Food truck events offer personal chef experience
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Henry Bieber, left, one of the pastors of the neighboring Shoreline Church, receives his food order from Grant Coggin, managing orders for The Chef’s Workshop at one of the businesses’ food truck events at Montessori Internationale School, 10019 S. Northshore Drive, Wednesday, June 24. The school is one of three food truck event locals held each week. - Tammy Cheek
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Residents and motorists along South Northshore Drive and Hardin Valley at Pellissippi State Community College’s AYSO Soccer Fields might see a truck from The Chef’s Workshop on any given Wednesday or Thursday. The food truck business is holding community food truck events at those locations, as well as another in the Choto area on Sundays. - Tammy Cheek
Choto resident Dale Akins is bringing the personal chef experience to three Knox County communities using his business, The Chef’s Workshop.
“The whole concept is to bring a personal chef experience into a neighborhood,” said Akins, president of The Chef’s Workshop, 10433 Hickory Path Way in Knoxville.
“That’s the whole idea, and to give people – especially during COVD — a different dinner option.”
Akins’ concept offers another win for area residents and other subscribers: The events are drive-through.
“Most of our customers never get out of their cars,”
he said. “Everything is online. We don’t go all over town. We don’t go to different subdivisions. We only stay in our three sites.”
He set up community food truck events at Montessori Internationale School, 10019 S. Northshore Drive, on Wednesdays, Pellissippi State Community College AYSO soccer fields, 10915 Hardin Valley Road, on Thursdays, and a private Choto residence, the Boyd-Harvey house, on Sundays.
Local chefs rent his food trucks and provide food.
“This is what we call a food truck hot spot,” he said. “ The idea behind it is that you go to neighborhoods. Residents are able to come in, drive around, pull back on the road and go home.”
Sign-ups for the service are at thechefsworkshop.com/, where you can order meals. Customers receive a text to begin the meal and another when the meal is ready.
“That way it’s completely COVID-compliant,” Akins said. “You’re not waiting in line with other people … it’s there and it’s ready.
“So far we’ve done really, really good and have had no more than one or two cars here (at a time),” he added.
“What’s nice about a food truck is it’s completely compliant and it meets the same requirements as a restaurant. We have the health inspections.”
While Akins has been doing food truck events for three years, he launched online ordering last February.
With a background in real estate, a chef came to him two years ago looking for space to rent.
Instead of renting a space for a restaurant, they decided on a mobile kitchen — a food truck, and the rest is history.
For more information, call Akins, 865-693-5066, or cheesewhiz@thechefsworkshop.com
Akins recalled what gave him the idea was after his daughter got married. While the reception venue was “gorgeous,” it had no kitchen. That got Akins to thinking, “I wonder if they could use a mobile kitchen.
“That’s when I built a kitchen on a mobile platform,” he said.
While Akins still has the warehouse to build a kitchen commissary, when COVID hit, he recalled everything went mobile.
“And, the more mobile you can be, the better off you are,” he observed.
The concept also helps launch careers for budding chefs.
“If you want to launch a food truck business and you don’t want to get a food truck yet, what you do is you come to us,” Akins said. “We’ll schedule you for a day to do a demo cook to get your production worked out, then we set the inventory up on this online ordering and mark you up for the (food truck location).”
