We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tevin Grupe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tevin below.

Tevin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

When my husband, Jon and I first started The Loaded Bowl as a food truck almost 10 years ago, it was just us and a couple of friends. We all still had full time jobs, but very quickly realized we had the potential to grow, so The Loaded Bowl became our main focus.

We held our first round of interviews two years in and are so thankful to say, our first full-time hire is now our general manager and has been with us for almost 8 years. Kaitlyn has worked every single position and was so instrumental in helping us make the jump from food truck to restaurant. My mom, Allison, was also one of the first to join us full time and she’s now our operations manager.

I think the trickiest part about hiring in the beginning was that we needed folks who could do all the things required to operate a food truck. We had to put together a team who could handle all of mechanical hiccups that come with a mobile kitchen and old truck, cook great food, and offer excellent customer service. You have to wear all the hats when you’re on a food truck.

As we became more popular and had more demand from our customers, we kind of maxed out our capacity as a small team and food truck. We knew making the jump to a brick and mortar was the next step and we had to find the right people to make that come to fruition. We got really lucky to have applicants who were just as excited and passionate about what we were doing. Everyone felt really invested in the success and they were willing to ride out the ups and downs of opening a restaurant. We’ve maintained that level of loyalty over the years from staff and customers alike, it’s been kind of magical. I think it starts with Kaitlyn and the way they lead our unique team.

At some point, The Loaded Bowl became this own living thing with a strong community built up around it. Jon and I took a step back when we became parents and were amazed at the way things evolved. It’s like we put this very personal thing out into the world, and then had to learn how to let go of control and watch it bloom into something totally different. The heart of The Loaded Bowl and its success is 100% the people who have given their time and efforts to keep it going over the years.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Our goal in starting The Loaded Bowl was to offer accessible plant based food to Oklahoma City at a time when there just weren’t many vegan options. Jon had experience working in restaurants and managing food trucks and I had been working in the world of nonprofits. We had only known each other six months when we formed our LLC, bought and old step van, and started building out our food truck and working on recipes. Everyone thought we were crazy. And we were!

Our claim to fame and something we’re most proud of is our cashew cheese sauce. It’s the base of most of our dishes and the star of our mac and cheese, which has been our most popular dish for almost a decade.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social Media has been crucial in moving our business forward from day one. As a food truck in the early days, it was the only way to share our location and hours because they were always changing. As we grew and planned to expand into a brick and mortar location, we utilized social media to build excitement and fundraise.

I think the best advice for anyone relying on social media is to remember that it’s a conduit to your audience. You have to stay engaged with comments, messages, etc.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The initial jump from food truck to restaurant was our first big hurdle. We quickly realized we expanded our menu more than was necessary and it was not sustainable for us. So shortly after opening our brick and mortar, we had to scale back and pivot some of the ways we were operating. It was scary to make such a big change setting the public’s expectations. We had some pushback at first, but it quickly leveled out and was obviously the best choice.

When Covid hit, we experienced our next big shift in operations. We again pivoted from being a full service restaurant and bar to being a to-go only location, akin to our food truck days. We built out a second kitchen where our lobby had been and scaled up our bakery and wholesale operations. This enabled us to shift our overhead and create more comfort to our staff. We were able to keep serving throughout the height of Covid without any closures. Again, I know there is some disappointment from customers about that change, but it was instrumental in keeping us going while the service industry at large was really struggling to figure out how to navigate a pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theloadedbowlokc.com
• Instagram: The Loaded Bowl OKC
• Yelp: The Loaded Bowl
• Other: The Loaded Bowl on Google