We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley & Kate Porter-Collins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley & Kate, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
Business Plan. If there is one essential tool that will open doors for you, it’s having a solidly researched and outlined plan with realistic timelines and goals. Writing a good plan requires you to have a very clear vision of what your business will look like, how it will operate, what it will sell and most importantly it’s mission, or it’s “why.” We needed to collect market data, figure out trends, costs, distributors, vendors and ultimately realistic potential profit margins. It took us the better part of five years to write our initial plan. Along with general research into the industry, we had to hone in on a very specific menu that not only we believed in, but one the general public would love as well. Our mission drove our menu which is to bring people together through the power of food. We wanted people to experience a fusion of cultures through ingredients, tastes, and techniques, so our menu became a reflection of diversity, inclusion, and fun. As Kate is our head chef and recipe creator, her Hispanic background gave us the baseline of “tacos” for the Noms and Ashley’s obsession of guacamole gave us our start to the Nibbles. Fusing various cultural flavors and techniques, we came up with our three main taco “Noms” which cover a huge dietary restriction range (vegan, vegetarian, dairy free, gluten free, and keto) and our signature “Nibbles,” fried guacamole balls and onion rings. It was incredibly important to us to create an inclusive menu that allows almost any dietary restriction to enjoy a nutritious, filling meal.
Once the menu and recipes were close to being perfected, we conducted market group surveys for taste feedback. With that coming back positive, it was time to gather the funds required. We began to send out our plan to family, friends, and investment firms while investing as much of our own money as possible. Having a solid plan led to finding an investor fairly quickly which led to every else happening quickly. Within four months of finding that investor, we were in operation because we had planned so well
Ashley & Kate, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Our names are Kate and Ashley Porter-Collins, but you can remember us as married Kate and Ashley, and we are the proud owners of Nibbles n’ Noms gourmet food truck in Connecticut. We specialize in our famous fried Guacamole and fusion tacos! Bringing together people through the power of food is what we are all about and we thrive on promoting diversity and inclusion, so much so you’ll see it reflected in our truck’s artwork and in our menu that covers a variety of dietary restrictions. One of our favorite sayings is “people over profit,” and we honestly opened so there would be another small business out there putting the people first! While we are incredibly proud of our food and our flavors, one of the things we are most proud of is how much of it we’ve been able to donate to those in need and the impact we’ve been able to have on our community.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Opening this food truck! Lol. Prior to this, I was a high school Agriscience teacher, and my wife Kate was an office manager for Merry Maids. Like for so many people, Covid was an eye opener for so many things, the most important of them being that we have one life to live, it’s short, and it’s not guaranteed. This caused us to take some deep looks into ourselves, our relationship, our careers, and what we wanted out of life. It wasn’t like a lightbulb just went on and we were like “Ahh, life would be great with a food truck,” in fact, it initially led to me diving deeper into education and taking a promotion. After time (and a lot of therapy LOL), Kate and I realized we still wanted (and needed) something else. We had always daydreamed of a food truck. A pipe dream. A fantasy career. But reality? And we FINALLY said, why the hell not? And there was our final movement in our full pivot
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Haha just one? Being a new business in a new industry, there was a LOT of trial and error and a very sharp learning curve. Neither of us had actual experience in food service, catering, or anything related to owning a diesel truck and/or mobile electrical equipment so mistakes happened left and right. We wasted product, we wasted money, we wasted time, but we learned from it all and we learned quickly because we had to. With just under five months in operation, our biggest resilience story comes when our generator went down. Since we were so new at that point (three months in) we hadn’t bought all of the converter cords to plug the truck in to a normal outlet and were running everything off our generator for operation, so when it went down, we couldn’t operate… at all. We went into emergency learning mode and quickly learned how to troubleshoot a generator that won’t turn. In the course of a day, we pulled the spark plug, tested if it was hydrolocked, and even disassembled to see if it was a sheared flywheel key. None of the common answers seemed to be our answer and off to the professional it went! After two days, we hear bad news. There was a valve that broke off inside the engine and shot a hole through the piston, essentially killing the entire engine. At this point we’ve been out of any income for 4 days and are just starting the warranty process. We have the cords on order but of course they will take a couple of weeks to get here. We ultimately lost 10 days of work which takes a good amount of time to come back from early on in a business. Ensure you’re ready for that kind of stress! Haha
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.nibblenomstruck.com
- Instagram: www.Instagram.com/nibblenomstruck
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/nibblenomstruck
- Other: TikTok: www.TikTok.com/@nibblenomstruck