Meet Mindy Freed | Owner & operator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mindy Freed and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mindy, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
As far as the food truck industry goes, people may think that its easy to just set up your food truck anywhere you want. When, in fact it is truly very difficult to find places to park your truck. Most towns or cities require their very own business license for operation or an additional fire inspection for your truck. This can get pricey to get started. Some even require fingerprint clearance cards, and you have to get it for that particular city and cannot use a previous fingerprint clearance card! It is not as easy as it seems. We started out by doing our own footwork. We drove around and scouted possible locations, made a list, and called the property managers. We signed up with a few food truck booking companies, which was good and bad. The good was that the booking companies had a lot of spots to park. The bad was that most of the park spots were lunch and we served breakfast and most booking companies take 10-15% of your sales. We ended up serving breakfast all day and people seemed to luckily enjoy having a breakfast burrito for their lunch break.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We had a dream and literally sketched it out on a piece of paper. We knew we wanted to start a food truck so we had to learn the industry. We pieced everything together and that has been a part of our journey. We learned a lot as we went along. If something didn’t work, we tried something else. We never gave up. We have had many trials and errors in our journey. A lot of fails and a lot of ” getting back up again”. I would say that what keeps us going is our amazing customer base. We feel as if we have the best customers that any business owners could ask for. In 2019 we were proudly voted by the readers of Phoenix Magazine as “Best Breakfast” in the valley! That was the greatest accomplishment for us and we appreciate everyone who voted for us. We were able to open our first brick and mortar location this year. Located at 3076 e Chandler Heights rd suite 101 Gilbert 85298. January 22, 2020 was our opening date. The restaurant has allowed us to meet even more amazing customers and friends.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If my family or friends are in town, we spend a day in downtown Gilbert! We head to the Gilbert Market for breakfast, we buy handmade soaps from Scentsible suds, fresh produce from Crooked Sky farms, fresh handmade tortillas from Benny Blanco, and a fresh acai bowl from Genuine Fresche food truck. Oh, and we have to pick up a bag of kettle corn from Kettle Heros! If we still have room for lunch, our go-to is Liberty Market. The nightlife in downtown Gilbert is awesome, so we head to Level One Arcade for some games and appetizers, then have dinner at Culinary Dropout. Gilbert is our home and we love everything about it. You really can’t go wrong when you visit Gilbert. It is full of unique restaurants and spots to shop. If you are in Gilbert or the East Valley and have time for a little day trip, our other favorite place to spend the day is on Canyon Lake. Bring a paddleboard, a life vest, and some snacks and enjoy the water with mountain views.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many people we would love to give a shout out to. Here is a couple that stands out in my mind right off the bat. First, we really owe a shout out to Suni with Waffle Luv food truck for being our mentor and helping us get started with our food truck three years ago. There were so many different steps in the process and there wasn’t one place to turn, and she helped guide us in the right direction. We owe her a lifetime of burritos. Another shout out goes to Jessa and Dan who own the Gilbert Farmers Market. When we started as “breakfast only” food truck, our options in the field were very limited. Most events were during the day for lunch or at night for dinner and we had a hard time finding a place to park. We didn’t want to change our concept to “fit in” so we applied to the Gilbert Market since they had morning event hours. After a few months of anxiously waiting to find out if we got a spot at the market, we finally heard back! We got into the market in September 2017. We started going to the market every week and the rest is history. The Gilbert Farmers Market has been a blessing in our success story and if Jessa and Dan didn’t give us a chance three years ago, we would not be where we are today. Thanks, you guys!!

Website: https://morningkickaz.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morning_kick/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morningkickgilbert/
Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/morning-kick-gilbert

Image Credits
(Family Photo)Credit: Wildlings Photo. @wildlingsphoto.co