Member Spotlight: Smoke Truck

True to the name of their business, Smoke Truck certainly do bring the heat.

Serving up some of the juiciest burgers across the UK, the team take their approach seriously and have enjoyed appraisal and repeat business from many enamoured customers. A proper burger deserves proper craft, and Smoke Truck even endeavour to create their own pickles, paying the finest attention to detail! We spoke to them to find out more about their independent catering venture:

What inspired you to start up your own catering business?

We moved to Castle Hedingham in 2016 and were still travelling back and fourth to London for work. When we had our first child we decided we wanted to give ourselves more time and freedom, and due to the lack of food choices around the area combined with our passion for food we decided to take the leap and start our own food truck!

Can you describe what makes a perfect burger in five words?

Juicy, flavourful, mouthwatering, indulgent, satisfying.

If you could go back now and give one piece of advice to yourself when starting up, what would it be?

To be patient and make sure you enjoy the small milestones!

We’ve seen that you make your own pickles – how important to a good burger are proper pickles?

Very important – you need the pickles to cut through the high fat content of our burgers. We have found that shop bought pickles are too thick, and with our thinly sliced pickles even people that say they ‘don’t like pickles’ have still enjoyed our burgers with our homemade pickles!

What do you find most rewarding about running your own business?

The flexibility of being able to spend quality time with out children, the accomplishments as well as the ups and downs that come in business. Even in bad times we work together and make things right.

What’s one dish every customer must try when they come and see you?

The Classic – we feel we have perfected the individual components of the burger to ensure that every single bite is satisfying and full of all the flavours.

What is the most important lesson that you’ve learnt whilst running your own business?

To ensure you do thorough market research at the beginning before choosing your truck/menu etc – this will definitely save time and money in the long run!

Cooking big juicy burgers so often, do you still enjoy eating them yourself – or do you eat anything other than burgers when you can?

Every day that our truck is out working, we’re eating! We’re big foodies and enjoy cooking and eating a variety of foods so may not necessarily always stick to the menu burgers, sometimes we add in extras but yes we still enjoy eating our burgers!

What is the plan for the future?

To keep providing our local community with the burgers and fries they’ve come to love and maybe, one day, move into a local premises!

What led to you joining NCASS and how have you found your membership?

The ease of how smooth you make running your own food business, all the help and support provided for all documents/legalities etc is invaluable. We can’t fault NCASS at all!

You can follow the Smoke Truck journey here. For more member stories, click here.