Georgetown Food Truck Owners Compete in Food Network Show
A self-described Food Network junkie, Heather Clauser always dreamed of competing in the The Great Food Truck Race, in which folks new to the industry compete to sell the most food.
She applied to the show but didn’t hear anything so the family forgot about it. Over six years, Heather passed the baton of her Arizona restaurant, The Oink Café, to her brother, while her kids, Tyler and Emily, worked as baristas. The family found their way to Central Texas after a friend who had moved to Georgetown kept telling Heather how great it was living here. She fell in love with the city and moved here with her husband, followed by her kids, who ultimately settled in Round Rock.
Out of the blue, Food Network called and, “We basically dropped everything to focus on that and banded together,” Tyler says. He and his family are grateful for the culinary competition that brought them back together. “If not for The Great Food Truck Race, we never would have worked together again.”
Inspired by their previous iteration, The Oink Café restaurant, they launched The Oink Mobile food truck, which sells all things pork. As Tyler says, it’s creative, it’s eye-catching, and everyone loves bacon.
The Clausers joined six other teams in Alaska to show off their cooking chops while battling the elements during the show’s 13th season. Each week, host Tyler Florence gave the trucks a limited budget for shopping and cooking; the teams that sold the most food advanced. Losing teams drove home, and the last truck standing won the $50,000 grand prize.
FIRE AND ICE
The Clausers were less enthusiastic about the climate. Having vacationed in Alaska one summer, they weren’t prepared for the Fall cold. Faced with 5° weather, they spent the first two days in Alaska shopping for winter clothes.
The weather didn’t merely challenge the cooks. Throughout the competition, most of their cooking equipment took forever to reach the right temperature, and there was an ongoing struggle to keep the food warm. “We were fighting against the cold weather constantly,” Tyler says.
They faced the opposite problem on Day 2, which started off well enough with a line of customers flocking to their door. “Our second customer was a fire,” Heather says. A fire extinguisher put out the flames, but it also ruined all the food they had spent hours preparing. There was no coming back after that, Tyler says. “We were digging ourselves out of a hole.”
They spent the rest of the week trying to recover after a full day without sales. Ultimately, The Oink Mobile was the first to go. But, despite the disappointment of having to leave so soon, Heather was glad it wasn’t because their food wasn’t good. Plus, “How many people get to say they were on a TV show?”
The Clausers’ early defeat didn’t stop them from making their food truck dream a reality. The Oink Mobile opened at The Good Lot Beer Garden in Cedar Park in June, and it rolls around Georgetown and Round Rock as well.
“We are thankful we got to do it,” Tyler says. “It was an awesome experience—we learned a lot. It brought us back together to do what we do best and we’re excited to share our story and our food with Austin.”