Dan Feldner/MDN • Sharon Brauer, left, and Lesli Getzlaff stand next to their new food truck at the North Dakota State Fair Thursday morning. The two sisters started The Wife’s Kitchen out of a trailer nine years ago and just upgraded to this new, custom-built truck around Thanksgiving of last year.

One loves to cook, the other loves to count. Who knew two sisters with such different interests could work so well together in a food truck?

Nine years ago Lesli Getzlaff and Sharon Brauer had a dream, and they found a way to make that dream a reality the same way countless others have – eBay. They bought a food service trailer off the online auction site, named it The Wife’s Kitchen and got cooking.

“We were just talking one night, saw it on there and said she can cook, I had some money” Brauer said.

“So we went for it,” Getzlaff said.

Getzlaff spent 10 years as a child selling footlong hotdogs at the State Fair, and has always loved the fair and loved to cook. Brauer is an accountant by trade, and spent her childhood on the family farm between Burlington and Des Lacs, spending most of her time in the barn with the calves, kittens and their father while her younger sister learned in the kitchen with their mother and grandmother.

When the sisters grew up, Getzlaff moved away, started a family and moved back to Burlington. She cooked for a living managing various restaurants, but when Getzlaff came back home she decided she wanted to start her own business and be her own boss.

“Instead of making someone else rich, I’ll be rich,” Getzlaff said with a long laugh, noting she realizes her food truck isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.

“We’re having fun. We love it. It’s fun,” Brauer added. “You get to meet so many people. It’s just amazing how many people you get to meet.”

The sisters aren’t the only family helping out with the business, either. Their father, Robert Reiner, is 85 years old and still helps when needed.

“He loves coming down here to the fair every year,” Getzlaff said. “He does our dicing and helps us out.”

“Up until two years ago he used to come in and help me during the noon rush and he’d run the deep fryers,” Brauer said. “He had a stroke two years ago so it kind of got a little hard for him. We had to slow him down.”

“He didn’t want to, but we kind of made him,” Getzlaff added. “He’ll be down here this year. He never misses.”

Other family members help from time to time as well, including a niece and Getzlaff’s son, who doesn’t help as much as he used to because at 6 foot 8 inches and 290 pounds, he doesn’t exactly fit in the cramped kitchen very well. Also assisting when she can is Grace Leslie, the best friend of the sisters’ mother who also still drives a bus for the City of Minot at 80 years old.

That first year at the North Dakota State Fair was a learning experience, to say the least. They were in the spot now occupied by Pita Pit and had to learn things the hard way.

“In our first year we had no clue what we were doing,” Getzlaff said. “None whatsoever.”

As far as lessons from that first year, Brauer learned one of the most important for a food booth.

“I learned how to cook,” Brauer said with a laugh. “I can’t cook, I’m an accountant.”

Having the right amount of product, interacting with people and learning how to fix broken equipment on the fly were just some of the things they took away from that first year.

“We learned everything that first year,” Getzlaff said. “We thought we were ready to go, but no, we weren’t.”

Fortunately, Getzlaff’s husband Terry is a jack of all trades and helps out with repairs and anything else that needs doing when he can.

Although it was stressful, both sisters have fond memories of their first year at the State Fair.

“The first year was, I think, one of the funniest just because it was the first year that we got to people watch. And that is one of the best things about being out here, is people watching,” Brauer said. “Everybody’s so nice. They all want to come up and visit.”

They got lucky a few years later and a nearby spot on the main road past the Grandstand leading to the State Fair Center opened up, and they’ve been there ever since. Getzlaff said the easiest way to find them is to look for the large Tubby’s food tent, and they are nearby.

Getzlaff said they are one of the few food booths at the State Fair to offer breakfast. The Wife’s Kitchen is well known for its biscuits and gravy, and also offers breakfast burritos. For lunch, the taco in a bag is a big seller, and chicken strips are a popular appetizer.

“Another one my husband found at a food show is deep fried pickles,” Getzlaff said. “And they have taken off like a shot.”

Their second year at the State Fair they went through two cases of deep fried pickles, and during the 2010 fair it was up to 20 cases.

This year the State Fair has a Food Frenzy vendor competition to come up with something new and different, and the sisters have definitely thought outside the box for their entry – a deep fried brownie with whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

“Oh, they’re sickeningly good,” Getzlaff said. “They’re sinful.”

Getzlaff would love to win the contest, but even if she doesn’t, she’s still proud of being named the State Fair’s Food Vendor of the Year in 2008.

Almost as popular as the food is the name. Even with the old trailer, which was a simple lime green color with The Wife’s Kitchen in purple lettering, wives would constantly stand next to it while their husbands took a picture. The new purple truck with not only the name, but the company logo of a wife cooking in her kitchen should definitely kick things up a notch.

“Now I can’t wait to see what they do with the new truck,” Getzlaff said.

The truck has the business’s phone number, 833-4225, on the side, and Getzlaff said that was probably the best decision they made when having it designed. It was built in Florida, and when they were driving it back to Burlington people were calling left and right about catering their events. Brauer said as they were driving through Minneapolis, a man called and wanted The Wife’s Kitchen to cater his wedding.

The truck has more space than the trailer, air conditioning, a layout exactly how the sisters wanted and a propane generator for work at auction sites or other spots that don’t have utility access.

Getzlaff said she takes the truck to area events such as the recent July 4 air show in Minot, auctions and bike rallys. She also noted they had the truck on order before the Souris River flood last year brought in so many out-of-state food trucks to serve the post-flood rebuilding and oil industries. As a result, many of her customers in the field are surprised the business is local.

Getzlaff also said she was proud to give away much of the food ordered for the State Fair last year to local people who were rebuilding their homes and didn’t have easy access to food or water.

Brauer still lives in Prior Lake, Minn., with her husband, but is hoping to find accounting work in Minot and move here full time. In two years she plans to retire from that job and work in The Wife’s Kitchen with her sister full time. As for Getzlaff’s plans, she already is full time and wants to keep driving her truck as long as possible. She even has dreams of fielding a fleet of trucks if business is good enough. And this time she won’t even have to look to eBay to make that dream a reality.

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/567585/Sisters-in-food-business-for-long-haul.html?nav=5010

Scott "Skip" Haag, owner of Skip's Gourmet Grub, serves up lunch to workers in the Grand Forks Industrial Park on Thursday. Herald photo by Eric Hylden

Food trucks are not exactly known for producing gourmet fare.

Scott ‘Skip’ Haag is out to change that.

Haag and his wife, Rita, own Skip’s Gourmet Grub food truck, which has been operating in Grand Forks, mostly in the Cirrus parking lot, for the Past year.

“It’s not your typical roach coach,” Scott Haag said. “The quality of the food that comes out of the truck is very high. Everything is made from scratch.”

He said his is the only privately owned state- and county-certified full-scale mobile food truck he knows of in the area. He contrasts his rig to the smaller, item-specific vehicles that sell tacos and other fare in town.

Haag, 50, prepared lunch for a customer last week inside the fully equipped truck as he talked about his business model.

“You can actually get a full meal from us,” he said. “We try to keep everything we serve under or around the $5 mark. You can get an entrée, soup and a beverage for $8 to $9.”

His rotating menu includes pulled pork, BBQ chicken, buffalo chicken sandwiches, beef tips, fajitas, tater tot hot dish, soups and potato and macaroni salads. Haag said he tries to provide customers with something familiar, while adding unexpected touches such as coleslaw served on top of sandwiches.

Skip’s Gourmet Grub can be found parked in the Cirrus lot in the Grand Forks Industrial Park from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Haag also provides mobile concessions for local festivals and the Haags cater weddings and other events.

The Haags plan to continue during the winter, perhaps cutting back to two days a week. Last year, they operated throughout the winter and only had to shut down four days when temperatures exceeding 17 below stopped propane flowing to the truck’s fuel tanks.

The former first sergeant was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base from 1993 to 1999 and returned here after retiring from the military in 2004.

Haag regularly prepared steak and baked potatoes for squadron fundraisers while he was stationed in Alaska. He catered events with his wife for five years before branching out into the food truck.

“I have a passion for food and people,” he said. “It just made sense to me to put the two together.”

Two years ago the couple began a business plan. They found a Florida concessions trailer manufacturer that built and customized the $65,000 truck.

Haag said Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race TV” show has helped draw business.

“That kind of helped people with the curiosity to see what kind of food could come out of a mobile unit,” he said.

What they take in during their three days in the industrial park takes care of basic expenses. Catering and special events revenue helps pay down loans for the truck and other startup expenses.

The industrial park made sense for its large number of employees and lack of nearby restaurants. Haag contacted park businesses to gauge interest and got permission from Cirrus to use their lot.

Business has grown, he said, mostly by word-of-mouth. Haag estimates he has 65 to 70 regular weekly customers.

“It’s different than what you usually get in a restaurant and it’s cheap,” said Dwight Wigness. He doesn’t work in the industrial park, but said he usually visits the truck twice a week to grab lunch. “There is always something good to eat. After people try it, they come back, and they usually bring more people with them.”

His truck gives people convenient access to an affordable lunch option, Haag said.

“We’re filling a niche that’s needed,” he said. “We’re not out here to make millions. We’re out here to serve people.”

“If we make millions, that’s OK, too,” Rita Haag said, with a laugh.

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/217923/

By JAMES C. FALCON | Minot Daily News

Lawrence Fortenberry, with First Presbyterian Church, cooks hamburgers from a caterer’s truck on Wednesday evening outside the Minot Municipal Auditorium. The church helped prepare meals during the first evacuation earlier this month, and will continue to help as needed. James C. Falcon/MDN

If Lawrence Fortenberry comes away from the Minot Municipal Auditorium smelling of hot dogs and hamburgers, it’s for a good reason.

“If that’s the worst thing that happens to us, we’re all right,” he said Wednesday evening as he and Steve Oster stood in a catering truck preparing the dinner.

Fortenberry and Oster are members of First Presbyterian Church, 1000-3rd Street Northeast. The church volunteers were working three weeks ago, during the first evacuation, to ensure evacuees were fed. They are now back.

“We can handle about 400 meals without a sweat,” Fortenberry said, as he flipped hamburgers.

Susan Ewert, emergency services director and volunteer services coordinator for the Mid-Dakota Chapter of the American Red Cross, said that, as of Wednesday evening, there were 180 evacuees staying at the auditorium.

In addition to serving food at the auditorium, food is also ferried over to the Minot State University Dome, and the First District Health Unit, Fortenberry said. He added that he anticipates the church will continue to serve food from today until Saturday, and “as they need us or want us.”

Their meal hamburgers, hot dogs, macaroni and potato salad, and coleslaw would be served shortly to the many people at the auditorium who have sought shelter from the flooding Souris River.

The food comes from different places every day, said Sharon Johnson, a disaster trained volunteer with the Mid-Dakota Chapter of the American Red Cross. For lunch Wednesday, the Royal Fork brought an appetizing lunch of chicken, vegetables, scalloped potatoes with cheese and coleslaw, she said. “We just have oodles and oodles of organizations” that have helped with food, Johnson added. They are too numerous to mention by name.

The only stipulation with donated food is that it must come from a commercial kitchen, or one that has been approved by the health department.

Convenience and grocery stores in the flood evacuation zone have also donated food.

“The food has just been wonderful,” she said, adding that refrigerators at the auditorium have been overloaded “umpteen times.”

Johnson commented on the outpouring of volunteers.

“The community has been wonderful,” she said, noting that there have been more volunteers than there are jobs.

On Wednesday, Johnson bounced from area to area, whether it was organizing the volunteers, overseeing that things were going as planned, and talking with evacuees. At one moment, she consoled a visibly upset woman. Forty-one years ago, she was one of them.

“In 1969, our home was flooded,” Johnson, who now lives on South Hill, said. “The Red Cross took care of us for three months. I have a soft spot for this kind of thing and Minot because I’ve been there.”

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/556013/Dinner-is-served.html?nav=5010