Finding Food Truck Success Amid the Pandemic
Keisa Carroll celebrates one year with her Good Azz Food truck
Call it peak season for food trucks.
The litany of festivals, concerts and other outdoor events that dot the calendar from March to October make it prime time for mobile restaurants serving everything from fried chicken to seafood.
When the coronavirus pandemic shut down those same outdoor events this year, it created a real challenge for someone like Keisa Carroll, who had just launched her Good Azz Food truck a few months before.
“It’s forced me to be a lot more creative to go out and get business,” Carroll said. “I see a lot of the older trucks have failed and I attribute that to being accustomed to business from events. I never got to experience this wonderful, fruitful season so it’s just been the status quo for me. I look at this as an opportunity for me to build my brand.”
That brand is finding some traction as Carroll celebrates her first anniversary in the truck on Saturday, Oct. 17 at Arches Brewing in Hapeville. Good Azz Food will be there from 3 to 7 p.m., serving the regular menu of southern favorites with a healthy twist. That will include the debut of the Ganja Bowl, a new dish featuring jerk chicken with rice, black beans and a freshly made pineapple salsa.
“I’m trying to expand the chicken portfolio since I’ve been tagged by my customers as ‘the Chicken Lady,’ ” Carroll said. “This is a bowl that allows an individual to eat healthy and still have a lot of flavor.”
Carroll’s business dates back to 2017 when she started doing catering and meal prep while still working a full-time corporate sales job. Business grew just by word of mouth and by 2019 she realized that she had real earning potential as a chef. She spent the first half of that year pouring money into savings and learning as much as she could about the business.
She left her corporate job at Grainger in July 2019 and purchased a truck that fall before working her first event on Oct. 5, 2019.
“I don’t think I could ever imagine the manual work associated with the truck,” she said. “Owning a food truck can be a lot of fun but it’s a lot of work. That’s the part I didn’t anticipate.”
It got even tougher when the entire country went into lockdown thanks to the pandemic. Carroll said she wasn’t sure her business would make in the first part of March. Where could she set up shop?
Leaning on her career in sales, she began cold calling apartment complexes and found her answer.
“It was a value add for the complexes because I was bringing food to their residents,” she said. “We were creating that whole social distancing environment where people could get food and not have to go to a crowded grocery store.
“That’s how I sold the truck. Before I knew it, I had work lined up every week for 12 weeks. That’s how I stayed afloat through the pandemic.”
Carroll has built up some brand loyalty by sticking it out. She’s parked in front of Hapeville’s Beer Girl Growlers & Bottleshop nearly every Friday night where more than 60 percent of her customers show up every week. It’s the same at another one of her favorite spots in Alpharetta where her repeat business is just as strong.
Those promising signs for the future have Carroll excited about expanding into new areas in her second year.
“Marketing and advertising really affects your ability to stay afloat in this business,” she said. “You need to get people interested in your cuisine. I’ve got the truck. Now I just need to build my following.”