Off-Road: The origins of Beatbox Kitchen and Australia's food truck scene

Chef Raph Rashid is the man responsible for starting Melbourne’s food truck scene. The now infamous Beatbox Kitchen was Melbourne’s original burger truck. It first emerged in 2009 – at a time when fish and chip shops or fast food drive-thrus were more common than a family-oriented burger or taco joint parked off the street.

Nearly a decade on, three new businesses, a trademarked sauce (Rashid’s Stereo Sauce), and a signature burger (the Raph Burger) later, Raph has created a booming hospitality empire out of following his passion for food, flavour and doing things differently.

We chatted to Raph about the challenges of starting a business when there are no step-by-step instructions to follow, carving a niche in wedding catering, and conquering council restrictions to bring people food that inspired queues down several blocks.

There was no food truck industry. So food truck builders didn't exist, either. I found someone who had built mobile cooler rooms in Bayswater. I literally just hit the phone book and said, "Does anyone want to try and build this?" And then one person said, "Yeah, I'll have a go.".

So I bought a Ford Transit. That was the cheapest thing on the market. Brand new.

To set up the business, I borrowed $10,000 off four close friends. That gave me $40,000. I was able to do finance on the Ford Transit. I also had about $10,000 of my own money that I saved up. I spent that on building the box and putting some equipment in there.

The whole thing cost me about $85,000. I'm lucky that my friends lent me the money because there's no way I would've been able to finance the box otherwise.

It wasn't really an option at the time. Because the path was unknown, I just couldn't prove that there was going to be any income stream off this business anytime soon. But I also really backed myself. I knew I had the ability to work hard and I knew I had the means to get some bookings.

I've always been involved with music, from hip hop culture in Australia to deejaying. I'd been to a festival called Meredith a few times. I knew the guy that booked the acts there. This would've been at the start of 2009. I walked into the pub at the Corner Hotel and my friend was sitting there and he asked, "What have you been doing?" I was like, "Cooking hamburgers. Just messing around with my own recipes at home." And then he said, "Why don't you come and do a stand at the music festival?"

And I was like, "That sounds kind of crazy. That's something I would do." I had no idea what it would actually be like, but I thought, "I'd try that out." So I started making a plan to do my stand. It was just going to be a marquee, like a tent. To make things easier for myself, I figured: "Why don't I just get a truck?” As in, set it up permanently inside a truck, like a mobile catering thing.

Next thing you know, we're building a truck from scratch. It hadn't been done here on that level. I was getting it done – running the projects myself – and hoping that it worked out.

The council had this permit that would allow people to sell ice cream. But ice cream vans got blacklisted by the local council in the late '80s, early '90s. At the last count, there were about 400 ice cream vans tearing around Melbourne. Their approach was a little bit too offensive for the inner city, maybe.

Ice cream vans kind of got a bad name from there. Yet there was this redundant permit that no one had used in the city of Moreland for years, though. So I applied for that permit – and the council agreed. From there, I started parking on the street every Friday night.

The first few weeks, there was no one, really. But after a couple of months it was just packed. Initially, it was all just word of mouth because I wasn't even using social media. I would just email people on Friday and say, "Hey, I'm going to be there again, if anyone's keen."

For the first couple years, it was quite a cool novelty for people to do and get out. I loved that. We never wanted to be elitist about what we were doing. We were just making hamburgers on the side of the street. It was for everyone, basically.

At the start, it was just me. I put my first full-time person on after about a year. He worked sporadically, when we needed him. We then started our second venture, the Taco Truck in 2011. That went more mainstream than I had ever imagined. So it catapulted us to the next stage of professionalism.

After 2012, we had four trucks. We got a warehouse; put more systems in place to make things easier for me and my staff. We now employ around 50 to 60 people. We also have two small restaurants now, both in Brunswick. A Beatbox Kitchen shop and also a donut shop called All Day Donuts which becomes Juanita Peaches in the evenings.

If someone wants to set up a food truck, I would always say, "Don't just serve what they're already serving in a shop. You need to do something new." There's also definitely extra work in stock handling. A lot of considerations need to be given around your event. If it doesn't go well and the food doesn’t sell, what are you going to do with the leftover stock?

The biggest trapping is a lot of events have really high fees. You might see someone with a really big line outside their truck. Everyone's like, "These guys are making so much money." But be wary of the fees that are involved. If you’re working hard and if you're really passionate about the food that you're making, I think that it can cut through to your audience.

I still think Melbourne is a fantastic place to do a business like this because people are open to getting out there and trying new things.

Being with the staff and the customers. It's really energising to be around them. We also cater lots of weddings – around 40 a year. It's probably a part of the industry that we shaped, which I'm really proud of. Say you've only got $3,000 to spend on your wedding food – which doesn't sound like much, right? But that's a lot to some people. So then you call me and then I come down. It's that simple.

For more info on the Beatbox Kitchen, you can follow them on Facebook.

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