We were lucky to catch up with Jason Fossee recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jason, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
It all began around 2012. A bunch of chefs and restaurant folks hanging out on Mondays,(the weekend in the restaurant business). After working for years together making crazy specials a kitchen manager said “Jason, it’s like there is a 600-pound fat kid that lives inside you!” So Jason’s nickname became Fat Kid.
Then Team Fat Kid was born on social media( Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and a Podcast): cooking whole hogs, recreating viral social media recipes, 3-tier Bacon Wrapped Meat Cakes, and Gigantic Cheeseburgers on homemade bread( because no one makes a sesame seed bun that big), Making all 50 state’s iconic sandwiches!
Then one day doing some recipe research, Jason clicked on a pop-up ad for The Great Food Truck Race. Team Fat Kid was selected to compete in season 12!
Though we didn’t win the hope of opening a food truck was not lost. We were in the middle of opening The Team Fat Kid Food Truck when the pandemic hit and everything shut down.
For 3 months a brand new food truck sat waiting for the DMV to open so the licensing process could begin.
On October 16th, 2020 the Team Fat Kid Food Truck opened at a Veteran-Owned Business market as aVeteran-owned food truck.
Fast-forward to May of 2022 when the Team Fat Kid Food Truck received Gold as BEST FOOD TRUCK on the southside by Coastal Virginia Magazine!
Jason, 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?
Team Fat Kid Food Truck is the unapologetic Cheat Day Food Truck. With well over a combined 50 years of restaurant experience from the 3 owner/operators Melissa Fossee, Alex Carr, & Jason Fossee, We pride ourselves on our made-from-scratch, cooked-to-order, always consistent mentality.
We believe this is why we are successful and why we were voted Gold as the BEST FOOD TRUCK on the southside by Coastal Virginia Magazine!
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
Jason Fossee & Melissa Fossee (husband and wife) met at work in a hotel, where Jason was the Executive Chef and Melissa was The Restaurant Supervisor.
Melissa & Alex Carr met at work in a tennis club, where Alex was Sous Chef and Melissa was bartending.
Jason and Alex helped open a Smokehouse together as Restaurant Manager and Kitchen Manager respectively.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When Team Fat Kid was in California on The Great Food Truck Race there was a menu item called The Triple P. ( Pork On Pork On Pork) This recipe was created for social media where we stuffed a pork loin with bacon, jalapenos, cream cheese, wrapped the entire pork loin in bacon, and then put it in a smoker with hickory for several hours.
Well here we are on the other side of the country trying to win $50,000 and we don’t have the equipment or the time to recreate the recipe.
So we decided to cut the pork loin into chops, stuff them, wrap them with bacon individually, and deep fry them!
(Great dish, we still make on the Food Truck from time to time.)
The new recipe took too long to prepare for the competition, so we decided to pound out the pork nice and thin bread and fry it( pulling from Indiana’s and Montana’s iconic sandwiches) and top it with crispy bacon and bacon cheese sauce! (This is the current everyday recipe.)
The Team Fat Kid Bacon Garlic Cheese Sauce was born! It is the “Life Blood” of the Team Fat Kid Food Truck!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.teamfatkidnation.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teamfatkidfoodtruck/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamFatKidFoodTruck
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/fat_truck
Image Credits
Alex Carr Jason Fossee