Mallory Heaberlin hands an order to a Truckin’ Good Food customer. Heaberlin’s truck is now in its second season at Louis Doe Home Center in Newcastle. (Christine Simmonds photo)
Mallory Heaberlin fell in love with the food service industry early on, and she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.
“I’ve worked in restaurants since I was 12 and I love it,” she said. “I love working in the restaurant field.”
When her grandfather tried to warn her away from cooking after he spent a lifetime in that field, it only made her more determined.
“I remember it so clearly,” she said. “He literally said, ‘You’re an idiot if you ever get into the restaurant business; you’ll have no life.’ And that was like a challenge.”
A grin spread over her face as she told the story.
“I was like ‘Yup! I’m doing it!’” she said. “And I love it. I really do love it.”
When her first job in a restaurant didn’t involve cooking, she decided to change that.
“I was a dishwasher and I kept sneaking onto the line to do prep work,” she said.
She continued until the head chef finally started assigning her to prep work and then to the fryers.
This is the kind of person Heaberlin is. She is driven by her passion for cooking, her love of restaurant work, and her extroverted personality. She brings all of that to running her food truck, Truckin’ Good Food.
In early May, the 34-year-old Bristol resident opened her mobile eatery for its fourth season of business and the second season operating out of the parking lot at Louis Doe Home Center in Newcastle.
After all these years of working in kitchens, Heaberlin said she is surprised at how much she enjoys owning and running the food truck. She wakes up excited to start the day, which never happened even with restaurant jobs she loved.
“I look forward to going to work,” she said, describing the food truck as her “home away from home.”
While she initially thought the space was tiny when she bought the truck, now she says it’s just right.
“I don’t need any more space than that,” she said.
She likes how the truck allows her to have face-to-face interactions with her customers and to hear direct feedback from people about her cooking.
“You don’t really see it as much when you’re in the kitchen at a restaurant,” she said. “You don’t know if you have return customers, because you’re kind of in the backdrop.”
She also likes the social aspect of the truck.
“I like chatting with people,” she said. “I even have people that have come as customers, and now they’ll just pop in to say hi.”
As a mother and a business owner, Heaberlin also enjoys the freedom she receives from operating Truckin’ Good Food. If her son has a baseball game, she can close early to attend it. If a location isn’t working for her, she can haul the truck to a different place.
“I love that I can kind of do my own thing,” she said.
She couldn’t do it alone, though. The success of Truckin’ Good Food is facilitated by the love and support of her whole family, but especially her husband Jo Luksic and mom Gina Googins.
“If I have a big event, it’s me and my mom cooking and my husband’s taking orders,” she said.
Heaberlin said her mom is always checking in to see how she can help, from prepping ingredients to picking up supplies to providing storage space at her house. She will even jump in to lend a hand if she stops by the truck for a visit and there is a long line.
“She helps me all the time,” Heaberlin said. “My mom has helped me so much with my food truck; I don’t know what I would do without her.”
Luksic helps with much of the manual labor involved. He performed the necessary renovations after Heaberlin purchased the truck, gutting the inside so they could install new appliances. He has also built infrastructure, including a retractable awning to keep the sun off Heaberlin and customers.
When she has to move the food truck for a catering job or a festival, Luksic packs everything up for transport. Heaberlin said Luksic developed a system after one particular move where her flat top grill was not secured properly.
“It went sailing out my glass windows and all over the road,” she said.
Heaberlin said her husband also knows how to lighten her mood even when she is overwhelmed with orders, and if there is a long line at the truck, he will talk to customers and keep people entertained while they wait.
Of course, the most important part of a food truck is probably the menu. Heaberlin’s menu includes a wide range of dishes depending on the season and the day, and she sources her ingredients locally. She described the menu as “Southern-inspired eclectic.
“I just tell people it’s good stuff, she said.”
Her offerings include friend green tomatoes, po boys and blackened haddock tacos, not to mention more traditional items like a cheeseburger or steak sandwich. Another regular menu item is the iconic Maine red hot dog, which Heaberlin has learned from experience not to list by its local moniker of “red snapper.”
“I just wanted selling it for the longest time,” she said, “And then this guy goes ‘Oh, red snapper, I do not like fish.’ I was like it’s not fish … is that what everyone’s been thinking?!”
She said once she changed the menu listing to “red hot dogs” then people from away began to purchase them. She still frequently has to explain they are not spicy, though.
”They taste just like a regular hot dog,” she said.
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