Tyler Howie didn’t plan to open a food truck.
It came down to financing. He couldn’t get a loan to start a restaurant, despite years in the industry and a thorough business plan. So when he got the chance to buy a gutted trailer, he jumped.
That was a decade ago. Crystal Howie was his brand-new girlfriend.
“Tyler was like, ‘Hey, I have this food truck,’” she said. “‘The first festival is coming up. Like, do you mind helping me out?’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, I guess you're cute. I can help you out.’”
She didn’t know she was signing up to work an all-nighter that involved wrestling a 150-pound pig carcass in a wind storm.
“That first event was a test to our relationship,” Tyler said. “We'd only been together for about three months at that point.”
For the last decade, the pair have served what Crystal calls “really fun tacos and burritos” from El Green Go’s food truck in downtown Anchorage. Starting off with a food truck was key, the pair said. The restaurant industry is tough, and expensive to get into. A food truck is lower risk, and it helped them figure out their concept, Tyler said. It also built a following of loyal customers.
On April 20, the Howies opened a second El Green Go’s, a sit-down version with a nearly identical menu in East Anchorage.
It’s a tough time to start a restaurant though, or make the move to a brick-and-mortar. The global economy is shaky, food prices are unstable and tariffs are unpredictable.
But according to Julie O’Malley, it’s always a gamble to start a restaurant. O’Malley has been writing about the food scene in Anchorage for over a decade.
“Making this step, even though you know you have a market and you know you have a good product, is a risk, especially in this very unprecedented, unstable economic moment in the United States,” she said.
Restaurants never make a ton of money, she said, since margins are tight. And it’s even harder to have a restaurant in Alaska where both the labor pool and customers are limited and getting ingredients can be complicated and expensive. The whole operation is risky, she said, so starting off small makes a lot of sense.
“Having a food truck makes you a little bit more nimble, especially if you're trying to, kind of, edge your way into the business,” she said.
Starting with a food truck was the right way to go, Tyler said, but it wasn’t easy.
“Twenty years of experience in a restaurant didn't help as much in a food truck because it was so different with the storage and not having an office to get all the paperwork done, so you got to go home and get everything done,” he said. “And we were closed on Sundays, that was invoice day.”
A lack of storage meant daily Costco trips, hours spent shopping for ingredients after a full day of work. Now they have so much storage in their new restaurant. There’s a walk-in cooler the size of their entire food truck. The extra space allowed them to add a cubano sandwich to their menu, made on a panini press that would have been way too big for their food truck.
They’ve been thinking about opening a restaurant for years, Tyler said, but they never found just the right spot. But their new place fit the bill, since it’s not too big and it was already partly built out.
“Building right now is just crazy expensive, so anything to be able to cut some corners on those edges as well was really huge,” he said.
It’s important to know where you’re going to tighten your belt when tough times come, Tyler said.
“This business is profit on pennies, not profit on dollars,” he said. “So if you're losing the pennies, you're not gonna make it.”
He said one way to save is to reduce staff, but that means there’s less money going out into the local economy, which creates a ripple effect.
While the US isn’t technically in a recession, experts say pockets of the economy are, and overall, there’s significant risk of a downturn.
The shaky economy is definitely affecting Anchorage, Tyler and Crystal Howie said. From talking with friends in the food industry, it seems to be the same all over the city, Tyler said – restaurant sales are down 30% to 40%. Everywhere, people in the industry are having the same conversations. Should they focus on getting more people in the door? Shave down costs to maintain that razor thin margin? Pass increasing expenses on to customers?
So the Howies admit it’s not the best time to open a restaurant. But it will force them to be lean and efficient, Tyler said.
“If we survive the recession, then we have a great concept, because it can survive the worst, we're going to do great during the best,” he said.
They’ll do that partly by following the advice they give to those just starting out.
“Keep it simple,” Crystal said. “When you over complicate things, that's when you're probably going to fail.”
Tyler laughed. “It’s called KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
