Cheese on wheels

White boxes filled to the brim with warm macaroni and cheese appear in late-night dwellers’ hands as they leave their favorite bar and head to Moscow’s best late-night meal — The Grub Truck.

Their small staff not only cooks macaroni and cheese, but tacos and burritos for hundreds of hungry customers each night.

John Fletcher, the owner of Grub Truck — also known as Grub Wandering Kitchen — bought the truck off of Craigslist in 2010 and spent two years fixing it up.

“I owned a couple of restaurants in Spokane,” Fletcher said. “The first one was very successful. It was the Neighborhood Bistro that I owned with my sister. I sold my half to her after four years and opened my own restaurant. It failed miserably in the first year, so I had to lower my scale of what I could to do next. That pointed me in the direction of a food truck instead of a restaurant.”

Working in the tight space of the food truck, there are only six employees, counting the owner — creating a sense of community amongst their staff.

“It’s easy to get along,” said Kaleb Wetzel, a part-time Grub Truck employee. “It’s a fun, relaxed place to work. We just tell jokes at each other’s expense.”

Brianna Finnegan | Argonaut
Employee Dee Johnson cuts onions for prep.

On Tuesday evenings, they prepare much of their food in their commissary kitchen — a kitchen used by food truckers specifically for prepping — off of Jackson Street. There, they cook all of the meat, cut the ingredients, partially cook the noodles and prepare the sauces.

Grub Truck employees also tend to work until 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. Since most are college students, this isn’t too difficult, but it does have its setbacks.

“It’s definitely hard,” said Dee Johnson, Grub Truck’s only other full-time employee. “Not waking up until noon or two in the afternoon, you don’t really have a normal life.”

Since they are open so late, Grub Truck serves Moscow’s night life, which comes with a lot of interesting stories.

“Serving the night life crew is fun,” said Jeremiah Agbeko, a part-time Grub Truck employee. “You see a lot of cool characters.”

Employees recounted several stories of drunk customers and the things they have done, which include fights, stolen food and handstands.

Brianna Finnegan | Argonaut
Noodles being stored after prep.

“Drunk girls stood up on the trash can right outside of the window,” Johnson said. “They dove headfirst straight through the window.”

They let her finish climbing through the window and checked her for a concussion, he said.

Most of the bizarre stories Grub Truck employees encounter are also caught on video. Grub Truck has a Twitch account where they live-stream to viewers around the world each night. Viewers can tip employees, buy dinner for customers outside the truck and subscribe to the channel.

Through Twitch alone, the company made $2,900 in March, Fletcher said. One Twitch subscriber named Mannyeven spent $8,300 in food for customers.

Grub Truck has made a name for itself, both through Twitch and their service in Moscow. Employees said they often have people from Pullman and other areas travel just for their food. Johnson described it as a “gem of the Pacific Northwest”.

“We feed the town,” Agbeko said. “I’ll walk through campus and there are so many kids who recognize me because I’m the kid who gives them food at Grub Truck. They have no idea who I am besides, ‘Oh, that’s Grub Truck and I’m happy now that I’ve seen him.’”

The Grub Truck is open from 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, as well as from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday through Sunday.

Brianna Finnegan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @BriannaFinnega8