Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marcus Crawford. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Marcus, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I started my food truck business out as a franchisee of a soup company. After running that operation for a couple of years, I noticed myself and my team would need to pivot. At that point, I began paying attention to other food trucks in the NJ market. Just seeing who was winning vs who was barley getting by. In doing so, I noticed certain cuisines typically had a longer life as a food truck vs others. These trucks were booked all the time and making money. Those trucks would be taco trucks, burger trucks, and pizza trucks. Those guys always had work and it was inspirational to me. Since we were running a soup operation our bookings were spotty and although we made it work by packing the schedule, I knew other trucks were getting way more opportunities than we were.
So I started to look at the trucks that were always busy and I also noticed they had fairly simple menus. That’s when I started to think of different concepts my team could run. We narrowed it down to two, either burritos or chicken wings. Well chicken wings were a bit stereotypical in my eyes, and I also noticed trucks with that menu didn’t necessarily take off in terms of having a booming business. They would either do decent or fold up.
So I started to dive into the thought of burritos more. So every time we drove by the popular national chain, they had a line. What that did was show there is clear demand for the product. Next we looked at the menu. We can sell tacos and other items as well similar to the taco trucks that were already killing it, we would just niche ourselves as being the “burrito” truck. Things were making sense as we dove more into the thought of the new menu but we needed to figure out a name. Our business is family run and most people in the industry think we are brothers, so we wanted to tie burrito and brothers together. Brothers Burritos, Burritos Bros……… Bro-Ritos!!!!!!!

Once we decided on the name we knew we needed to create a brand behind it and every since that day, thats exactly what we have been doing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Marcus Crawford, I am the founder of Bro-Ritos. We operate food trucks as well as a brick and mortar space selling burritos, tacos, quesadillas and more. We have been in business since 2016, been featured on numerous tv shows and other media outlets, named top 40 food truck in the state of NJ along with other accolades. We offer a wide range of services from business to business to direct to consumer. We operate our truck on public streets at times so that anyone can purchase from us, we attend festivals, we do private bookings for commercial and residential customers. Our food truck is not just food, it’s an entertainment piece in most cases and that why we are able to continue growing. We are NJ’s first burrito food truck and have created the staple for what a burrito should taste like in NJ. We have traditional options as well as our specialty options which are the one people come back for more and more. Burritos like our Suavemente Bro, 3 Kings Bro, or our Super Veg capture our audience with tons of flavor and fun names. I’m most proud that this business start by 3 young guys has been able to grow into something that supports our livelihoods and allows us to create jobs for others in the community. This really started just as an idea for us and now it’s a tangible business with the real opportunity for growth and sometimes I have moments where I reflect on how far we have come and how hard the journey has been. It’s pretty dope to reflect on

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

As discussed in previous questions we started as a soup truck. The “truck” was actually a trailer. This is important, becuase it’s how we got started. We luckily found someone who was leasing this trailer and just wanted to get the payments off of their hands. So we stepped in and took over the payments which allowed operating the business to pay for itself. Only thing we needed to do was to outfit the interior of the trailer with the equipment we needed for service. I took a credit card with 0% interested for 12 months and paid for the updates to the trailer on that card. Then I paid the minimum payment until I could afford to cover the total cost which was around $6k. This credit card method helped to launch our biz which we generated the profits we used to get Bro-Ritos started. We used the same credit card trick along with the profits from soup and haven’t looked back since.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Being on time, being efficient, being professional! When we got started in this business I was 27, one of my partners was 24 and the other was 20. We were all young guys just trying to figure it out but ultimately the way we carried ourselves with other food truckers and with clients is was pushed us forward. Word of mouth is real and people loved to engage with us and share our story. Without that since of pride and wanting to always operate at a high level, I think people would of just looked passed us and not taken us seriously.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.broritosfoodtruck.com
• Instagram: @broritosft
• Facebook: @broritosft
• Twitter: @broritosft
• Youtube: @broritosft
• Yelp: Bro-Ritos