Fulfilling a dream

Just an update about business stuff. A few weeks ago, wife and I spent the day driving around the county meeting businesses and trying to get permission to setup there cooperatively. We were very successful, and get positive responses from each place, lots of excitement from them too because we were the first ones that approached them. The last place we visited was a turkey farm because we wanted to see if they made turkey roasts similar to what Butterball does. We talked to the 7th generation owner of the farm and told him what we intended and he said he'd look into making them for us.

2 saturday's ago, my phone rights at 8:19am, I say to my wife, "must be a farmer calling" and figured it was my Amish friend because if he's calling it's always around that time. Yup, farmer, but not Amish, english Turkey Farmer calling about the roasts. He's butchering and wanst to know if we still want them. I do, but I also know that I can't use them for my original intent, but don't want to put him out and we settle on a price and 5 roasts as a test.

Today they were ready and we went over to pick them up. I parked way int he back of the farm to stay out of the way of any equipment and walked my way to the office. I come across a guy on a fork lift. I ask him if the farmer is around and he asks if I ordered a turkey. I tell him no, he has some roasts for me, then he excitedly says "oh, you're the food truck guy". Last week I texted him and said we'd love to bring the trailer over and serve his entire family dinner so he can see how we're going to represent his product to the public. He was very excited about the idea and told his entire family. Sometime in early December, we're talking the trailer over and making everyone 16+ people a turkey dinner served from the trailer. Not cooked there, but kept warm and served. Super nice family we're happy to making this "partnership" with them. They also want us to come out next year during turkey season, set up and serve their customers while they wait to get their turkey. We'll be serving big bowls of Creamed Turkey and Hot Turkey Sammiches.

I grew up not too far from his farm, which makes me a local. People down here don't like non-locals.

After much discussion here between the wife and I we have decided that we're going to need some help getting everything else done. We hate having to do this but we've started a campaign here: https://www.givesendgo.com/MollesCoach

We are also trying to organize a live fundraiser in the local area, but we're trying to find land to host it on. Right now without our inspection, we can only do private events on private land. More details on that to follow.
 
First a big thank you to everyone that chooses to help out. Second, we're going to keep a list on the truck of everyone that does. If you ever make it out to us, just tell the person that's taking orders your name and they will make sure you get a free meal.
 
I just made a Craigslist deal to pickup a pair of 100W solar panels which will fit perfectly on the outside of the serving window. With those wired in we'll have 570W of solar power to run the trailer. If we have a good sunny day, we shouldn't need to run the small generator at all. This works towards our goal of being the quietest truck out there. If it works, the only noise will be from exhaust fans. I do have to drive to DE to get them, so the wife and I are taking a road trip tomorrow.
 
I went out and took my first class on getting my ServSafe Manager certification. It's required to pass inspection. Seems like it'll be easy enough to pass the test. Made a friend with one of the other attendees, that's also trying to get a mobile concession business going.
 
Monday afternoon I should have a max of 570W of solar power available. At 12V output, that's 47.5A, and we only use 18A if everything is on. I got these panels from a guy in Delaware that he got for his sailboat, but they wouldn't fit. A test fit on the serving window door indicated that a breeze could possibly cause it to slam down with 60 extra lbs of panels on it. We replace the lift struts today with a pair that support 380lbs. Which is more than enough to support the door and the panels. Waiting on some things to arrive to finish the wiring. Now there's 3 100W panels, and 1 270W on the truck. Should be enough to keep us powered on a sunny day. We still have a generator on board, just in case.

P6jtQ7.jpg
 
Nice job!! Victron makes a nice MPPT for your solar panels. We have GoPower in ours as the factory option. Renogy is another solution.
 
Viking1 said:
Nice job!! Victron makes a nice MPPT for your solar panels. We have GoPower in ours as the factory option. Renogy is another solution.
Click to expand...
I have a Renogy installed already. With a 5000/10000W inverter and an RV charger that runs from 120vac when there isn't enough sun. If need be, it can be plugged into nearyb shore power, or a generator.
 
Wired in my new solar panels the other day but it's been overcast for a few days. Today it's been sunny except my neighbor's old oak tree shades where I park. Now the sun has moved enough that I'm getting power from the complete panel setup. Right now with nothing running inside it's giving 100W to the charger. If I turn on both exhaust fans, and both interior and exterior lights, I'm maintaining about 140W of use. The charger then indicates it's supplying about 185W to the system, keeping the battery topped off. The fridge compressor is running as well, but I have no good way to measure it's usage from the batteries as it's pulling power from the inverter. I could put a current meter in there somewhere, but I'd have to check it manually as it operates outside of the 12V circuit controlled by the Renogy charge controller.

But, even with the compressor running, the 185W with the sun this afternoon was holding the battery at 100%. There is a fan in the compressor cabinet to keep it cool, which it doesn't need to run right now due to it being 41F. The height of summer will be the real test for power consumption. If I have to run a small generator, I will, but I do have space to mount a couple more 100W panels if need be.
 
You may look for a smart shunt. It connects directly to your batteries negative terminal and your load. It will give you real time current.
 
For the past few years my family and I have been making large batches of cookies and brownies, boxing them and dropping them off at various local businesses that we've gotten to know. The list has gotten longer over the years as we're still finding new, to us, local businesses to work with, especially with the work we've been doing on the trailer. Today we started baking. While the wife and I were out running errands today, our oldest daughter made two full trays of brownies. Wife and I worked on making all these peanut blossoms today, recipe called for 168, we got about 140 due to sizing differences

Dhcsmu.jpg


We have 4 more kinds of cookies to make tomorrow, then we start delivering on monday. This year's list include friends and family members, but also a barbershop, autoparts store, propane shop, trailer shop, metal shop, two gun shops, two hardware stores, turkey farm, greenhouse, grocery store, restaurant store, our mechanic, and probably more that I've forgotten. We'll be making hundreds of cookies tomorrow.
 
We've been making cookies all day. Probably made around 600 so far, some are still getting done. 4 kinds, but no sand tarts, I don't like them, and they're very time consuming. Tomorrow we box and deliver them. We've probably used close to 20lbs of butter, 10lbs of sugar, 15lbs of flour, and more than a fifth of the fifth of the Robert Irvine Vodka that we turned into vanilla extract. Over all, the cookies might have cost us around $100 to make. Hard to quantify because we buy bulk ingredients all the time. But the discounts I've gotten from the auto parts store for Christmas cookies has more than paid for them.
 
Wow! That's impressive. My dream for a while now has been to buy a decent motorbike, and it looks like this year it will finally come true.
I've checked all the possible online review trends and statistics and found a great option that satisfies all my needs.
For now, I will keep the model as a secret, but as soon as it arrives, I will definitely post a picture of my new best friend.
 
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The week before Christmas we delivered 27 boxes of cookies to businesses that we work with whether personally or for the truck, also to the businesses that have given us permission to setup, and for the owners of the country's oldest Turkey farm. Today, wife and I ran some errands and made some stops at a couple of the places we dropped off cookies. The one was the propane shop that's been helping us and where we'll fill up the tanks when need. A concern came up after I left dropping off cookies as they had a chart on the desk regarding the vaporization of LP at various tank sizes and temps.

We have 2 40lb tanks, and at 70F drawing 160K BTU, we can use those tanks for almost 11 hours. As the temp decreases the vaporization rate drops off drastically. If we were to switch to 100lb tanks, we'd be ok down to 0F, but that add 360lbs to the tongue of the trailer, interferes with the solar panel, and no good way to fasten them in place. The only solution that will work will be 120VAC thermal blankets made for those tanks. The plan would be to keep the tanks warm while the trailer is at the house and plugged into shore power. When we drop shore power and hook up the truck, they can continue to run with the extra power from the truck keeping the batteries topped off. If everything goes as plan, the heaters will only need to maintain the temp, not warm them up to temp, so they won't draw too much power. 2 Blankets, 240W total. We' only need to use them when temp gets below 35F.

We got notified today that our application has been tentatively approved by the Dept of Ag, and now we just need our opening inspection and we're open for business. Our first official date will probably be Jan 15th at a local gun shop that has a large manufacturing facility as their neighbor. Good visibility from the road, lots of parking available. We'll have space to put some signs by the road.

We bought the trailer on Feb 17th 2023, and we're opening about 11 months later.
 
Quite the trek to your eventual opening! I never would have guessed it'd take that long.

Someone on an RV forum experienced loss of pressure to their indoor LP heater (they have 11 lb tanks, so you can imagine!) in the middle of the night. For the future they rigged up a pvc exhaust extension under the trailer, pointing toward the tanks. I thought, good luck with that....

Might be a good idea to check your regulator since sometimes they can be off. In the meantime, keeping them topped off before a job should help.
 
Propane supplier said to keep the tanks 30% full, anything below that at low temps and we'll end up with flame outs. They're not terribly far away and they can fill the tanks without taking them off the trailer. I recently configured them so they can fill them without even needing to unlock them. It costs me about $20 to fill both tanks, and they do it in under 10 minutes. I just pull up to the building, run inside and get one of the guys they come out and fill, we pay him and leave. It's a very efficient operation. It might just become procedure to top off tanks at the end of the day or the start of the next day. Two of the places that we got permission to work at fill propane themselves so we can always hit them up for a quick fill.
 
It's been a busy couple of weeks. Opening inspection is tomorrow at 8:45am, we should pass. Although throughout all this I keep thinking how could we possibly pass, then I read through inspection reports in the news, and I think how could we possibly fail. If we pass, we can legally open, but our plan was to go out on the 15th as our first day of serving, but now the weather is starting to look bad. After our inspection, we're going to stop at one of the businesses that we talked to but didn't give us a definite answer with the trailer. We'll take him out and show him what it is, and hopefully get a positive answer. Then we're heading to the butcher to pick up the sausage we ordered, and we'll show him the trailer. He was very excited to take the order, very nice Amish guy that runs this shop and makes amazing sausage. We have wings ordered from a local poutry farm, prices went up since we talked to them last summer, but they're less expensive than anywhere else we looked into getting wings. Sysco is probably cheaper, but I won't buy their crap plus we want to stick to local suppliers. The bakery that we talked to about supplying us sweets is ready to go and help us out.

A big greenhouse we talked to last year is closed for the season but reopening on March 1st. We're going to be there for their reopening, and have some stuff planed that people can walk and eat. There's a big horse event in Lancaster this year, and we should be there, and probably the only truck there, but not the only food service. There's going to be a big tent serving subs and pulled pork sammiches. But it's an event of 3 to 4 thousand over 2 days.
 
We just got back from our first gig, which was a last minute booking because the weather isn't going to be good on monday. We started working at 7am, from picking up wings to prepping them and all the other stuff we needed to prep, loaded up, forgot some things and arrived at 3:30pm and stayed until 7:30pm. It went well except the guy that booked us messed up in notifying the other attendees that a truck would be there. We're going back up on the 27th, and it looks like we could be a regular booking for events there.

While driving there I got a phone call from a nice Amish guy that organizes the food for a huge event that is in Lancaster this year. We're booked for it, with 2 other trucks. My goal is to not be setup in events where we're competing with lot of other trucks, but in this case, it's a 2 day event that sees 15,000 people per day. We'll be serving wings and some other finger food, maybe angry corn dogs or tater skins.

The best thing is that my plan for serving high speed wings went perfectly, we had wings out the window in under 5 minutes. 3 minutes of that was frying them. We've been to truck events where orders are taking 10 or more minutes to complete. Trucks are supposed to be fast, no one wants to stand around waiting.
 
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