America’s food truck trend has expanded exceedingly over the past eight years since the beginning of the trend’s movement in 2008, according to Mobile-Cuisine.com. This trend made its way to Marquette within recent years with food trucks like Señors, Dia De Los Tacos, and now with a new truck serving the local streets, Superior Mobile Koney.
This truck serves an assortment of cuisines, everything from omelets to kabobs to their Detroit style Coney dogs which give the truck its name. Owner Mike Grant lived in Detroit until about three years ago when he moved to Marquette.
He has cooked in many different areas but was given the opportunity to start a food truck after cooking at the local Stucko’s Pub & Grill for two years. Stucko’s was offering to sell a food truck and Grant jumped on the opportunity.
Grant sets his food truck apart from the others by having variety in his menu and the number of hours you can find him out on the streets open for business, he said.
“I’m really the only one who’s doing late-night. That was my big thing, when the bars close and it’s after 10 p.m. it’s hard to get a bite to eat in this town that isn’t fast food,” Grant said. “So I’m trying to counter that a bit,” he added.
As of right now, Grant doesn’t have a set schedule on where his food truck will be operating each day. In time he would like to establish something more routine, he said. The truck frequents spots in town like Blackrocks Brewery, Ore Dock Brewing Company, and downtown Marquette during the night for all the hungry bar folk. Grant keeps customers updated on the truck’s whereabouts on the Superior Mobile Koney Facebook page. They’re open rain or shine, something he plans to continue even through the long U.P. winters, Grant said.
“I live in Marquette because I like it here year round, and I plan on running my truck year round too. Hopefully I build up enough business that when winter hits things won’t drop off too badly,” Grant said. One way to bring business and attraction to the food truck scene here in Marquette may be for the various food trucks to come together, Grant said.
“The other guys and I have talked about it a few times, setting up together just to draw people to us. We haven’t really played with it yet, but it could work,” Grant said. Mike Walker of Dia De Los Tacos said the food trucks of Marquette coming together is something he has hoped would happen for a long time.
“We could potentially create a localized sort of food court and I think it would be good for everyone involved in it,” Walker said. Koney’s opened up about a month ago and business has been quite good for the new truck so far, Grant said.
“Everyone seems to be loving the food so, hey, that’s all I can ask for at this point,” Grant said. Grant hopes to see his business blow up and is hopeful to possibly open another food truck if Koney’s is successful, he said. “If they’re all loving the food then hopefully the rest will come with it,” Grant said. People are really enjoying the Koney dogs, but Grant is partial to his kabobs, he said.
“Obviously, we have good Detroit Coney’s; everyone’s tearing those up right now, but I think the kabobs are off the hook. I’ve been living off them for the last three weeks,” Grant said. All the lunch meat sold from the Koney’s truck is made by Grant himself, he said. “Everything is real food from scratch,” Grant said.
