We’re looking forward to introducing you to Chef Petrina & Roger Tate & Mitchell . Check out our conversation below.
Chef Petrina & Roger , so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What do you think is misunderstood about your business?
Our business is the time and effort that Chef Petrina put into smoking the meat woodfired. She put together her own seasonings,sauces, and everything from scratch which is much needed for customers at all events. A slight couple of customers sometimes don’t figure all of the that into the price that we put down. When we make our own sauces and seasonings which is very expensive such as our Fry Magic Seasoning, Jalapeno Ranch, and The Texas Heatwave sauces we tend to get a very different, positive response and our customers come back . They appreciate it knowing that you can’t get it from the store and nothing is artificial. Aside from that Roger the other owner also does a lot of labor on the food truck and that’s time efficient, and hard work itself because it’s like a restaurant on wheels. It’s a tough job and a lot of work . But, in order to for us to operate we has to have propane gas, truck gas and the generator gas. There’s a lot of overhead costs that goes with that so it takes a lot . The community do appreciate us when they do get the chance to taste everything and see the effort that we put into it and that’s when we get a lot of respect, happiness, & and a lot are very grateful.You has to have a passion for this or it will not work for anyone in this type of business. Whats The Gourmet Flavors of Texas saying….”Good Food Ain’t Cheap, and Cheap Food Ain’t Good
– Roger Mitchell
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Yes,we are the owners of our mobile food trailer on wheels. We make everything from scratch. We create our own twist of gourmet foods. We smoke all of our meats,and veggies. We only use wood, chemical free charcoal and natural fire starter to get it started. We mainly use hickory and pecan wood . Chef Petrina creates all social media ads herself and we both do a lot of marketing especially Chef Petrina. What makes our company and everything in it special and unique…. well, the freshness, the different types of desserts that we come up with, our gourmet food specialties, our own sauces and seasonings. We get customers and other food truck owners that constantly ask what’s in our stuff. So, when customers wonder where we get our specialties from is looking at a zillion of other food ideas and Chef Petrina put an image into her head and creates something so magical that she puts it all together. She studies it and has this imaginary mind that creates something so beautifully done. That’s what late Librans do. I can’t tell you enough but she is creative in everything she does. It’s like when she wanted to get out that delishious Pepper Jelly Cream Cheese Bacon Steak Burger for instance or our 10 Ingredient Cream Cheese Banana Pudding, it’s because we want to stand out different from other restaurants & food vendors so people can try something new and not have to have all of the same everywhere else when they can just come to us knowing they’re going to get something fresh, different and real gourmet foods. That is what’s unique about Gourmet Flavors of Texas Llc 💯. If anyone comes to get our Seafood Platter which is our 10 to 12 oz. Cajun fried Catfish Cajun Fried Crawfish and Cajun Fried Shrimp that’s served with our popular Garlic Fries and Jalapeno Ranch. They will never be disappointed. We always make our seafood fresh and made to order,and burgers too, so they can taste the quality & freshness of our gourmet foods. Just know our seafood is in a separate fryer away from the big fryer and everything else to make sure if anyone has any kind of allergies, they will not get sick and we stick with that 24/7. Our seafood platter is so fresh where we get it which is this warehouse . That warehouse never disappoints us. We get a lot of compliments on it that I would love for people to come on out and enjoy it. Gourmet Flavors Of Texas always have something that someone wants and what’s unique about it if you’re in a mood for our Pizza & Wings Combo is it only takes about 6 minutes for both. Our burgers, wraps tacos, and quesadillas are all handheld and fresh with our special sauces like our Fire Roasted and Avocado Salsa that is made from scratch. Trust us you will enjoy every bite in your mouth. It’s very mouthwatering and our customers always say the same thing which is OH MY GOD!! LOL!! It does not matter what we have, there is always something that somebody is going to want. The beauty about all of this is thank God the community comes out and try us out. We do we have a 99.9% that comes back wanting our gourmet foods, and we are so grateful of that!
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Yes, so I’m Chef Petrina and I was just a single mom at one point for years & a waitress all of my life since I was 16 years old. I struggle with what my career was going to be, if I was ever going to have one. Believe it or not ! At this point in time I couldn’t believe that I actually have a career at 46 years old. A lot of customers would tell me you need to do something different than wait tables, especially a lot of elderly people. I guess they left me so much positive feedback that it gave me hope and I followed through it. Even when I was at the domestic violence shelter at one point the directors, caseworkers,and counselors would all say “Hey you need a restaurant or something!” We would take turns cooking and everybody would love my cooking. I never knew I would get this far and definitely never imagined that I would have a food trailer outside. However, Roger was in Florida and he works you know some
different jobs, but when he moved to Texas he had another odd job that didn’t last long. Then he started working at Texas Instruments. Most of all Roger encouraged me and when I went to culinary school at City square for a little bit and I was an intern at Wynham Hotel in North Dallas. He would always tell me I needed to do something besides being a server like being a boss. He would say I need to work for myself. We need to have our own business and here’s where we’re at. It takes two to be a team and he is my other half to make this happen with Gourmet Flavors of Texas . Never give up on your dreams,no matter how late in life to get started.
What’s something you changed your mind about after failing hard?
It took us since 2021 when our company was established. 2022 is when we really started it. After many times of going out working, hustling, & marketing it started to become harder. I was looking for other server jobs including my old job to go back to to serve tables. Then I ask God what do I do because it takes a lot of patience to run your own business with everything you have to do especially with not a lot of help. So, I decided to change my mind about working for somebody else at the time. I say 6 months ago I was actually looking for something else to fill in. Then, when I thought about it I was like if I work for somebody else and these people are loving our food how am I going to work the business, prepare all the meats, keep marketing,create all of the advertisements and work under somebody else. We have not even made profit yet because we have to pay all the permits, the insurance and everything that’s inclusive. We always has to keep updating our fire extinguishers to keep us legal. We got three of them in our food trailer. Giving up is just not the answer . That’s just out of the question and especially how the economy is right now. So, I decided not to give up on our business especially when we see the outpouring of our loyal customers wanting more. For instance just a couple days ago a lady saw us at River Bottoms and she order Brisket Tacos with onions, no spicy barbecue sauce so I had regular barbecue sauce and top that off with real honey and she tried her friends. garlic fries and She drove all the way from Mansfield to Plano to order more that very next day so I opened up the food trailer by myself and served her. Then I decided to serve our local community for a short time.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
How easy it is to run a food truck. How easy it is to figure out what type of food you want to get out to the public. Basically, they really don’t realize that yes you can have a food truck or food trailer but at the end of the day you don’t make money right then and there. Especially, If you don’t make profit right then and there. They forget we had to get all of the permits in every city which can be hundreds of dollars. We constantly has to make sure the food is on point. When you work or run your own business you really have no days off especially when you have a family with kids.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What will you regret not doing?
Expanding the business and not having our children to run it. Also being able to build something that’s connected to our business in order to succeed successfully like whether it’s our own restaurants, or food truck park. But, mainly we’re looking at having our own commissary that can save a lot of food truck owners money without being greedy. There’s a lot of commissary people that charges so much but there’s this one guy in Fort Worth and his name is Dan and he is amazing and very reasonably priced when it comes to commissary prices. Just so people can understand what a commissary is it’s a commercial kitchen that is required by the state to utilize to put your products there and make your food but basically it’s a commercial kitchen and you can even have your food truck at certain places as well. If you’re not all in, then it’s just not for you. This business is definitely not for everyone! You has to have passion to make it work.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Petrinaflavors78
- Linkedin: Petrina Tate
- Facebook: Gourmet Flavors of Texas LLC
- Yelp: Gourmet Flavors of Texas LLC
- Youtube: @petrinatate1039
- Other: Tik tok @Petrinatate0
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