Some brick-and-mortar restaurants have chosen to roll out food trucks to help diversify revenue sources during the pandemic, including Colorado classics such as The Fort and Beau Jo s. But one food-truck operator has gone the other direction, bringing comfort food to two Denver neighborhoods.
Steven and Mandy Smith opened their first Crock Spot restaurant last November at 4045 Pecos Street. The move came after a decade of serving hearty bowls from their food truck, which got its name from crockpot cooking (even though the truck switched to more traditional oven and stovetop cooking shortly after launching). The Sunnyside Crock Spot has been serving up rice, barley and quinoa bowls topped with the likes of pulled pork, Celtic white bean stew, jalapeño shredded beef and root veggie curry to receptive neighbors over the past four months, even during the COVID-related dining-room shutdown that lasted from November 20 to January 4.
Chris Kilcullen and Mark Sunderhuse founded the nonprofit food truck Kitchen One for One to create a connection point to pass on sustenance both as food and as goodwill. The three-year-old endeavor recently started a new program called Taco Nights as a way for people to enjoy meals while helping give food to those in need. “We wanted to go out and love people,” Kilcullen says. “We wanted to do it in a way that was non-threatening, meeting people right where they are no pretension, no requirements.”
Taco Nights work like this: Kitchen One for One volunteers set up the taco truck to sell meals to those who can afford to pay, and then Kilcullen and Sunderhuse use those funds to provide tacos to community members struggling with food insecurity. The new program is an adaptation of their old food truck model that caters specifically to the safety and social distancing realities of COVID-19 while also responding to increased demand. Their first Taco Night in Denver is Thursday,