By John Huxman
Freelance Reporter
Special to the Tribune
Many restaurants in the Tri-County Tribune coverage are were closed, understandably, for Labor Day, but for Brandee’s Bites, a food trailer seen frequently in Pratt and Medicine Lodge, it was business as usual. Owned by Brandee Blick, this unique food outlet provides home-style meals such as one would expect from a restaurant, but there are also frequent barbeque options or eclectic items to try, like fried frog legs. On Monday, Blick parked her food truck in the Tractor Supply parking lot on the east side of Pratt, much to the delight of customers looking for a good meal.
Blick has operated the trailer since she moved back to Kansas from Colorado when her mother passed away about a year ago. Neither she nor any of her five siblings wanted to lose the home at Sharon, Kansas, where they had grown up, but Blick was the only one in a position to move in and take care of the home place.
“I’m not really back permanently. I am here for now,” she said. “They needed someone in the house.”
Blick said she had worked as a cook in Colorado but was ready to be her own boss. She said she prefers running a food truck to working in a restaurant.
“Trust me, I have plenty of opportunities to own a restaurant if I want one. I don’t want one. It’s too much overhead,” she said.
Blick also said she likes that she can operate the trailer by herself, and set her own hours, choosing to be open on Labory Day when many other eating establishments were closed.
Right now Brandee’s Bites has only one other steady employee, an old family friend who does most of the cleaning, but Blick said she does hire other waitresses when she does larger events.
Blick described a typical day one the food truck.
“Everybody thinks you only work three hours,” she said, referring to how long the truck is actually open for customers over lunch. “I have to be up by 4:30 in the morning to get things going. I’ll be up until about 10 at night. If I’m lucky I’ll get it done by then and then back up at 4:30 to do it all again.”
Blick said that she sometimes works seven days a week. She likes working a lot of days in a row so that she can get into rhythm and become more efficient.
Everything about the food trailer is connected to family. Not only is Blick in Kansas for her family, but, to her, cooking is a way to keep her mother’s memory alive.
“My Mom and Dad died pretty close together, and I tell you there’s really a lot of love that goes into this truck. All my siblings, all her grandkids. This is kind of how we’ve kept her memory alive. A lot of my specials are based off of things she fed us growing up. I love my Mom and I miss my Mom and that’s why I get out here and I cook like I do,” she said. “I do pretty much everything from scratch. I always try to offer not just barbecue. Like today we had blackened catfish and a broccoli cheese soup and a turkey spinach salad with strawberries and blueberries. I give everybody a desert with their meal and every kids gets a free popsicle.”
Blick said that she usually has two or three different meal options on a given day.
“I do Sunday dinners. Like in Medicine Lodge people are nuts over liver and onions,” she said.
Another feature of the trailer that is immensely popular is her scratch made lemonades. She makes the lemonade simply by quartering and crushing a lemon and adding sugar, water, and, optionally, a choice from any of 31 flavored syrups. The lemonade was the brain child of her daughter, Chelsea Nemechek.
The lemonade has been so successful that she sometimes has to organize separate food and lemonade lines at events.
Blick maintains a Facebook page for Brandee’s Bites that informs customers where the trailer will be set up from day to day. She does not list her menu on the page to protect herself from competitors who might steal her ideas. The page does show pictures of the many of the offers that she has done; from unusual foods like liver and onions or frog legs to more normal fare such as chicken fried steak or barbecue.
Brandi’s Bites food truck is an advertisement for business in itself.
“If you look at all the details on the outside of the truck you’ll see hummingbirds; my Mom loved hummingbirds. My Mom and Dad ran the elevator for years down there [at Sharon]; we got wheat in [the logo],” Blick said.
The trailer is named “The Neffer” after its former own, Wayne Neff who passed away due to cancer. Neff’s wife’s nephew ran the truck for a short time before the family decided to sell it to Blick. The Neffs had sold barbecue out of the trailer and, in consequence, the vinyl wrap identifies the trailer as a barbecue trailer. It would be more accurate to identify the trailer with home-style cooking now, but a new wrap would cost around $10,000. “…and the barbecue’s a good staple. There’s times I’m tired: then there are no specials and we just do barbecue,” said Blick.
Though a regular in the Tractor Supply parking lot in Pratt, Brandee’s Bites is also a popular food stop in Attica, Zenda, Medicine Lodge, and even occasional events in Wichita. Earlier in the Labor Day Weekend, Brandee’s Bites served many hungry festival goers in Kiowa for the Labor Day Celebration on August 31 and September 1, offering funnel cakes, french fries, chicken strips, corn dogs and appetizers. Blick was open with more regular fare in Pratt on Monday, September 2, then closed for her own Labor Day rest on Tuesday, September 3.
