Food truck owners: 2 Rock Hill families find ways to continue serving you
Editor’s note: There are nearly four dozen food trucks serving this region. Here is another installment in The Herald’s occasional series that highlights these food trucks. If you’d like to be considered for this series, contact Tracy Kimball by email at tkimball@heraldonline.com.
Michael Loss was driving up the interstate on his way home to Rock Hill from Georgia when he saw a sign.
It was a message board hovering over I-85 with a directive from the South Carolina governor to “go home and stay home.”
Loss made the trip to the Peach State last spring to do a walk-through on his new food truck when the Covid pandemic shut businesses and closed schools. That was just about the time Loss and wife, Tracey, were launching their new food truck — Priority 1 Barbecue.
“It was a little scary,” Loss said. “But you know, we just went all in.”
The couple had dedicated their lives to service.
Michael, 48, had worked 15 years as a Rock Hill firefighter and 12 years as a paramedic for Piedmont EMS. Now he works full-time on the food truck.
Tracey is a full-time 911 operations center supervisor. The two met in 1995 and started serving food to family and friends about 15 years ago, Michael said.
“I have a love for helping people, but over the years, it can wear on you mentally,” he said. “I’m still serving people, but I’m serving in a time that they’re not having the worst day of their life. So it’s a nice change of pace.”
They started two years ago selling barbecue by the pound.
It began as a hobby, making barbecue in the backyard over burning hickory wood chips in a stick burner, Michael said. Growing up, he enjoyed making barbecue with his dad, and at yearly events.
“There’s nobody I want to impress more than my daddy,” Michael said.
Before they started the business, they were thinking of a name. Priority 1 is a code given to firefighters, ambulances and police when they should use lights and sirens while responding to an emergency.
The couple employs several people on the food truck, including their 16-year-old son Chase. The family has no qualms about working in the tight space, Michael said.
“A lot of people say, ‘How do you work with your wife’?” he said. “It’s kind of easy when you’re hanging out with your best friend. She doesn’t always like it, but she always lets me come home.”
The red, fully electric truck is 30 feet long and boasts a back screened-in porch with a large cooker. It also has a bathroom.
Tracey helped develop the menu, which is “short, sweet and to the point,” Michael said.
There’s pulled pork, pulled and sliced brisket, smoked sausage dogs and brisket nachos, which is a menu favorite. Another featured item is the bacon burnt ends, which comes off the fatty part of the brisket. The Losses “tuned it up” and started using slab bacon, which a friend nicknamed “meat candy.”
The slab bacon is cut in chunks, smoked and seasoned with the Losses’ secret sauce, which they hope to market. Michael’s not telling what’s in the sauce.
“There’s a lot of trial-and-error and a whole lot of ingredients that were thrown away because it didn’t come out good,” Michael said.
He said what sets their food truck apart is the sauce and high-quality meat.
“We stay on what a lot of people consider like a health-conscious-type thing,” he said.
You won’t find any gristle or fat, Michael said.
“It’s like finding a bone in a fish,” he said. “Once I find a bone in a fish, I’m done.”
The Loss family has taken their truck to businesses and neighborhoods, but most recently to businesses. On many recent Saturday’s they have set up shop at the Yorkville Marketplace. At events, they serve 40-60 customers, he said. At business events, that number can be around 120. You can visit Priority 1 online at this site.
Michael said other food truck owners reach out to each other and network.
“The industry is kind of neat,” he said. “I grew up in the fire service, it’s a brotherhood and the food truck industry is turning into that, too.”
Now they serve in a different way
Tyrone and Ceslie Jenkins of Rock Hill serve South Carolina low-country cuisine on their truck. They offer low-country boils, shrimp and grits, and a crab cake sandwich.
Their truck is called Salute Chew, which is a play on words to mean “salute you.”
The couple wanted to use their military service as a theme. Like the Losses, who they know, the Jenkins have a service background, too — they are Army veterans.
Music blares from a speaker on the red truck, including traditional Army bugle calls. Some of the descriptions for menu items are listed as “chow” and “grill sergeant.”
Customers at Salute Chew may also recognize a familiar face.
Tyrone, or “Chef T.J.,” is the chef at the Rock Hill School District’s Applied Technology Center, where he teaches high schoolers how to cook.
“While I was in the military, I was a logistics specialist, not associated with cooking in any type of way ...,” Tyrone said. “My military occupational skill had nothing to do with culinary arts whatsoever.”
Tyrone started teaching in 2016 after an acquaintance recommended the job. “He persuaded me to just try it,” he said. “I tried it out and I actually enjoyed doing it.”
The 49-year-old joined the Army in 1992, having graduated from high school in Charleston in 1990. He trained as a logistics specialist and was deployed to Germany, Korea and a handful of cities in the United States.
He planned to serve only two to three years.
“Funny thing, every time I came up for reenlistment, I would reenlist,” he said. “So that two years turned into 22 1/2 years.”
He served until November 2014, when he retired as sergeant first class.
After he retired, Tyrone trained to be a chef at the Art Institute of Charlotte, where he graduated with an associate of science in culinary arts.
Ceslie, 39, joined the Army in 2000 after briefly attending college. She was medically discharged in 2006 due to neck and back injuries. She joined the Army Civilian Service in 2010 and served until 2014.
The Jenkinses, who met at Fort Bragg, N.C., have been married 18 years and have two children.
The idea for the food truck, which starting operating in July, came after a trip to the doctor’s office.
Tyrone had bought bushels of crab, shrimp and clams from Charleston and decided to sell it.
“I just put it out there, ‘I’ll be selling some of this seafood stuff,’ or let people sample it, and I got overwhelmed,” he said. “That kind of set off a light bulb that maybe we should do this for real.”
They came home from a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t get to the driveway due to the line of cars, Ceslie said.
“If there’s any doubt in your mind before, this is your confirmation, from that point on it was a go.”
Like the Loss family, the Jenkins’ quest started at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
The couple runs the food truck on the weekends and full-time during the summer when Tyrone is not teaching.
The menu’s specialty is low-country cuisine, but other dishes also are popular, Ceslie said. They serve chicken and waffles, fish and chips, a grilled chicken salad and burgers.
The “chow menu,” includes a crab cluster shrimp low-country boil with lemon garlic sauce. The dish includes shrimp, corn, egg, potatoes and sausage.
The shrimp and crab cake sandwich is topped with lettuce, tomato, and a cajun remoulade sauce. The sandwich is served with fries and apple-bacon slaw.
Like many food trucks, the Jenkins’ has set up shop in local neighborhoods. They also have been to local breweries, a furniture store and a coffee shop.
And after the food is served, the couple salutes the customers.
“It’s our way of saying ‘thank you for stopping by,’” Ceslie said.
Visit salutechew.com and priority1bbq.com for details and menus.
This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 10:47 AM with the headline "Food truck owners: 2 Rock Hill families find ways to continue serving you."
