Wichita trio shares details from time filming Food Network’s ‘Great Food Truck Race’

Chad Freeman was skeptical when he got a message on Instagram from someone claiming to be a casting agent with the popular Food Network Show “The Great Food Truck Race,” hosted by celebrity chef Tyler Florence. The agent wanted to talk to the couple about possibly competing as contestants on the show’s 17th season.

“It was a brand new account with no profile picture and like five followers,” Freeman said. “It looked like it was a joke.”

But Freeman responded to the message — and to the call that followed from a New Jersey area code — and he now says he’s glad that he did. At 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, the two-hour premiere episode of the show’s newest season — titled “The Great Food Truck Race: Games on the Gulf” — will air, and the owners of Argentina’s Empanadas will begin to find out how national exposure will affect their burgeoning Wichita business.

Freeman said it’s impossible to know until the episodes start airing, but he’s prepared for anything.

“There’s just so much coming at us,” he said. “We have options... almost too many. So now it’s, ‘What’s the safest bet?’”

Learning on the fly

The first season of “The Great Food Truck Race” aired in 2010, and it’s always pulled in strong ratings for the network. The show follows nine teams of food truckers around the country as they compete while selling their food and completing challenges. The winner gets the $50,000 grand prize.

Each team is made up of three people, but because Freeman and his wife, Carolina Brandan, are the sole owners of their business, they needed to pull in a third. They asked their friend Paola Mentis — the owner of local Argentinian dessert business Konkeh Artisan Alfajor Pastries — to join them on the race.

Filming started in January and continued for about seven weeks, Freeman said. The trucks were sent all over the southern United States to cities like Houston; Galveston; Mobile, Alabama; Pascagoula, Mississippi; and Panama City Beach, Florida. Local followers of Argentina Empanada’s social media accounts quickly deduced what was happening as the team was required to post at each stop to help lure customers to their truck.

When they were chosen for the show, the couple had recently purchased a truck they planned to convert into a food truck, but they hadn’t yet done so. For the race, the show provided them with a top-of-the-line rig that had every possible amenity.

“It was just the Cadillac of trucks,” said Freeman, whose job was to drive the rig. “Every comfort was there. It spoiled the crap out of me.”

Each member of the team had a job on the road, the trio said. Mentis was the salesperson who lured people over to the truck. Apparently, it was a role she was born for, and the couple suspects she’ll be a break-out star on Season 17.

“Paola was the one outside of the food truck, cheering the crowd and trying to sell the empanadas,” Brandan said. “And people loved her. The star of the show is Paola.”

Another difficulty for the team: Before they left for filming, none of the three had ever worked on a food truck. They had to learn on the fly how to organize their equipment and ingredients and serve 1,000 people out of a confined space. It took them a while, but they finally got the hang of it, Freeman said.

And now, they’re experts.

“We had zero experience on a food truck and how the science of it works, how organization matters,” he said. “...We went in completely green and came out with a master’s degree in food prep.”

Capitalizing on the moment

Brandan and Freeman started their business at home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, selling Argentinian empanadas stuffed with fillings like beef, chicken, caramelized onions, smoked ham and more. Brandan is an Argentina native and dreamed of operating her own restaurant.

They quickly learned they needed a commercial kitchen to legally operate and moved their operations to the kitchen of Reverie Coffee Roasters. Then, in the spring of 2022, they started selling empanadas from the Anchor Meat Market at 1113 E. Douglas — a setup they knew was temporary.

That arrangement ended last July, and the couple had been putting on occasional pop ups around town while they worked on their food truck plans

Exposure from the show, Freeman hopes, will help catapult the business into its next phase, which he says will be opening a new food truck and starting a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Since returning home from filming, Freeman and Brandan have started taking their temporary food truck out around Wichita. They set up every Saturday at the Old Town Farm & Art Market and serve from the truck at local breweries. They’ve continued to develop their catering business, too.

Meanwhile, they’re in the process of choosing a higher-end truck to use in Wichita, and they’re also “waiting for things to align” so they can get going on their first brick-and-mortar location.

Expansion outside of Wichita is also possible, Freeman said.

“We’re on a few little wait lists around town of places we’d like to be, and along our journey, we’ve created some movement outside of Wichita. We hope to have something that’s bigger than Wichita.”

Mentis also has continued her pastry business, which sets up at the Old Town Farm & Art Market when it’s not too hot outside. (Her delicate pastries can’t take extreme heat). She also stocks her pastries at two local coffee shops: Sunflour Cafe & Collective, 6120 W. Central, and The Coop, 2812 E. Douglas.

She said she was proud to represent not only Wichita but also her home country of Argentina on the show. The team’s uniforms featured elements of the Wichita flag, she said, and the logo on their fancy competition truck incorporated parts of the Argentinian flag.

“I felt it was quite a weight on our shoulders to feel like, ‘Oh my goodness. In 17 seasons, they never had a team from Kansas before,’” Mentis said. “So not only we’re representing Kansas and Wichita but also Argentina. They have never had a team that offered food from South America.”

Freeman, who worked in real estate and construction when the couple’s food business started, has put that on hold so that he can focus completely on Argentina’s Empanadas. Brandan has a full-time job at Empower as the director of small business programs.

She said competing on “The Great Food Truck Race” helped her gain confidence in herself and in her business.

“I definitely was underestimating me and us and the power that we have to communicate with people,” she said. “I know that empanadas are the byproduct, but in order to have a business, to be an entrepreneur, you really have to connect with the community, connect with the people, and we have that.

“Before coming into the show, I was just selling myself short a little bit, and this show made me believe, ‘Okay, no. We have something here.’”

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