Food trucks have become an accepted part of Australia's dining landscape. Whatever city beach or suburban park we're at, we've come to expect a food truck will be parked somewhere nearby, slinging dishes through its open window to a gaggle of waiting diners.
It hasn't always been this way. Just ask Raph Rashid.
Rashid has had a remarkably varied working life. But two common factors unite all of Rashid’s projects: passion and hard work.
Raph Rashid grew up in Frankston, 45 minutes south of Melbourne. Rashid has always wanted to work, but when he left school at 16 he had no set plan. “I just wanted to be hands-on. I didn't consider my career trajectory at all,” he says. “I just wanted to be involved.”
When he was 14, he started his first job at a toffee-apple factory on his street. With gloved hands wrapped in electrical tape, he dipped sticks in a frying pan of hot wax before skewering them into apples. The pay was low and the work laborious.
But Rashid persisted and saved. Around that time he was given a screen-printer, which led to setting up fashion label Blank TM with friend, Danny Young (who went on to be a founding member of the band Eddy Current Suppression Ring). With roots in the local skate, music and graffiti scenes, the pair began selling T-shirts and hoodies to friends and out of backpacks at gigs. The business took off. Determined to expand beyond Melbourne, Rashid was soon travelling the globe, selling Blank TM gear in the US and the UK. “It was unreal,” he says.
As he travelled Rashid took photos, including many of the US hip-producers he admired working in their home studios. Photographing legendary producer J Dilla in 2005 (who passed away the following year) was a career highlight, and appears in Rashid’s book
Behind the Beat: Hip Hop Home Studios (Gingko Press), released in 2005.
It was on his travels, selling Blank TM and taking photographs, that Rashid became passionate about food. “I got really deep into hamburgers early on,” he says. “I was really taken by American food and the way that the mom-and-pop stores operated,” – something he compares to the fish-and-chips shops of Australia. “I really liked that model.” He also saw how prevalent food trucks were in the US.
When he returned to Melbourne Rashid set up hamburger food truck, Beatbox Kitchen – the city’s first. There was no template for Rashid’s vision and it wasn’t his ambition to start a revolution. “I just wanted to sell hamburgers,” he says. “The food truck was just my means of doing it. I've [always] been driven by what I wanted to deliver, and the food I wanted to make. Not the concept.”
Beatbox Kitchen debuted at the Meredith Music Festival in 2009, Rashid’s truck sitting between the traditional food caravans and standalone outlets. It quickly became a regular fixture of the city’s events and streets of the inner north, a model that others quickly adopted. “I always just wanted to make something that was fresh, didn't have a sweet bun, and highlighted Australian beef,” he says. “And was reminiscent of the fish-and-chip shops where my first memories of hamburgers came from.”
Beatbox was a near-instant success, embraced by a clientele that until then never knew how much they wanted their burgers to come to them. But Rashid had challenges to overcome – from the build of his truck to trading on the street. Being the city’s first food truck meant there was no council regulation in place. Negotiating the byzantine bylaws of each council required ingenuity, patience and commitment.
“I had to find little loopholes,” says Rashid. “To jump through them or exploit them to my advantage.” Rashid had to “work with the councils to show them what we were doing wasn't illegal at all [and] what we were doing was always above board. I don't know if I could do it again. But when you're that passionate about something you're willing to do whatever it takes.”
Eight years later, Rashid has more than earned his place in the Australian dining scene, adding the much-loved Taco Truck and brick-and-mortar stores, All Day Donuts, Juanita Peaches, and another Beatbox Kitchen to his empire. Its not just confined to Melbourne, with Beatbox and Taco Truck common staples of the nation’s music festivals and public events.
Rashid says running conventional restaurants is “100 per cent easier” than his high-maintenance food trucks. But there remains no shortcuts – Rashid might run a diverse, busy business, but he still serves from the truck. “As much as I love my stores, there's something about being right there at a festival or on the street trying something new,” he says. “That's as close to people as I can get. I’m always interested in cutting out all the pretence to do with food and restaurants.”
After two decades’ experience of turning his passions into successful business ventures, Rashid has advice for young entrepreneurs beyond wrapping your hands in tape to avoid scalding toffee: have a plan.
“If you think you're going to sell 100 hamburgers but only sell 50, then at least you've got something to check back on,” he says. “If you don't know how many you want to sell, then there's nothing to keep you accountable. Be accountable.” And get started.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Tequila Herradura. With more than 145 years experience making premium tequila, Herradura proves there are no shortcuts to quality.
