Louise Joseph, owner and operator of Dough Girls Pizza, a food truck, is often asked by strangers if they can buy her truck.
“Not for sale,” she noted on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “People always come up to me and say, ‘I make the best blah, blah, blah, and I want to get a food truck when I retire!’ And I always say, wait, why would you want to work three times as hard when you retire? Don’t do that.”
In other words, Joseph’s reality is far less glamorous than some people might picture. Running a pizza truck is hard work, and the romance of it all wears off pretty fast. Still, Joseph loves what she does. She has run Dough Girls Pizza for nearly a decade and remains booked year-round operating out of Greenwich, Connecticut. She’s become well known for serving up some of the best pizza in the Nutmeg State—no small feat.
Related: Pizza Power Forum: How to Start The Pizza Business of Your Dreams
For those serious about starting up their own pizza truck, or any pizza business, Joseph offers some advice. For one thing, she said, be really honest with yourself about how much it’s going to cost.
“A lot of people don’t realize that you need a commercial kitchen in order to function and have a mobile [business],” she said. “You can’t just do it out of your house,” she added, noting that there are a lot of other obstacles nobody considers.
“People think that if you have a food truck, you’re rolling in money because you don’t have as many expenses as a brick and mortar [storefront],” she said. “And maybe your lease isn’t as expensive. But you have all of the same insurances, labor is the same, the food costs are the same, plus you have gas. And you also have to remember that we’re working against the weather. Nobody is going to stand in the rain for pizza, even pizza as good as mine.”
The rest of the conversation on the latest podcast episode covers topics as diverse as Joseph’s early career as a home chef to the culinary inspiration she drew from her mother. She also teases the fact that Dough Girls Pizza may soon have a brick-and-mortar location, while making it clear that she’ll never give up her beloved truck.
Listen here:
