These days, Brittaney Hutson may be found leaning out of a 1989 Ford Step van. She serves up porchetta with a massive smile topped with sautéed mustard vegetables and house-pickled onions, all piled among a toasted ciabatta bun. The entrepreneur launched her Italian cuisine food truck project and inspired an ER nurse to launch a nearby meals truck, Two Fat Olives. But ten years ago, the possibility of cooking for a dwelling appeared like a pipe dream to Hutson.
At the time, the Moncks Corner local became inside the Air Force with stable earnings and exquisite advantages. However, her thoughts drifted lower back toward her lifelong passion for cooking. Her dream inched toward fact one day while she spied a vacant construction – her first notion questioning it would be the ideal spot for an eating place.
Hutson quickly talked herself out of the concept. “I changed into like, ‘That’s a terrible idea; it’s now not sustainable; that is a terrible idea,'” she said. “We’re going to stick with clinical and navy.” Hutson ultimately accompanied her nursing career plan and looked at emergency room life. While the work changed into pleasant and profitable, she stated she nonetheless felt something lacking. Hutson explained she enjoyed serving her sufferers and helping humans for the duration of “the worst day of their existence”; however, she hated the office work, regulations, and fast-tempo of the ER surroundings.
“I cherished it and hated it,” she stated. “I idea, ‘What am I going to do?'”
That’s when Hutson commenced to “hypothetically plan” what her existence might appear to be if she cooked for a living. She then had another breakthrough and actually secured a workspace at Workshop, an exploratory meals court in Charleston intended for budding chefs and business proprietors to test their culinary craft.
That’s when everything started to fall into an area for Hutson, and they met Katie McNab, a female she categorized as a “Godsend.” A blooming chef, McNab helped Hutson cozy sources, look at an idea, and refine a menu. Fat Olives was born shortly after, pairing Mediterranean fare with the South’s consolation meals.
“Italian through a Southern lens,” Hutson stated. The menu combines recipes from the Southern vicinity of the boot-formed Motherland with conventional dishes from the Southern United States. While Hutson boasts an Italian historical past, she favors the fare more than anything.
According to Hutson, bread, pasta, cheese, and sauce are “the critical consolation food.” And her clients agree. “People love the food,” she stated. One menu preferred is McNab’s Calabrian Chili Chicken Wings, the usage of the Calabrian Chilis well-known in Southern Italy. The chilis are blended into a flavorful oil used to cook dinner the wings, served with a Gorgonzola cream sauce. For McNab, it’s important she hand-makes all her sauces and spices; she said it is a practice that leads to greater wealth and clean-tasting food.
Both ladies were raised eating properly and gaining knowledge of kitchen competencies from their moms—McNab mentioned that she watched her mom put together all her family’s meals. “We each love food and cooking, which inspires this,” Hutson said. “Not the earnings or the cash; it’s our general love for meals.”
While cooking comes 2nd nature to the pair, demanding situations like building a logo and advertising themselves nonetheless exist. “It’s just getting to know a lot all of sudden,” Hutson stated. “I become an ER nurse, so I’m used to pressure, but this is one-of-a-kind pressure because it’s all on me; this is my dream. And I’m taking (McNab) alongside me on the journey. I even have a responsibility to her. I’ve got to make this thing work.”
Hutson stated she’s been thrilled with how well Two Fat Olives has been received. She’s learning more daily about the rules surrounding the food truck enterprise and gaining a massive social media following. “We haven’t hit any important road bumps,” Hutson said. “We must work more until we get that float going. We’re on the right path.”
