Food truck season is just around the corner for The Happy Lobster — a Chicago-based food truck company dedicated to serving fresh lobster year-round to residents of Chicagoland.

Co-founder Alex Robinson said he started the truck in 2015 with two of his closest friends, Neal Bassett and Tyler Cullitan, after noticing a gap in the Chicago seafood market. Robinson’s family was in the seafood business while he was growing up, and he was used to being able to get a quality lobster roll without sitting down at a restaurant. The lack of casual lobster in Chicago, combined with the increasing popularity of food trucks, inspired Robinson’s business plan.

Now, The Happy Lobster has two food trucks and a brick-and-mortar location in Downtown Chicago’s Washington Hall. The company does catering, delivery and events, in addition to their dinner and lunch services.

The Daily spoke with Robinson about his business and the challenges of operating food trucks as opposed to traditional restaurants.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity

The Daily: What did that first year or so of starting your business look like?

Robinson: The food truck landscape now is very different, but back then, our main source of business was downtown lunches, and there were only a couple of really good spots in the city for lunch. Obviously, it was very competitive, there were a lot more food trucks around back then. It was a lot of waking up really early in the morning, getting a truck to a spot, doing prep at a spot at 4 or 5 a.m., and then just kind of hanging out until lunch. And back then, I was on the truck all the time. So it was really long days and not a lot of days off.

The Daily: Now that you are a more established business, what do your day-to-day operations look like?

Robinson: Pretty much since the pandemic, we went from most of our services being lunches to most of our services being dinners, and from the majority of our services being in the city to it being a pretty solid mix of city and suburb. We go all over the Chicagoland area, as far west as Oswego, and as far north as almost Wisconsin. Really, mornings are just getting a truck ready for service, and then the crews take off. Obviously, the days are different, because a standard day might have a lunch or dinner service, but there’s also catering and special events.

The Daily: How does your business model change with the seasons, specifically with food trucks in cold Chicago winters?

Robinson: We used to run the food trucks in the winter, but it actually became more expensive to run them in the winter than it did to actually winterize them and shut them down. When it gets really cold, there are a lot more maintenance issues, and there’s a lot more food waste because of the weather and the crowds being pretty inconsistent. So in the winter a couple years ago, we decided to (shut down) just the food truck portion of our business. We winterized them, and we shut them down from Thanksgiving through the end of February. We pivot that part of the business to more at-home delivery. Everything on our menu that gets delivered to people is meant to be a “take and make version”. So if you order lobster rolls, they’ll come deconstructed with instructions on making them at home.

The Daily: What have been some challenges with your food trucks?

Robinson: There are so many challenges with running a food business that any food business is going to have, from the cost of everything being super inconsistent to trying to manage food waste and things like that. The one thing that the food trucks add on top of that is all the maintenance issues because you’re also driving a vehicle. If you get a flat tire on your truck, you can’t run a service because you can’t get to it. So keeping up with the maintenance on the truck is incredibly important.

The Daily: What have been some of the best parts of creating your business?

Robinson: I had come up with the (business) idea myself. I had had some of my friends over to try the food one night before I was really going to kick into gear, and they both approached me saying they wanted to do it as well. I was very against that, but they eventually wore me down, and it ended up being the best thing that could have happened to me. I get to go to work with two of my best friends every day, and that’s really been a huge highlight. When you start a business, some years you’re making money, and the business is being successful, and other years it’s more of a grind. We’ve had a lot of really awesome times doing it. Building a business with the two of them has been one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Email: brookenelson2028@u.northwestern.edu

Twitter: @BrookeNels25

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