We have five restaurants in Madrid, mainly serving Spanish food based around the best produce. We recently celebrated 15 years in business – for 14 of them we have had food trucks.
We started with the truck because it is a nice way to interact with guests that might not otherwise visit the restaurants. It is a way to show what we do to more people.
Almost immediately after opening the restaurant, we were invited to join a group of operators at an event – we hired a catering van, added our branding and we got started. Today we almost always sell food but we also have a Champagne truck.
It is easy to adapt a food truck to different events. In the winter you put together a menu of warmer food; toasted sandwiches, or a mulled wine. In the summer you do something fresher.
This year we took two of our vans to the Madrid Masters tennis tournament; one sold hot dogs and in the other we had three different sandwiches, our croquettes and the patatas bravas, with drink of course.
We always think about the likely public. They are often younger, so burgers, pizzas and sandwiches work well. But it has to be easy to eat. People are standing up so you have to consider the potential for dropping food or staining clothes. They don’t want to have five serviettes in their hand to constantly clean themselves up.
In a medium-sized van you almost have the same capacity as in a normal kitchen. We have the same kit – two fryers, a plancha, a bain marie, fridges and a beer tap. It is easy to fit them out. You have to research the equipment from a modular view point – a bit like Tetris – and fit it all in. On the outside, you can paint it or do something different to give it identity.
The truck can generate a lot of work with very little staff and with imagination you can overcome all limitations.
We always go when we are invited to an event; it is a lot of fun. Almost all of the trucks we have done have been profitable and it is a great way to get the brand out to a different public.
It has bit of nostalgia for us – it is great to have bigger restaurants that bill more – but we don’t want to let go of those simpler operations.
Tina Nielsen
