Matt Maroni is using his culinary experience to feed the hungry public in Chicago and using his political connections to get the city to allow his food truck on the road.
Maroni currently prepares sandwiches on Indian-style naan bread at his brick-and-mortar storefront and sells the plastic-wrapped “naan-wiches” out of his Gaztro-Wagon in Chicago because city ordinances prevent him from selling food that was cooked or assembled in a motor vehicle. So the Boston-born chef, who spent his early life and gained his foodservice education in Houston, is driving his converted postal truck around town while trying to get Chicago City Hall to see the wisdom of the food-truck movement.
His goal is to convince the city of Chicago to allow food to be cooked and assembled on trucks so he can replicate the success being enjoyed by the mobile operations rolling through the streets of Los Angeles and New York.
BIRTH DATE: Oct. 22, 1978
HOMETOWN: Boston
EDUCATION: bachelor of science degree from University of Houston Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: earned dean’s award at Hilton College; won the Southwest region of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs young chef competition in 2001; apprenticed in Italy at the Castello Banfi vineyard in Tuscany
PERSONAL: married
HOBBIES: golf, deep-sea
fishing, traveling
How did the Gaztro-Wagon get its start?
I was looking to do something on my own. I was working for a corporate club company. Got the boot from there for having a cocktail at the end of the night. But that is corporate America. I started looking at a niche here in Chicago — what wasn’t here. Something I could do on my own dime and raise the funds. Doing research, I just kept hearing: food truck, food truck, food truck.
I started looking at the permits here and I realized why we didn’t have food trucks. Because we couldn’t cook or assemble on them. I penned an ordinance for the city of Chicago, approached my alderman and started working on my truck at the same time.
Where are you in terms of the law?
Well, we are in the middle of a lot of turnover here in Chicago; we just had elections and we have a new mayor coming in. It is in committees right now. It is just really boiling down to … when new aldermen come into office in May. So things should ramp back up around then.
It had a very positive outlook from Rahm Emanuel, who is going to be our new mayor. He said he would approve [it,] and we heard a lot of positive stuff from other alderman as well.
Has it been hard to gauge demand, since you need to prepare and wrap the sandwiches ahead of time?
Well, it is a gamble every day — depending on the weather, depending on the locations. When we started we were the first hot-food truck to launch. We had enough press going out so that we sold out in about an hour and a half. We sold close to 300 sandwiches.
Tell me about the food.
The staple is a naan-wich. It is a twist on modern street food. When you first think of food trucks, you think of taco trucks, and I didn’t want to do tortillas. Anybody can do tortillas. “What kind of a vehicle can I use instead of a tortilla?” I looked at pizza dough; I looked at different types of bread. The naan held up the best.
What are some of the costs that surprised you?
Insurance. Business insurance, not necessarily driving insurance. Business insurance, just because it is not something that every carrier provides. It had to be a custom-built insurance policy.
Also, small code and build-out things to stay up with the city of Chicago, because I [also] have a storefront that is open to the public. So it is kind of a two-pronged attack.
Contact Mike Dempsey at michael.dempsey@penton.com.
