Slow Morning Ponderings- Food Trailer

Jodi Lohrman
2 days ago
3 min read

Yesterday I was able to have a slow morning and reflect on the last couple of years since Covid. The reason for the reflection was we finished up serving food from The Bee-stro On The Move Food Trailer at The Farm & Co’s last ever Fall at the Farm 4 day event on Monday. This event was one of the “Big” events on our calendar for the last several years. It was one of those events that we “geared up for” adjusting our schedules and the schedules of some of our staff.

We purchased our food trailer in 2020, the year we were closed for dine-in service and the year Fall at the Farm started. We didn’t participate in Fall at the Farm that year. We purchased the trailer on October 6 kinda last minute after I was up all night on my phone shopping trailers (the story is in another blog).

Since purchasing the food trailer, it has been out on multiple occasions. Some were yearly events until they weren’t. Others were one-time events like a graduation party where the graduate just wanted the Bee-stro Food Trailer there for his celebration.

The Bee-stro On The Move Food Trailer has had one transformation in addition to its original set up, both reflecting the look of the Bee-stro kitchen. Initially, it was painted “Belvedere Cream” from Sherwin Williams to reflect the color of the old Bee-stro. The trailer was equipped with residential equipment like we did in the original Bee-stro. Then in 2023, we refurbished the inside with mostly commercial equipment and put in wallpaper to reflect the white ceramic tile that is in the existing commercial kitchen.

In reality, the Bee-stro On The Move Food Trailer is essentially a catering trailer, meaning we do very little cooking actually on the trailer. We do the occasional Hoosier Breaded Tenderloin and Pork Burger, but 90% of the time we cook most items in our commercial kitchen, and then keep items warm or cold on the food trailer until ready to serve. Just like the quirkiness of our restaurant, this makes the Bee-stro On The Move Food Trailer hard to fit inside a box- and that’s just the way we like it.

Over the years, we have gotten a little wiser with the food trailer game. Rarely do we participate in public events unless we know there will be a large crowd with a few food trucks. It just comes down to numbers. We learned that the hard way. You see, because we make everything ahead of time from scratch, it takes us about 4 hours of prep time not including grocery shopping and planning to get the trailer filled and ready to pull out the driveway. Once it comes back to the commercial kitchen, it takes another hour to do the dishes and clean out the food trailer. That doesn’t include the time on the trailer serving food and the cost of a staff member to work and the cost of food. There have been several times early in our food trailer game that the food trailer going out to an event has ended up costing us money.

This year, we have participated in only a handful of public events with the Bee-stro On The Move Food Trailer. One of those was Fall at The Farm. This was our 4^th year to be at The Farm & Co for this event and it has always been an event we have looked forward to each year. Not only was it always a profitable event for us, but the scenery is gorgeous, the Schopmeyer family was welcoming and gracious attending to every detail, and the other local businesses were a joy to work alongside. After a half-decade run, the Schopmeyer family has decided to go a different direction in 2026 discontinuing Fall at the Farm.

Even though our days of participation at Fall at the Farm began at 4:00am and didn’t end until at least 14 hours later, we are going to miss the local fall vendor market.

Personally, I loved this event because it helped me to do something creative each day. We would always have biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls, and breakfast potatoes for the early morning crowd. Once 11:00 would hit, we would focus on a soup, sandwich, a bowl of some sort, and loaded baked potatoes as offerings. The offerings would change each day. The food trailer would hold enough food to give roughly 250 people an entrée to eat.

With that being said, all good things come to an end and we will miss Fall at The Farm. As we continue to focus on dine-in and off-site catering, we will still do the occasional public food truck event and enjoy as many slow mornings as possible.