Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad & Erika Egan.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brad & Erika. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
So it all began with a joke. I worked through some recipes. Built out a food truck. Met the woman of my dreams. Got married. Bada bing bada boom, here we are running a ‘Mom & Pop’ pizza shop, Great Heights Brewery co-op….. Alright, so it all wasn’t that easy or that fast.
My pizza expedition began in 2009 in Lubbock, TX. I was working on my 5-year Environmental Engineering Masters Degree program at Texas Tech. Congruent with many college students, I found myself broke, so I decided to get a job at a pizza joint close to campus. I quickly felt at home amidst the ‘kitchen camaraderie’ if you will. I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes restaurant atmosphere, the thrill of fighting through a lunch rush, and all the new skills I was learning along the way. At the time, I only saw the job as a fun/quick way to earn that extra cash I desperately needed, and nothing more.
Fast-forward to 2013, I graduated with my Masters & Bachelors in Engineering with a job lined up back in Houston (my home town). Unhappiness, corporate-world disconnect, and a family medical incident led me to realize that life is short, and I shouldn’t waste my time in an unsatisfying career, so I quit. Not knowing what my next step was going to be, I found a job at a local pizza place in Houston just to pay the bills. I worked my way up the pizza ladder very quickly, becoming a manager, helping to open a new store, and eventually attaining a General Manager position overseeing ~25 employees. After I spent 3.5 years with the company, the owner decided to sell out….. and things started going downhill from there. The new owner steps in, an evaluation of the company/employees was conducted, and every manager/GM gets their salary slashed (this includes me). I quickly decide this new company feel is not the right atmosphere for me, so I quit.
The next few months are confusing/scary as I rack my brain trying to decide what route I want to take with my life. After some job offers and potential job let-downs, my friend jokingly recommends I start my own food truck. I laugh it off…… and then I start to look into what it would take. After some research, the idea actually seemed feasible. Low capital cost. My food. My recipes. My management. My company. My way. After breaking the news to my family that I was going to take the biggest risk of my life by devoting everything I had, all of my time, all of my efforts, and the next however many years of my life to this pipe dream, I was off!
The Purple Flour, LLC was established April 4, 2017. All of my sauce/dough recipes and menu items were concocted and solidified over the next few months. The food truck was then built out according to Houston Health Dept regulations (easier said than done) and all the necessary equipment was added. My soft-opening was set for Dec 17, 2017. We had a great turnout, and feedback from friends and family was nothing short of spectacular!
The next year and a half is full of heartbreaks, success, setbacks, stress, fulfillment, excitement, long nights, and more amazing customer feedback than we could handle. We have since (starting Sep 2018) set up the truck permanently at Great Heights Brewery as a sort of beer & pizza partnership.
On top of taking a leap of faith and opening my own company, I meet a woman that both steals my heart and takes my breath away with a single glance! I fall head over heels, we get married exactly a year after meeting, aaaaaand she gets sucked into this crazy Purple Flour rollercoaster ride with me. And here we are.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has been about as smooth of a road as driving down Westheimer… literally. Where. To. Begin… Starting a business has SO MANY unknowns and any business owner will tell you that there are always going to be hiccups and setbacks along the way, no matter how prepared you think you are.
Opening, operating, running, heck even just driving a food truck is a struggle in its own. Not to mention basically cold-calling other businesses (we stuck with mainly breweries and bars at the beginning) to schedule a date to set up the food truck at their location and hopefully make some money. Not knowing what the outcome of any location was going to be. Whether they would get a good customer turnout, so we could have the potential of a good ticket turnout. I had to load up venues week by week because not having anywhere to set up the food truck = no money to be made. But it’s also a chess game, because if I choose a venue that results in a terrible turnout for us (i.e., no one eats our food!), then we could potentially be losing money, not to mention loads of time and effort.
A lot of people don’t really understand what it’s like working in a restaurant kitchen. People go to their favorite food place, order their favorite dish, sit down, and magically, their food arrives shortly thereafter. The restaurant atmosphere is all about efficiency, quickness, focus, consistency, and attitude. Most restaurants have a staff hierarchy containing many different employees to focus on each individual aspect of dining experience to ensure every detail is sought out and maintained. With a food truck, the entire restaurant atmosphere is condensed to about the size of your college apartment kitchen, and can only fit 2-3 people max. It’s pretty cramped. The very small staff (in our case, just my wife and I) have to wear many different hats and were them well.
With only my wife and I running the truck, we are the FOH & BOH, HR reps, accountants, chefs, financial advisers, marketing team, etc. We have had to become expert jugglers on the matter. Not to mention trying to fit in our personal lives, friends/family time, sleep, and OUR WEDDING!
I would say at this point in the life of the company, the most important obstacle is TIME MANAGEMENT. We are trying to build the company from the back end (introducing new marketing tools, rolling out new merchandise, hiring employees, etc.) all while trying to survive the constant growth in business we have been seeing this year. Unmanageable growth is a real thing and we are currently floating somewhere on its edge. Moreover, we are also trying to set time for ourselves. Anyone who is married knows thats marriage takes work as well and you might think, “but you guys are together all day..everyday.” Yes, we are! and it is amazing! I literally get to be like Jim and Pam from the office and be with my spouse all the time! However, most of those hours are spent talking about the business or doing things for the business. Trying to have a “normal” marriage (i.e., date nights, self-care days or just an activity together) and unplug and spend time alone or away from both the food truck and our home is not easy. Somehow, we are making it work, though!
Other extraneous obstacles of the company include: maintaining truck maintenance (we are a kitchen on wheels after all), maintaining our personal health (if either of us gets sick or hurt, we would have to temporarily close the truck), maintaining our personal relationship (running a business is incredibly stressful and can take many tolls on a relationship, especially that of newlyweds running a business together).
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Purple Flour – what should we know?
The Purple Flour is a pizza food truck slingin’ out ‘American-Style’ ‘za to the greater Houston area. We classify ourselves as a cross between NY style & Neopolitan style pizza. Our menu offers build-your-own large 16″ pizzas and pizza by the slice (we tell people they are about “as big as your face”). You can always choose between one of our nine different specialty pizzas created by yours truly. We also offer Bread Bites, PizzaDillas (kind of like a quesadilla, but pizza style), and Cake Pops for dessert (Fact: these are made by my mom). Our Menu is filled with some fun, meaningful pizza names.
The Purple Grace in a nod to both the name of the food truck and the middle name of my niece. The Vesuvius received its name because the tomatoes we use were originally grown at the bottom of Mt. Vesuvius. The Aloha Hoo Ha Ha…. if you know, you know. The #16 earned its name for being the winning recipe (we made 17 different BBQ sauces and the 16th one was the winner!). The Mozza Abbondanza… we are big fans of both The Office and accents. When trying to think of a name for our olive oil based pizza with every cheese on it.. let’s just say Karen Filipeli was setting up her voice message at the time.
Do to us being a food truck and having limited space, we do not carry all the toppings a normal Pizza place would; which includes not having room for gluten-free dough or vegan cheese. However, because of our limitation, we allow people to bring their own/favorite gluten-free crust and top it for them! We also do half and half pizzas! I would say that this is something my husband has definitely perfected (must be the engineering degree and also why I call him a pizza engineer).
The dough, along with five different pizza sauces (red sauce, buffalo, alfredo, BBQ, olive oil), and our signature Mo’ Sauce (garlic butter) are my own recipes. Every pizza is hand-tossed right inside the truck, cooked to fluffy and crispy perfection, and hand-delivered right to your table…. or your car…. or wherever you would like to wait for your ‘za.
We are parked right in front of Great Heights Brewery, so we run orders into the taproom, out to the patio, into the back room if there’s a private party going on, and even over to Decant (winery next door) and The Walking Stick Brewery (a hop, skip, and a step down the road).
What sets us apart from not only other food trucks or other pizza joints but other restaurants, in general, is our customer service. We believe in breaking down the barriers between owners and customers, and it happens because we are relatable. We have become pretty good friends with half our customers because of the fact that we are not different from them. We have similar interest, we are usually in the same age range, we were once in the same industry as them and most importantly, we are not afraid to be human around them! For a long time, people that would be in the “industry” were people that wanted to be in the restaurant industry or just got stuck in it. Nowadays, that’s not always the case. Houston is mainly known for being home to the oil and gas industry, which my wife, until recently, has been a part of. We are helping breakdown the stigma that just because it’s a food truck doesn’t necessarily mean the person in it is any less than the person standing outside of it. All of the sudden more and more small businesses are made up of very intelligent and successful people that became tired of the fluorescent light or had an epiphany and took a risk that most of our regular customers admire.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
SO MANY TO COUNT! first off, my entire family has been behind me every step of the way. They have been my taste-testers as I was feeling out recipes, advisers for any issues that would arise, and the best kind of marketing team, spreading good word about the pizza and the truck to anyone they came across. Basically, the entire company was funded from loans given to me by multiple family members. This company literally would not exist without them.
I have had a good amount of friends that consistently support the truck and the pizza on a regular basis. Whether it be bringing a group of buddies to the truck for some pizza and beer or sending a great shoutout on social media. Our friends have really been amazing through this experience! Starting your own business helps you see who your real friends are. Sadly, our weekends are busy with work and we don’t get to spend time with them the way we did in the past, but they have been amazing with working around our schedule. The above also applies to our family. We knew that opening a business required sacrifice and our family did as well. Even though that is a known concept, it’s still difficult to miss certain occasions, but once again, they are wonderful and make the journey to see us at work.
The one biggest supporter has been my amazing wife. We began our personal journey smack in the middle of me trying to get this company put together. She has been right by my side every step of the way. She gave me VERY real and honest feedback on recipes I had been working on. She gave me clarity and real word advised when I didn’t want to hear it (she’s is a business major). She brought me back down to Earth when my mind seemed to be floating away filled with stress and anxiety and exhaustion and unknowns and … you get the point. She devoted all of her free time/weekends to helping out on the truck while she was working a full-time job in the corporate world (i.e. leaving downtown Houston during rush hour traffic, getting to the event, changing in a bathroom and then taking orders and running food out all night. Repeat) I can’t count how many nights she stayed up making sign for the food truck or taking pictures of pizza (we had a mini studio set up in the kitchen). I can’t tell you how many of our “date nights” were spent stamping pizza boxes in the living room drinking Jameson. She has since fully devoted herself to the truck and the company. She has been the most amazing thing to happen to me, and I cannot wait to continue this journey together.
Lastly, our customers and hosts! Great Heights has been an amazing home for us. The owners have been beyond awesome in us, partnering together and making accommodations for us. Because of them, we have gained an insane amount of regulars that are honestly the most amazing people we’ve met. The GOOF Community has welcomed us in and really been involved in our lives. They are understanding when stuff like the truck breaking down or the ovens not working have happened. They are supportive during the times when we close to spend time with family (weddings/funerals) or do a special event and are thrilled when we take time for a vacation!
Contact Info:
- Address: 938 Wakefield Drive, Houston, TX, 77018
- Phone: 713-289-9797
- Email: thepurpleflour@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/thepurpleflour
- Facebook: facebook.com/thepurpleflour
- Yelp: Yelp.com/thepurpleflour
Image Credit:
Dina Rohira
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