Jason Bucknam, left, and Kevin Cunningham officially opened their My Waffle food truck on Memorial Day. Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover

LEWISTON — Friends Kevin Cunningham and Jason Bucknam hit the road this year with My Waffle food truck and a jam-packed schedule.

Maybe, in hindsight, a little too jam-packed.

“Doing a Friday night, a Saturday and a Sunday every week became aggressive,” Cunningham said.

One of the takeaways from 2019: More Sundays off for the family in 2020.

Cunningham, a chef, and Bucknam, a beer salesman, launched their food truck after coming out of Top Gun LA last spring.

Cunningham said it was a great year and a learning year. They learned which events were slow. Which to stock up for. Which other trucks cut into sales if they were parked too close.

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“The industry as a whole has been so incredibly helpful,” he said. “We would show up at events and other trucks would be like: ‘Hey, so you’re new. At this event here, the crowd doesn’t start until 2 o’clock, so you don’t have to scramble.’ And then somebody else would come up at another event, ‘Just so you know, as soon as the gates open at this thing, you’re going to be buried.'”

Their most-popular offering: chicken and waffles. The organic chicken is hand-breaded and cooked right on the truck. Nutella and berries was second.

Cunningham and Bucknam worked all of the events. They will consider hiring help once they have paid the investment in the truck back to themselves, Cunningham said.

This year, they mostly attended festivals. Next year, they might take a week off their day jobs and do a fair like Topsham or Fryeburg, he said.

Down the road, they will weigh adding a second My Waffle truck or upgrading to a single truck with more amenities.

The truck had its last 2019 event in mid-December. It will emerge for another busy year around May.

“We’re having fun doing it, that’s the biggest thing,” Cunningham said.

And it is safe to say being surrounded from Friday to Sunday with all that wafting, waffle smell had to be tough.

“I ate a waffle probably every day on the truck, and I almost always had a peanut butter and jelly,” Cunningham said. “So I would say I probably had at least 50 or 60 this summer. Maybe more like 100.”


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