There’s an origin story behind every business, and for many Inland Northwest restaurants, that tale begins with a truck.

For some restaurateurs, the decision to start with a mobile operation came down to lower costs and more flexibility. For most, the food-truck-first strategy provided those founders with valuable learning experiences and the chance to develop customer bases before committing to brick-and-mortar establishments.

“The food truck was an easier start-up,” says Mirak Kazanjian, owner of Skewers. “The nice thing with the food truck is a lot of the money that you invest into it is easy to get back out. You buy the truck and then you sell the truck. It’s a little bit safer.”

Startup costs of a food truck are generally in the tens of thousands of dollars, compared with six-figure price tags for brick-and-mortar ventures, some in the industry estimate.

A partial list of restaurants that started out as mobile operations includes:

• Skewers, at 1009 W. First, in downtown Spokane.
• Big Red’s Colbert Trading Co., at 18711 N. Yale Road, in Colbert.
• Bruncheonette, at 1011 W. Broadway, in the North Bank neighborhood.
• Island Style Food & BBQ, at 2931 N. Division, on Spokane's North Side.
• Good ‘Dilla, at 808 W. Main, in River Park Square.
• Tacos El Sol, at 3422 N. Division, on Spokane's North Side.
• 3 Ninjas Curbside & Catering, at 21802 E. Indiana, in Liberty Lake.
• Tamale Box, at 1102 W. Summit Parkway, in the Kendall Yards neighborhood.
• Mac Daddy’s, at 808 W. Main, in River Park Square.
• People’s Waffle, at 15 S. Howard, in downtown Spokane.
• Versalia Pizza, at 1333 W. Summit Parkway, in Kendall Yards, and at 20760 E. Indiana, in Liberty Lake.
• Crêpe Café Sisters, at 441 N. Nettleton, in Kendall Yards.
• Burger Bunker and Bunker Bar, at 702 N. Spokane, in Post Falls.
• Seng’s Asian BBQ House, which is expected to open later this year at 801 N. Monroe, in the North Bank.

Skewers

Kazanjian opened the Skewers food truck in 2016, serving Middle Eastern cuisine. Last year, he opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant at 1009 W. First, in downtown Spokane.

Known best for its shawarma—layers of beef or chicken marinated in Middle Eastern flavors and slow cooked on an upright rotisserie—the Skewers mobile operation started out the way many food trucks do: parking in front of office buildings and on street corners, learning the ropes. Kazanjian also drove the truck to various farmer’s markets, like those in the South Perry District and in the Kendall Yards neighborhood north of downtown.

While his truck is still a staple at farmer’s markets—and made its Pig Out in the Park food festival debut this year—Kazanjian had transitioned to catering more private events prior to opening the restaurant. Those events proved to be more lucrative, he says.

“The benefit of that is guaranteed numbers,” Kazanjian explains. “They tell you they’ll have this many guests. They pay for that many guests, and it’s not weather dependent.”

That transition left a void in Spokane’s culinary community, however, as people hungry for his Armenian-Lebanese dishes couldn’t access Skewers as easily anymore.

“People had a demand for us,” Kazanjian says. “It allowed me to be comfortable opening the restaurant, and now you have somewhere where you can always go with set hours. That’s what the biggest push to the restaurant from the food truck was.”

Big Red's

Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant wasn't the original goal for Kazanjian, but it was for Curtis Bytnar, the longtime owner and operator of Big Red’s food truck, and now Big Red’s Colbert Trading Co.

“That was the easiest route to get my own kitchen,” Bytnar says. “The overhead is night and day different. You can run your products at a really good cost and push them out.”

With about $50 in his pocket, Bytnar initially began his journey toward opening a restaurant with a hot dog wagon. After about four years of slinging Chicago dogs near downtown Spokane’s bars, he had a trailer custom built and expanded Big Red’s.

Bytnar operated the Chicago-style cuisine truck for about 10 years before closing down in 2018 to refocus his career goals.

His dream of opening his own brick-and-mortar eatery never faltered, however, and to the delight of the Big Red’s faithful, Bytnar and his wife, Leslie, opened their restaurant in Colbert earlier this year, at 18711 N. Yale Road.

“If you love it, you’ll keep going until you get that brick-and-mortar,” Bytnar says. “You basically put that carrot in front of your face every day.”

Bruncheonette

The cheaper cost of starting with a mobile operation was also a factor in Joile Forral’s story.

Forral opened Couple of Chefs: Catering & Food Truck in 2011, first as a catering company and about a year later as both a catering service and food truck business.

She now owns Bruncheonette, a brick-and-mortar restaurant at 1011 W. Broadway, near the Spokane County Courthouse.

“Quite frankly, I didn’t have any money,” Forral says. “I started picking up catering contracts, and with the food truck, I was able to do more as far as lunch services, dinner services, events, and catering.”

The food truck route helped Forral, who started Couple of Chefs in her early 20s, learn the ins and outs of running a business, something that helped her when she opened Bruncheonette.

“I got to learn as a young entrepreneur how to do QuickBooks, how to figure out food costs, and booking schedules, and customer service," she says.

Forral says she decided to open a brick-and-mortar brunch house when she eventually outgrew the food truck.

“It got to a point where we were tapped out for how much we could make in the food truck, plus all the weddings we were doing," she says. "The only way to move up from here is to open a brick-and-mortar.”

Her catering and mobile business venture helped her grow a large customer base, which helped her when she opened Bruncheonette.

“The community got to really know who we were, and we had a really good following on our social media,” Forral says. “When it came time to open the restaurant, we had a really solid foundation of people who were excited for us.”

Island Style

Building a strong foundation of customers also worked well for Nicolas DeCaro, when he opened Island Style Food & BBQ in a standalone building last year at 2931 N. Division, about three years after starting with a food truck.

“As soon as we opened (the food truck), I saw the potential in it and saw where it could go, and my entrepreneurial mind just started going,” DeCaro says. “Within the first few months, I knew that it was going to be successful.”

Starting out with a food truck is a good way to learn about customer habits, DeCaro says.

“The food truck gives you a good learning base,” he says. “It helps you learn your customers, your clientele, their likes and dislikes, and it helps you learn locations too.”

People in different areas, even just throughout Spokane County and North Idaho, prefer different types of foods.

“Our whole menu was built off of the different things we tried out on the food truck,” he says.

While the restaurant on North Division is up and running, Island Style is carrying on with its mobile operations.

“The food truck business is more profitable,” DeCaro says. “There’s less overhead, less labor involved. You’re not paying rent and utilities. That was our bread and butter to start, and we’re going to continue to do it.”

Island Style receives five to 10 booking requests a week, he says, to the point it's turning some events down and referring customers to other businesses in the food truck industry.

Words of Advice

DeCaro, Forral, Bytnar, and Kazanjian all say they would recommend that aspiring restaurateurs start with a mobile setup before starting a brick-and-mortar establishment.

“The restaurant industry is a really tough industry, and the failure rate is tremendous,” DeCaro says. “So many people have big dreams, or they have friends over for dinner who tell them how great their food is, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a Michelin-star quality chef. The restaurant industry is not just about the food. There’s a lot of parts to it.”

Bytnar says a food truck is much more forgiving than a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

“With a restaurant, you’re putting everything in,” he says. “With a food truck, you’re putting what you want into it. It’s, how successful do you want to be?”

Despite those words of advice, the mobile food business is not without its own challenges.

“The food truck is way more work,” Bytnar contends. “You’re constantly setting up, taking down, setting up, taking down, and you’re confined to this little area.”

Forral also experienced her share of difficulties while operating her food truck, including constantly working 80-hour weeks.

“I wouldn’t be in the spot where I was starting out with the restaurant if I didn’t have that food truck,” she says. “I’m glad I have the brick-and-mortar now, because life is a lot easier when people come to me versus me having to go set up somewhere.”

And not every food truck owner makes the leap to the brick-and-mortar world, however.

Tony Epefanio, owner of Mixed Plate Food Truck & Catering and president of the Greater Spokane Food Truck Association, hasn’t made that transition yet, but says it’s still in the cards.

“Our goal was always to get a restaurant, then you start looking at restaurants … and there’s just a lot of fixed costs there,” Epefanio explains.

Still, he continues to patiently wait for the right opportunity.

Epefanio opened Mixed Plate in 2017 after starting out with a hot dog cart.

He says it’s smart to start out with a mobile operation before opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant and locking into a long-term lease.

“If it doesn’t work, then you’re in real big trouble,” he says.

Mobile food businesses are a good way to learn the industry, he adds.

“If you’re going to events and night markets and things like that, you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t work,” Epefanio says. “Then, once you open up a brick-and-mortar, you can have more of a grasp on things.”

The food truck industry has grown in the Spokane area over the years, he says.

In his role as president of the Greater Spokane Food Truck Association, Epefanio saw over 900 job inquiries come in through the association’s website last year.

“There’s more jobs than we can handle that come through the website,” he says.

Founded in 2012 by Forral and a group of other food truck owners, the association supports new and existing food truck owners with resources and works to promote the local food truck scene.

The food truck and mobile food business community is a tight-knit group, Epefanio says.

“There’s enough business out there for everybody,” he says. “That’s why we can help each other out.”