It's now April, and his business is booming.
Harris has used his experience in the restaurant and catering business to create the 'Boka Truck.' Harris's business is centered around a truck that drives around the Richmond area looking for spots to sell his "fusion-based" food on the street. A vehicle from which he serves his own personal brand of, what he refers to as, "fusion tacos."
One of the best assets of the truck is that it's mobile. At the same time, he also utilizes Twitter to communicate with his customers. Harris receives personal requests to come to a certain location or regarding potential fusion taco combinations. The manner in which he interacts with customers is both unique and innovative.
When asked about the street food business, Harris remarks that the West Coast has been ahead of the game when it comes to serving food. Also in their interactivity with customers through social media, whether it’s through Facebook or Twitter.
He referred to a San Francisco-based street vending company known as the Kogi BBQ or the Kogi Truck. Kogi BBQ was able to serve street food and utilize Twitter as well. Harris loved the idea, and wanted to bring that concept to the East Coast.
Harris is a trained chef in French, American-Southwest, and French- Asian fusion cuisine. He used what he learned, fused all of the types of food together, and brought it to the streets of Richmond.
In July 2009, Harris came to Richmond when there was an opening for the Executive Chef position at The Water Grill, who is owned by the Richmond Restaurant Group. RRG has also used his services for another one of their restaurants, The Hard Shell.
Harris has an impressive résumé, so why did he choose to create fusion street food? Why should he drive around in a truck in hot weather and serve people on the street?
I spoke to chef Harris to learn more about him and the history behind the 'Boka Truck.'
Patrick Rossman: For everyone who doesn’t know, can you give us an explanation of what the Boka Truck is and what it entails?
Harris: Request-driven, chef inspired food truck. You tell us where to go, and we show up. We’ll serve the crowd and we move on to the next requested location. It’s not like a delivery business.
PR: You have worked in catering and restaurants for years, but what exactly motivated you to start a taco truck business?
Harris: Well Boka Truck, it is a catering truck that I turned into a vending food service truck. It’s basically a restaurant on wheels. So I see it a little bit differently then a “roach coach” or taco truck. Its really like a normal restaurant, it’s got everything in there. There’s two ovens, a four burner stove that all high gas heat, a flat top grill, an open flame grill. I removed the fryer but I have a big stainless steel prep table, a humungous three tub sink and I got two industrial refrigerators and a half freezer.
PR: As I read in your bio, I noticed you’ve been working with food since you were young. What was it that made you realize at such a young age that you wanted to work with food?
Harris: Well the story goes like this: all the girls were in Home Ec class (home economics) and me being in 7th grade, that’s where I wanted to be. I signed up, I wasn’t much of a seamstress but my mom had sewing equipment and helped me out with that part of the class but I naturally had an inclination towards the cooking. Not because I had experience with it but I just, you know, I was a fat kid and I always loved food. It was very interesting to me and more so I think than a lot of the other classes I took, so I kind of took to it.
When I realized how much better I was doing than everybody else in the food part of the class, I started looking at my GPA and realizing that I can bring up my GPA by taking food classes like the gourmet cooking class in high school, so I took that. Again, I realized that I was excelling and getting straight A’s on everything while other people were struggling in the class. It kind of came naturally to me while other people had to try at it so hard.
PR: You declined to attend Johnson & Wales University for Culinary Arts, in order to pursue a marketing degree from George Mason University. Was there a specific reason for that decision?
Harris: I had taken some apprenticeships while I was in high school and I worked with some really smart and talented chefs, in doing that I was taught some life lessons really early before I had to live them out.
One is that, if you’re going to commit yourself in the life of a chef in the professional restaurant industry or hotel industry, you are never going to have holidays, your going to spend 80 hours a week working, very long days, and the pay is not what you’ll get with a higher education.
One of the other words of advice that I got was, the way that you always keep up with culinary trends and being a good chef is to constantly study. No matter what you’re being taught in a class, they will never be on the cutting edge of what you need to be learning to keep present in the market. So I took those words of advice and what I did was, I studied independently while I went to school to get a business education. I literally gave myself a culinary education while I gained a business education.
PR: With working in a restaurant, catering, and creating street food, which do you find most enjoyable and why?
Harris: Well I say that this is the most satisfying because I get to put out what ever I want to do. I can play bucket drums when I’m trying to get business and I get to put together whatever type of cuisine I want, its awesome.
PR: Was the idea of fusion street food something that you've always wanted to do?
Harris: No, I did not want to do fusion street food. I kind of saw it as a step backwards in what I was trained to do, since I was Master Cook at Alain Ducasse's classical French restaurant, Adour. Having the opportunity to open up his restaurant in Washington D.C., I worked with some of the most talented chefs in this hemisphere and I learned a ton. Going from something where it’s just that classically refined and bringing it down to a street level, totally a step backwards.
However, being able to do street food well, I have put myself in a position to do that. Its simplification, I’m not doing anything crazy.
PR: Social networking is blossiming right now, but not many restaurants are still not using it to their full advantage like the 'Boka Truck' does. Why do you think social networking hasn’t fully caught on in the food industry?
Harris: I think it’s something a lot of people are starting to do especially with Facebook and MySpace pages. At this point and time, Twitter is not necessarily the best way to market yourself on a lot of these sites for a lot of these companies. Mainly because these companies are in the same location all the time, they don’t need to update what their new specials are every week, and a lot of people don’t care. They aren’t going to go to that restaurant everyday…or even that often.
It’s not like the people come to my restaurant everyday or anything but I do have a lot of people that come every single week, when I’m in the area. So, I don’t know, maybe I just have a good following because I have good food.
PR: The 'Boka Truck' is very innovative in using Twitter for setting up locations. Does social media help with your business?
Harris: Twitter definitely has. Twitter created a foundation for people who’ve never used twitter before that sign up for twitter just to follow me. They know that’s how they can follow me.
PR: Other than Twitter, what other ways is the Boka Truck trying to be innovative and establish its brand?
Harris: I try to network into as many different social media avenues as possible to diversify my reach of customers. I also post in forums and other blogs and I try to create a spider web affect with how we reach our customers.
PR: What is the popularity behind the 'Boka Truck'? What makes customers come back?
Harris: The popularity behind it is that its chef driven and that every time that you come back there’s new menu items, that weren’t there the last time you ordered. It could be the entire menus changed since the last time you saw it and I think that’s a big draw for people to come back. Also, the fact that you know you that you can still get some of the staple items that are on the web sites that we can’t even fit on the menu. There’s a lot of little secret things about the Boka Truck that if you are a diner at the Boka Truck, you know you can order flour tortillas or you know you can get a steak and cheese quesadilla anytime.
PR: Ten years ago, would you have imagined starting a taco truck?
Harris: No. Never. When I was 18 years old, I never thought I’d be running a taco truck when I was 29. It was probably the last thing in the world.
Harris also does catering that is not 'Boka Truck'- related. Visit this website for more information.
(Click Here)
To follow him on twitter, click (here):
Great interview.
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