This is a reminder to let everyone know that we will be closed for an extended holiday throughout the rest of November and December.  We are currently trying to reconfigure our business and are trying to rethink a number of things – from our ongoing search for a few great locations to figuring out an economical relationship with a kitchen where we can produce our recipes and store our inventory.

We’re very sorry to have to disrupt our service to our customers but this is required for us at this time.  We’ll be sure to post any updates both here and on Twitter/Facebook.  As always, we look forward to hearing from you!

We will be closed for Thanksgiving starting this Wednesday and will most likely be closed for much of December as we do some strategic thinking about a new marketing plan.  More to come on this later!

Tues, Nov 9

We will be located at Temple main campus – 13th and Norris from 11am – 3pm, evening hours at Smokey Joes on 40th Street

Weds, Nov 10

UPENN 40th St between Locust and Spruce 11am – 3pm

Thurs, Nov 11

Love Park – 16th and JFK

Fri, Nov 12

UPENN 40th St between Locust and Spruce 11am – 3pm, then Bob and Barbra’s from about 8pm – close, 15th and South Street

Last week we checked out the Temple Dental School in North Philly on a tip that there are very few quality food options up there.  As we pulled up at Broad and Allegheny – far from our West Philly home, we realized the window on our truck was on the wrong side for having a normal operation on either street.  Since we have the window on the driver side it only works for one way streets on which we can park on the left side of the street.  Yet another oversight on our part.  We operated anyway, serving customers out of the back and side doors instead of through the window.  We’re not sure if the lack of window and paint job caused people to stay away but we only served about 10 customers there.  We’d consider sticking around if the window was on the opposite side and trying to grow the customer base with some viral marketing and networking (we have a few friends up on that campus who are spreading the word for us).  I think that considering our current configuration though Broad and Allegheny will be axed from our quest to spread the Coup love throughout the city.

Do you have a good idea for a Philly location?  Here are the constraints:

1) Can’t be in Center City from river to river and from Spring Garden to South, anywhere outside that perimeter is okay for trucks

2) Can’t be in University City other than our unique spot at 40th and Locust, anywhere west of 41st, south of Baltimore and North of Filbert is okay.

3) Must be a one way street on which parking is accessible on the left side of the street

If you have some good ideas please let us know – we are in the process of building out our customer base across the region while remaining for the majority of the time at 40th and Locust.

Just like LeBron, our roofer was like, “what’s a young guy like your son doing in this city?  He should be on his way to Miami!”  And no, it’s not the beautiful beaches or classy dance clubs – he was referring to the untapped opportunity to open a CdT boat off the South Beach shoreline.  Apparently his brother-in-law recently opened a hot dog super-raft just far enough from the shoreline to escape the bureaucracy of municipal permitting!  AND, he said the guy takes in $1500 a day!  What could be better than hanging out on a taco raft all day and chilling with hungry beach bums in the fine Miami sun?  Well, maybe playing pro-ball with two other studs and swimming out to the CdT raft for some grub on your off days.  LeBron and my mom’s roofer, if you guys are reading this, we’ll be there in 2020, get pumped!

Co-located with the local morgue in a bland building that is mis-marked on Google maps, the Philadelphia Department of Health is a marvel of modern municipal government.  Although this department is a daunting obstacle for any entrepreneur to navigate I have one observation that warms my heart when I go back there again and again for licenses, certifications and the like.  We’ve been there about six times and each time there are people of all stripes, clothing types, races, ethnicities, classes – you name it, this is a department with a diverse clientèle.

Today there was an Amish man inquiring as to where he was supposed to put a 3-basin sink on his produce stand (good question).  We also ran into our mentor/adviser who was in the process of re-opening a restaurant and was turned away because the Health Dept doesn’t accept checks anymore.  And even though the new Le Meridien Hotel opening on Broad and Arch has a full corporate real estate and management company (Starwood Hotels) operating their mega-biz they still have to send some executive in a fancy suit down to 321 S. University Ave to deal with health inspections and food safety certifications.   He had to show his own ID to get his certificate – couldn’t send his admin assistant.  I tried to make him feel at home by offering him a seat on a make believe sofa and a pretend cup of coffee.  The guy didn’t so much as smile but it felt good knowing we were both in the same boat, at least for a minute.

We switched up our normal Thursday schedule for Love Park this week because Penn undergrads were on fall break so we thought we’d skip a slow day on campus and make for Center City.  I explained that to my dad but after it was too late.  He promised he’d start to look at Facebook but I don’t buy it – he doesn’t even have a profile (although my mom does).  I think I’ll install Twitter on his iPhone and have him follow just us so he’s always aware of the latest news – I recommend this to you too!

After health inspection it was straight to the kitchen but we had no idea how much food to cook.  It was going to be our first day in business for a crowd that promised to be much larger than what we were expecting on an average day.  We took the recipes we had used for our pre-launch tasting parties, multiplied the amounts times about 14 and crossed our fingers hoping for the best.

When we arrived on Christian Street we hadn’t attached the ventilation fan on the top of the truck yet so I got up and attempted to connect the wires the way our mechanic had instructed us.  Despite all his warnings I managed to zap myself into a little electrocution dance (to the great distress of some woman watching me below – fortunately the electric shock wasn’t so bad and I maintained my balance on the roof to get down safely).

As soon as I got down we had our second run with the Phila Dept of Health for a flash inspection.  Again we passed with a great score but the intrusion slowed down our already lagging set up for our first day in business.  To make matters crazier, almost as soon as the inspector left our truck our water line burst spraying water all over the truck.  We rushed to patch up the line before we lost too much water (duct tape really is the greatest invention known to food trucks).  It wasn’t until an hour and a half after people started flooding the block when we were able to serve the first Coup de Tacos known to man.

Six hours and about three inches of rain later we had completed our first day in business, which remains one of our most successful days recorded.  This year’s Bloktoberfest will mark just about our 1 year anniversary and will serve as a measuring stick to see how far we’ve come.  Hope to see you there!

With Coup de Taco it’s admittedly not nearly as scary but some similar feelings and principles apply.  For example, for almost a year we’ve had the plan to make 40th and Locust our home.  We’ve stayed there day in and day out seeking to build a loyal following Monday through Friday.  But we’ve watched on the sidelines as food trucks across the nation and in Philadelphia switch locations while Tweeting their next move.  Just in Philly we know of three or four trucks that each have thousands of followers on Twitter and long lines for their limited appearances on specified days.  After evaluating the risks and rewards we’re getting ready to jump off.

We will still remain at 40th and Locust for three or four days a week, ensuring that our home base customers know they can readily find us there.  However, starting this week we will head to the famous and wonderful Love Park in Center City at 15th and JFK from 11am – 2pm one day a week (this week it’s Friday but it will usually be on Thursdays).  We’re excited to give Center City a shot and to see if we can quickly generate a following there.  We’re not sure if this will alienate our customers who walk up to our location on Friday not having read this blog or our Tweets to follow.  Over the summer we received some complaints for not being open and not adequately informing our local customers, which is why I’m hoping this blog’s info will reach far and wide.  We hope that our University City clientele understands that we’re trying to broaden our customer base and bring delicious tacos throughout the Philadelphia region but we are taking the risk of potentially confusing and aggravating some of our loyal customers.

The first time I jumped off the 45 foot cliff my arm swung out to the side and was fixed parallel to the water below.  When the underside of my arm hit the surface of the water flat it stung like a bad belly flop.  However, compared to the excitement, joy, elation and outpouring of intense emotion that I experienced during the trip down, that sting was just a tiny blip on the radar and I jumped again and again afterward.

Center City, get ready, we’re about to jump in!

Steve’s main concept is that good entrepreneurs are just as risk averse as the average corporate type.  In fact, we’re fundamentally in the business of risk calculation, risk evaluation and risk management.  Entrepreneurs should not come up with an idea and immediately pour money into it while just hoping for the best.  To the contrary, entrepreneurs ought to be extremely diligent about assessing the risk associated with our ideas, doing tons of research to evaluate that risk and only then should we act on our vision and put money into it.

After our team came up with the CdT concept we wrote a short but thorough business plan.  In writing it we uncovered the main assumptions that, if untested, would be the biggest risks.  For CdT the foremost assumption that came out of this exercise was that we could sell enough tacos in University City to support our operation.  Rather than staying seated behind our laptops and taking “conservative” guesses about the tacos we could sell in an hour we set out to test this assumption to see for ourselves.  First, we went to a number of food trucks all around University City and sat outside counting the number of customers and average meal price at each spot.

Next we set out to test our pricing assumption by having friends come over to Peter’s apartment and actually pay for their food.  Having friends come over once was okay but we weren’t comfortable with our pricing until people came multiple times to our tasting events paying for their food each time.  Once we established the average customers/hour at local trucks and our potential customers’ willingness to pay we plugged those numbers into our financial model to see what our daily sales would likely be.  We then went to the food wholesaler and priced the ingredients we’d need for our recipes.  At this point we could gauge profitability and we finally felt comfortable with our plan.

It’s not to say that we weren’t nervous about signing the final check to pay for the truck (the largest chunk of our initial investment) but after taking all these steps we didn’t feel like this was a big risk anymore – we knew what we were getting into.  That’s not to say we haven’t faced about 100 obstacles we never could’ve imagined (or calculated in the financial model) but at least we thoroughly analyzed the key risks.