Owning and operating a restaurant is not easy. Just ask Santa Ynez resident and culinary entrepreneur Teresa Keeling.
Keeling had been doing catering since 2003 when she decided to open up a restaurant by the name of Flavors in Buellton in 2010. But then she closed it down two years later. She said she’ll probably never run a restaurant again.
“It’s so much stress,” she said. “You really have to dedicate your life to it.”
Not that catering is any easier. Keeling considers it “24/7 work.” A one-day event usually takes about three or four days to prepare, she added. But one thing that made running a catering business different from owning a restaurant is that she was preparing food for a predetermined number of people. Planning to feed restaurant patrons was difficult to do.
“I felt like I was planning for a party every day and I wasn’t sure if I was going to have two or 200 people,” Keeling told the Sun. “It was too much work; it was too much money.”
Location also made running her restaurant difficult, Keeling said, particularly the fact that the restaurant was located in a strip mall where the parking wasn’t ideal and there wasn’t much foot traffic.
Before closing the restaurant, she purchased a food truck and moved to the East Bay area where she catered for start-up companies that were doing “boot camps”—or extensive day-long training sessions for employees, Keeling said.
The truck was like a mobile version of the restaurant, which was more of a lunch spot that specialized in red-oak grilled tri-tip sandwiches prepared seven different ways.
Afterward, Keeling put the truck in storage where it sat for several years. But then her son, Seth, got married last April and they both decided to give the truck another go. They renamed it Tipsters Catering Food Truck.
The new truck stays true to the restaurant’s original concept with the tri-tip sandwiches, and they also have bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the menu too.
The truck is a radical departure from Seth’s old life as an up-and-coming professional fighter. Seth, according to his mother, started off as a basketball player who eventually became attracted to the ancient martial art of pankration—a combination of boxing and wrestling that resembles what the modern world knows as mixed martial arts (MMA).
One of Seth’s biggest fights was at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 2010. It was his boxing debut and he won the fight.
And one of his first MMA fights was at the Viejas Casino and Resort in San Diego, which Keeling said ended in a draw.
Then Keeling said her son got injured in a fight when his retina became detached, effectively cutting his fighting career short. Surgery reattached the retina and Seth took a year off. He now strictly trains in boxing. But he’s also a full-time food truck chef.
Keeling’s experience as a caterer combined with her son’s barbecuing skills making the food truck was a perfect fit.
Now they’re serving up tri-tip sandwiches at least three nights a week starting at 4 p.m. at Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company in Buellton. And they’ve expanded to local wineries. Tipsters will be at Babcock Winery for the Oct. 8 harvest festival.
It turns out that the truck is much more profitable than the restaurant, Keeling said, because it’s a lot less costly to run than a brick-and-mortar business. Everything is prepared in a separate location but served from the truck. There’s no oven, only a small grill to toast the bread, so supplies are limited to what the truck can hold.
“A food truck is so much easier,” Keeling said. “You prep, you go, you serve.”
Tipsters Catering Food Truck is located in the Santa Ynez Valley and can be found on social media at facebook.com/tipsterscateringfoodtruck and @tipsterscateringfoodtruck on Instagram. Tipsters can also be reached at 350-1198 and tipsters@gmail.com.
Highlights
• On Sept. 14, The Nipomo Community Services District board of directors approved a grant for the Nipomo Chamber of Commerce in the amount of $1,980 for continued solid waste removal with the Cal Trans Adopt-a-Highway program.
• On Oct. 18, the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a tour of Solve-it! Companies LLC. The tours are organized to raise awareness of industry and manufacturing in Santa Maria. The tours are open to the public. To register for a tour, send an RSVP to register@santamaria.com.
Staff Writer David Minsky wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Oct 6-13, 2016.