We were lucky to catch up with Lakita Spann recently and have shared our conversation below.
Lakita, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that if you have an idea and don’t execute, someone else will. Understand this, it was important to execute as best as I possibly could when I had the idea to start a food truck. In 2014, while working as a Regional Sales Manager for a telecom company I read an article about local food trucks making waves while trying to fight for the ability to operate in certain parts of the city. I began to research the food truck industry and started to discuss the idea with my husband Aaron. Although hesitant initially, we both began to get excited about making this idea a reality and reached out to several industry experts for advice. Aaron began to work on recipes and I handled all things business.
While vacationing in Orlando a colleague suggested that I meet with his customer that owned a company that built and equipped food trucks. During this meeting, the owner told us to return to Jacksonville and figure out how we could test our concept of selling potato based products. Because I worked in a corporate environment I knew that the first order of business every day was “What are we eating for lunch.” As a result, we decided to test our concept by working part-time out of a shared kitchen offering delivery only service to businesses. We spread the word by having friends and family try out our baked potatoes and asking them to get with their co-workers and place group orders for delivery. Aaron would handle all things food because of his 20+ year restaurant experience.
This worked beautifully and within 6 months, my husband was working the business full time. We continued run Mr. Potato Spread as a delivery only company for 2 years before purchasing our food truck. While waiting on the food truck to be built out, I left my job and prepared to become a full time entrepreneur alongside my husband. We agreed that I would handle all things operations and delivery and Aaron would continue to handle all things food and run the truck. The beauty of this is that our truck was visiting locations that knew us via delivery so we were a hit instantaneously!
It would be another 3 years before we launched our first restaurant and which led to us offering franchise opportunities.
Lakita, 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?
Born in raised in Jacksonville, FL, Aaron and I have always been rooted in our community. My husband and I married young and have raised 3 amazing kids, Breanna 29, Aaron II 25 and Zahria 22. Our goals in life were to provide our kids with better lives than what we had and live our lives to the fullest. In order to achieve our goals, we worked hard for other companies, making these companies lots of money in the process. We were both proud of the achievements we made for our employers but always wondered if we could the same for ourselves.
While working in corporate America, I assisted small-medium sized business with finding gaps in their day to day operations. As a result, my understanding of data, systems & processes and automation became a large part of my focus for Mr. Potato Spread. Because of Aaron’s love for food and experience in the restaurant industry, his role was all things food.
I’m really proud of our decision to take things slow and grow into each phase of our business. Our experience in the commercial kitchen made us resilient because there was no heat or AC, the food truck is also extremely hot! Our desire to succeed outweighed the need to be comfortable so we made it happen despite the circumstances. We delivered to customers and took the food truck out even if it rained because we knew we needed to be consistent. Our customers always showed up, even when it was raining & lightning.
Knowing that many businesses fail because they diversity too quickly, we were careful to ensure we had data to support us every step of the way. This data told us where to take the truck, how much to spend and even where to open our first restaurant. Our system & processes were important because of our desire to franchise.
Have you ever had to pivot?
COVID-19! Our entire business model was dependent on other businesses. The food truck only visited businesses to feed employees for lunch and our delivery services were only available to businesses. When all of those businesses closed and sent employees to work from home luckily we had the restaurant but had to pivot and focus on residential delivery and taking the food truck to neighborhoods. Thankfully we had the technology in place that allowed us to offer curbside delivery, add delivery partners (Ubereats and Doordash) and offer pre-orders when we visited large neighborhoods.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When COVID-19 happened my husband Aaron broke his leg in two places. In order to survive, I continued to handle all operational issues but also began driving and managing the food truck. Driving the truck has never been an issue for me, but learning to light fryers, ovens and operate a generator was difficult for me. Additionally, the truck was extremely busy because people were so happy to have trucks coming into their neighborhoods so it was physically hard being on my feet for many hours at a time. I constantly reminded myself that our goal was to keep our employees employed and the food truck was an important part of our business, so not taking the truck out was not an option.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mrpotatospread.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/mrpotatospread
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/mrpotatospread
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrpotatospread/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrpotatospread
- Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrpotatospread