Delaware food trucks add spinoff brick-and-mortar sites
They're going from four wheels to four corners.
A growing number of food trucks are busily adding spinoff eateries in Delaware and beyond, going from mobile to brick-and-mortar.
After ruffling feathers of some restaurateurs who complained about the popular trucks swooping into places like downtown Wilmington and eating away at their business, some roving chefs have begun to expand with traditional shops of their own.
In recent years, the WiLDWiCH and Plum Pit food trucks have both opened luncheonettes in downtown Wilmington with the WiLDWiCH Café now on Delaware Avenue and Plum Bistro & Catering nestled within the Delaware Contemporary art museum.
Elsewhere, the Kapow Food Truck has spun off Kapow Kitchen at Booths Corner Farmers Market in Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, and I Don't Give a Fork is about to reopen its Fork in the Road Cafe next month at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Plaza.
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So why are these rolling restaurants putting down roots?
It's all about the kitchen.
Food trucks need a Mobile Food Establishment permit from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services to operate in the state. And to get a permit, food truck operators need to have a servicing area for food storage – a fixed location, food-permitted establishment where cooks can prepare food and also clean and sanitize utensils and other items.
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After using rental kitchens in the early years of operation, some food trucks have made the plunge, combining new kitchens with a lunch counter with an eye on recouping some of their kitchen costs.
"We thought it was foolish to have a commissary kitchen where we can't sell anything," says Mike Stanley, owner of the WiLDWiCH food truck since July 2014. "Even if it makes a little bit of money, it can pay for itself."
Stanley opened WiLDWiCH Café in January in downtown's Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware building near I-95. The spot is a former legal storage space that has been transformed into a café, serving the same sandwiches as the food truck, along with specials like creole shrimp and grits, cinnamon buns and breakfast sandwiches.
Stanley had been using the kitchen at the Delaware Contemporary before opening the café and found that potential catering customers weren't taking them seriously because they were working out of an art museum and not their own space.
"Now that we have a storefront, we started doing a nice little bit of catering about two months ago, and it's starting to grow pretty quickly," he says.
Stanley is already eyeing an expansion with a possible second commissary kitchen located in an industrial park, away from other businesses. (Let's just say that when he smokes his pork on Delaware Avenue, all the office workers above know about it.)
"They are like, 'Will you stop? We're so hungry,'" he says.
Wit Milburn, the chef and owner behind Kapow Food Truck and Kapow Kitchen, says sales from his Booths Corner Farmers Market location now covers both his rent for the eatery and the cost of running his truck. All of his profits come from truck food sales, he adds.
The four-wheeled, Wilmington-based Kapow truck has been a regular in the city since first hitting the road in April 2014, regularly selling lunches at events like the weekly Downtown Wilmington Farmers Market at Rodney Square. So why did Milburn and his wife, Jody, decide to settle down over the state line in Garnet Valley?
Milburn's mother ran her first restaurant – Jeenwong's Thai Cuisine – in Booths Corner Farmers Market, starting in the mid-'80s when Milburn was growing up. After having spent his formative years in the farmers market, it just felt right to return. (Jeenwong's is located at the Riverfront Market in Wilmington these days.)
"I spent every weekend there," says Milburn, 34. "And now it's a centralized hub for our business."
Milburn now hopes Kapow Kitchen's Pennsylvania location will be the first of many, eyeing possible franchises to sell his egg rolls, dumplings and Thai wings.
I Don't Give A Fork food truck owner Leigh Ann Tona will be celebrating her business' four-year anniversary next month. Having started with a food cart across from the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, she has since invested in a large-scale food truck where she slings her infamously decadent cheesesteaks topped with macaroni and cheese.
In April, she expanded yet again, taking over an eatery near New Castle at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Plaza. The Fork in the Road Cafe allows her to follow in the footsteps of Milburn and Stanley, selling lunches from a permanent kitchen that can double as a prep station for her truck.
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Tona's café is closed for August as she tweaks the menu, but it will reopen Sept. 6.
"It really works well here," she says. "My cafe employees come in every morning and do made-to-order breakfast and lunch, but in between customers they are slicing tomatoes, cutting onions and doing all that prep work."
When Stanley first started his truck a few years back, he didn't have enough money to open his own restaurant after working about 20 years at restaurants like the old Deep Blue Bar and Grill, Restaurant 821 and Union City Grille. But he did have enough to start a truck. And now thanks to the truck, he was able to open his café.
Stanley says he was catering in downtown Wilmington last year when he visited nearby restaurant owners to let them know that his truck was working a private party. During his conversation with one restaurateur, Stanley mentioned he was opening WiLDWiCH Café, and he describes the reaction he received a "little shocked and standoffish."
"And I kind of honestly enjoyed that reaction," says Stanley, 44, of Newport. "A lot of them see our trucks and think, 'Oh, they are a passing fad.' We're just restaurateurs who took a different path."
Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).