Member spotlight: What The Cluck

Serving up mouth-watering fried chicken from their eye-catching mobile unit, What The Cluck have fast established a crispy reputation among the street food scene. The Midlands based partner team are passionate about frying up delicious chicken and have recently enjoyed a spell wowing the crowds at Herbert’s Yard as well as collaborating with friends Patty Freaks on an incredible fried chicken burger.

We caught up with them to find out more about life as What The Cluck:

What inspired you to start up your own catering business?

We are both from hospitality backgrounds and absolutely love working with the public in a more personal way. We really believe that street food allows you to take both of those things and create a dream job. Working in traditional kitchens takes away the ability to connect with your customers face to face which is what we love doing. Speaking to people about their love of food and what they want out of a dish to then serving them something you’ve created for them and watching them really enjoy it, is what we really love.

Favourite event you’ve traded at?

For us it must be our weddings. It is always a huge privilege to be asked to cater for someone’s big day and we just love being a part of it. We love speaking to the couple about exactly what they want, to then decorating the truck on the day and just speaking to all the guests and watching them have the best time ever with our food being a part of it.

What does success look like to you?

The obvious answer would be cash in the till but over recent years we have decided that it is extremely important to really have a great work life balance. We own our own business because we’re passionate about what we do but you also need to look after yourselves to ensure the longevity of that business. Burn out within hospitality is a massive mental and physical issue that a lot of people go through and struggle with so making sure you take time for yourselves is important. We also find that during our downtime is when we come up with our best ideas and network with people that we may not of got the chance to whilst we are intensely working.

If not working in hospitality, what would you be doing?

We both absolutely love the outdoors and our fitness so Holly would want to have a dog walking business so she could be outside and walking all the time whilst being a stand in dog mom to other people’s dogs whilst they are at work and away. Sophie has always been really into fitness and we both train at a CrossFit gym. She would love to coach in a gym and help people with their nutrition goals as this was something she studied at university.

From the perfectly drizzled sauce dishes you serve to the bespoke, very on brand van design it’s clear you put a lot of effort into how the business appears. How important do you think presentation is?

Presentation is key but it also must coincide with quality. There is nothing worse than buying an amazing looking dish and the taste just isn’t there. Each dish we send out looks incredible but also tastes awesome, we wouldn’t hand it out any other way. We always get comments on how the food people receive looks exactly like our Instagram photos which is important.

The vans branding was a labour of love, and we just wanted something completely different that stood out. Each yellow zigzag is individually placed on, and we were grateful to work with an amazing design team on this. We always get the public commenting on how they see our van around when we are driving so this really confirms that it’s doing the job that we wanted it to.

How did the collab with Patty Freaks come about and how did it go?

We’ve known the guys at Patty Freaks for years and they’ve always been a great help to us throughout and we consider them good friends. It was one of those early mornings at a food festival when you’re quiet and I just thought “I fancy a burger with fried chicken on it”. We both decided which two dishes would work the best together and just cracked on with it. It was delicious. Sometimes your best ideas come when you’re hungry!

What would be a dream food collaboration of yours?

It would have to be Vietnamese street kitchen. We are absolutely obsessed with Vietnamese food and their food is as authentic as it gets. We would love to create a Vietnamese inspired fried chicken with them, using their expertise and amazing flavours.

Strangest thing a customer has asked you?

We regularly get asked if we can just pop up on people’s driveways and serve them and their neighbours for a few days. Maybe this is a service we need to start offering?

Would you describe yourselves as cluckin’ mad?

Anybody that works in kitchens is slightly cluckin’ mad. With the crazy long service times and the hours that come before and after to prep and clean down, it is not an industry to get in to unless your slightly mad. Saying that though, we wouldn’t change it for the world as we’ve met a lot of amazing people over the years from vendors, event organisers and all our customers. They make the cluckin’ mad times worth it.

How much chicken is too much?

We absolutely love chicken and eat it all the time so I would say there’s no such thing as too much chicken. On the other hand though, when we’ve got a crazy busy weekend and we place the order and then collect it, sometimes we stand back and think “This is an obscene amount of chicken”.

You can find out more about What The Cluck and follow their journey here.