Food on the fly

Faith, family inspiration behind new food truck

Posted

Endless pans of macaroni and cheese at a graduation party and a car conversation with God provided the ambition Tova Johnson needed to start her own food truck.
Johnson, a Beaver Crossing resident, will soon - and literally - roll out her Coolers food truck to Seward, Beaver Crossing and events throughout the area.
Coolers will specialize in chicken wings, large sandwiches and, of course, Johnson’s famous mac and cheese.
Johnson said she’s always enjoyed cooking for her family, and many of their gatherings revolved around food she made in her own kitchen. A graduation party the Johnson family hosted last year was the one that showed Johnson she needed and wanted to share her food with anyone looking for a meal made with care and different from anything they could find in the area.
“We had wings, we had chicken, we had baked macaroni and cheese and desserts. People were coming and with graduations, you’re supposed to float from party to party,” she said. “Not here. I fried 100 pounds of chicken, seven to eight pounds of macaroni and cheese and made so many sandwiches.”
Johnson said she made so much food that night to the point where she had been in the kitchen for the entire graduation party and when she went out, she saw that the hungry and appreciative crowd had devoured most of what she put out - and wanted more.
“People were going crazy for the chicken and I could not believe it,” she said. “One guy came up to me and said, “If you had a food truck, I would follow you everywhere you go.”
After the party was cleaned out, Johnson sat in her car, alone, to reflect on the success of the event and the food truck comment.
“I was sitting in my car and talking to the Lord and He said, ‘Do it,’” she said. “I just sat there and kept on thinking about it and thinking about it and one day, I just said I was going to do it.”
Johnson’s first move was to find a trailer, which she did in the form of a 6 foot by 12 foot trailer on discount for $3,100.
The rest of the pieces came slowly but surely and the truck started to take shape. She said she never had a set date when she hoped to complete the truck and didn’t want to rush the process. She instead approached it with a mentality that it needed to be done correctly, affordably and ambitiously.
“I started working overtime, just doing things for other people where we could trade off different services and stuff,” she said. “Everything just started falling in place. Little things started happening.”
Those little things came in the form of well-timed sales for equipment, generous donations of goods and services and a little luck. Within 45 days, Johnson had collected all the pieces needed and was ready to put it together.
One of the last steps after the interior was ready was to give the trailer its signature look. Johnson said the name “Coolers” was a no-brainer because the food served out of the truck’s windows is the same that accompanied family outings to the beach when the Johnsons lived in North Carolina.
“We used to go to the beach and we would always pack our coolers. I’d make sandwiches, fried chicken, cake and pack our drinks in it and go to the beach,” she said. “We were in the kitchen laughing one night, saying we needed to sell these sandwiches and call our business Coolers.”
The namesake is reflected on the trailer’s design and logo, as it was designed to look like a cooler’s branding.
“I wanted my trailer to look like a cooler with the little tag on it,” she said. “That’d be our little thing when you see these trailers around.”
With the trailer complete, Johnson said she quit her job in order to focus her attention on the new business full-time. To call it a leap of faith would be an understatement, she said, but it was a leap she made with all the confidence in the world.
“I jumped, I jumped so hard but I did a flip when I jumped,” she said. “Everything was so amazing, it was like, how could you not? It was like someone opened the door and said, ‘Come and get it.’”
Coolers’ official grand opening will be May 22 at the Walmart parking lot and a soft opening will be held in Beaver Crossing May 12. She said she hopes to serve the communities five days a week and will promote where and when she’ll be through Coolers’ social media pages.
She said the menu will consist of nine flavors of wings, five sandwiches, baked macaroni and cheese and homemade chips. Food is made to order and can be ordered ahead. She said chopped Carolina style barbecue and family meals on Sundays may grace the menu in the near future, as well.
Johnson said she’s excited about the possibilities that will come along with the business. She said she believes it’ll provide a new, affordable and unique food option for the community but will most importantly be served with friendliness and care.
Looking at the truck and smiling, Johnson said she often thinks about the fortunate choice they made to move to Beaver Crossing, which eventually led to the connections who ate her food at that graduation party. Many of those people were the ones that helped her complete her truck.
To get to this point wasn’t quick and it wasn’t always easy, but Johnson knows it was the way it needed to be.
“I said, you know what, I’m going to stop trying to do it myself and when I stopped that, everything just started rolling,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to have it any other way, because it changed so many things for us.
“It showed that you can do anything. I don’t care how old you are, how much money you have…you can do anything,” she said, adding that she knows that lesson was made possible because of the conversation she had in her car after the graduation party. “I am so glad I took the time to sit down and listen.”