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Food Truck ‘Meet-Ups’ Common; How They Do It

You might not have heard of Curbside Bites, but there’s a good chance you should be thanking it roughly once a week. The Fullerton-based company schedules food trucks at office parks and apartment complexes in Southern California—in some cases perhaps outside the office where you’re reading this.

Husband-and-wife co-founders Christian and Danielle Murcia work with 50 properties and 250 trucks, mainly in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties; about 25% of the trucks hit OC locations that include Chapman University, Irvine Co. apartment communities and First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. Murcia-sourced food trucks farther afield go to Fairplex in Pomona, California State University-Long Beach, San Diego state beaches, and some malls owned by Westfield Corp.

The Murcias coordinate with catering companies already on campus—Sodexho USA at Chapman, for instance—and office park managers who “see it as an amenity,” Christian said.

“You don’t charge the offices,” he said. “We charge the food trucks.”

Fees range from a flat $25 per truck for an apartment complex gig to a commission structure for bigger shows.

Good Match

Curbside Bites is the sister company to Crepes Bonaparte, which has two food trucks of its own and a new stand-alone restaurant, and does corporate catering—another potential place for a “merci” or even a “grazie” as Bonaparte’s, a Corsican name and owing as much to Italy.

Everything’s in Fullerton, including the restaurant, which opened in the downtown district this year.

“We’re from here,” Christian said. “We got to open in our community, not somewhere we don’t know the people. We invested in a business in our backyard.”

They’d provided food trucks for the property owner at other locations, and “she was going to lose the tenant” that had the space but couldn’t get going.

“I think it was a crepes restaurant,” he said. “An owner-operator trying to build out on their own got bogged down in city stuff.”

The Business Journal estimates 2017 revenue for Crepes Bonaparte at $1 million. That’s before the 1,000-square-foot restaurant opened, which will kick up revenue another 25% this year.

Breakdown

Scheduling work at Curbside Bites adds similar numbers to the couple’s overall take.

Catering has a more intimate, fine-dining feel and does about 50 to 70 events a month—birthdays, weddings—for groups of 20 to 800, with “some corporate clients”—residential communities for Mother’s Day or Easter. A crew comes for an hourly rate and about $10 to $13 per person.

It’s the largest part of the food business.

Crepes Bonaparte runs food trucks in OC and L.A. commonly scheduled for locations or private events, with about 15 trips a week between the two. An average ticket is $9 to $11, and the number of customers is generally smaller in this part of the business compared to catering.

Trucks slightly trail catering on revenue, with lower tickets and fewer people.

The restaurant added lunch hours during the week, when it was previously open only for dinner. All three meals are served on weekends, when dessert crepes are big.

“We have steady late-night business on Fridays and Saturdays” in Fullerton’s downtown.

Course He Can

As their name suggests, the food trucks, catering and restaurant serve crepes.

Sweet or savory options include Caprese—theirs adds chicken to the mozzarella and tomato; California Sunrise—a twist on an avocado and cheese omelet; and, again with the Italian, the Al Capone—with blackberries and mascarpone.

Catering came first, in 2008.

Christian earned a business degree—entrepreneurial studies emphasis—from the University of Southern California, saved about $10,000, and he and Danielle began catering intimate tabletop-type events, including wedding receptions.

“We didn’t have a lot of expenses, and it was a way to see if customers liked the product,” Christian said.

Food trucks followed in 2010, making the same menu items “more casual” in presentation and for a wider audience.

The restaurant—which many historically started with before adding catering or trucks—came last, and partly as a way to enhance the overall work rather than just open a restaurant, which recently became the last step.

“We’re able to reach more people because they’ve seen the truck or been to a bridal shower” we catered, Christian said. Or, “we have loyal followers who don’t want to track down the truck.”

The restaurant also helps with the other work.

“The back-of-the-house kitchen space lets us prep for parties or send crews out,” he said. “Front-of-the-house is nice, people come, new customers—but costwise, the business is profitable regardless of the restaurant.”

Brats That?

A name that doesn’t sound right—at first—is that of parent company Brats Berlin Inc.

It owns Crepes Bonaparte and Curbside Bites—Christian and Danielle are the only owners—but the closest its food offerings get to German sausage is a ham and mozzarella cheese crepe, and some bacon strips here and there on other items.

Call it the fruit topping of a failed venture—actually three—from a few years back, about which Christian is candid.

“A few years ago we’d launched different food trucks under different brands,” he said.

This was 2012 to 2014, and the Murcias added three food truck concepts:

• Louks Greek, with a Mediterranean menu.

• MexiCalbi, an Asian fusion truck.

• Brats Berlin, which sold sausages.

Problems included different food trucks from different makers, how to make sure the vast varieties of food were made to the specs they wanted, and “under-capitalized at the time,” he added.

“We over-expanded, closed those brands, and sold them off,” he said, but it ended up being more efficient to keep the name of the last one as the official corporation.

Slow, Steady

There’s an art bordering on magic to crepe-making.

Making a business based on them takes agility, too. The route is not unlike some cooking: low and slow.

• Minimal investment.

• Work gigs yourselves.

• If you blow it, get out.

Oh—and get a good deal on bricks and mortar.

The nature of crepes has kept the Murcias from diving into trends too soon—food delivery, for instance.

“Difficult to do delivery with crepes,” he said. “They’re best eaten right away, and don’t hold very well” in transit or over time.

“We could, but I’m a little skeptical,” he said.

Restaurants, for instance, that work with multiple delivery services, have to monitor all of them.

“You’ll see four tablets on the wall, and you ask, ‘How is this functional when they’re [taking orders] from four different places.”

The couple’s also “slowly easing into our hours” at the restaurant, and not looking for a lot from it right away.

“We look at the business this way,” Christian said. “How do we reach as many customers as possible with the least possible investment?”

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