks will serve something they aren’t used to, something they haven’t seen. We are blessed in our Food Truck Association, for the fact we have a group of very talented chefs all working out of trucks, bringing great food day in and day out. Nobody is just buying stuff from a big box store, reheating it to serve to you. Everyone is taking great care to make creations all on their own and selling it. Trust the process and trust the trucks because the food we are making is great! You will be surprised how delicious food from a truck can be!