2011
The Truck Hits the Streets
Jae buys a food truck and starts slinging Korean BBQ tacos on the streets of Anytown.
The Origin
One truck.
One truck.
One family
recipe book.
In 2011, Jae Kim sold his car and put $18,000 into a beat-up food truck. He convinced friends and family to chip in another $22,000. He had no formal culinary training — just years of working in pizza shops, sandwich shops, and Chinese kitchens, plus a head full of his grandmother's recipes.
The first menu was tiny: Korean BBQ tacos, a kimchi fried rice burrito, a bulgogi gogi bowl. Within months, he'd earned his investment back. By 2012, the first brick-and-mortar opened on Example Location.
Today, Gochu Cantina has six locations across Missouri and Illinois, a Michelin-starred culinary director, and a food truck that's still rolling through Anytown fifteen years later.
