BRIEFING – ARZÁBAL FOOD TRUCK, SPAIN MY KITCHEN
Iván Morales and Álvaro Castellanos
Te founders and chefs behind Arzábal restaurant group in Madrid tell Tina Nielsen why they love going on the road with their food trucks
W
e have five restaurants in Madrid, mainly serving Spanish food based around the best produce. We recently
celebrated 15 years in business – for 14 of them we have had food trucks. We started with the truck because it is a
nice way to interact with guests that might not otherwise visit the restaurants. It is a way to show what we do to more people. Almost immediately after opening
the restaurant, we were invited to join a group of operators at an event – we hired a catering van, added our branding and we got started. Today we almost always sell food but we also have a Champagne truck. It is easy to adapt a food truck to
different events. In the winter you put together a menu of warmer food; toasted
sandwiches, or a mulled wine. In the summer you do something fresher. Tis year we took two of our vans to the
Madrid Masters tennis tournament; one sold hot dogs and in the other we had three different sandwiches, our croquettes and the patatas bravas, with drink of course. We always think about the likely public.
Tey are often younger, so burgers, pizzas and sandwiches work well. But it has to be easy to eat. People are standing up so you have to consider the potential for dropping food or staining clothes. Tey don’t want to have five serviettes in their hand to constantly clean themselves up. In a medium-sized van you almost have
the same capacity as in a normal kitchen. We have the same kit – two fryers, a
plancha, a bain marie, fridges and a beer tap. It is easy to fit them out. You have to
research the equipment from a modular view point – a bit like Tetris – and fit it all in. On the outside, you can paint it or do something different to give it identity. Te truck can generate a lot of work with
very little staff and with imagination you can overcome all limitations. We always go when we are invited to
an event; it is a lot of fun. Almost all of the trucks we have done have been profitable and it is a great way to get the brand out to a different public.
It has bit of nostalgia for us – it is
great to have bigger restaurants that bill more – but we don’t want to let go of those simpler operations.
The food truck fits the same equipment as a regular kitchen
One of the Arzábal trucks is focused on drink but most offer food
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