Food truck business lands at Sound View
Old Lyme — At Rollinred's Beach Shanty on Sound View Beach, with clear skies and a view of the beach from any of its red outside benches, it was easy to forget the colder months.
For a seasonal business like Rollinred's, summer could not have started fast enough.
The decision to transform Rollinred's, formerly a food truck of the same name, into a brick-and-mortar location stemmed from co-owner Randy Carroll's desire for a place to call his own.
With Rollinred's as a food truck, Carroll operated mainly at festivals and other outdoor venues in southeastern Connecticut, making the transition to Old Lyme a smooth one. Rollinred's new home previously was known to locals as Sound View Sugar Shack.
"The food truck business was good, but I wanted to be stationary," Carroll said.
Despite being familiar with what goes into owning and operating a food establishment, both Carroll and co-owner Damien Speranza admitted to challenges that arose during preparations to open this year.
Carroll said opening the food truck each summer presented minor hardships, but it's not as much work as cleaning and maintaining a building. "When you maintain something, it's less work in the long run," he added.
Speranza said another point he previously did not consider was the intensity of working at a seasonal establishment.
"When it's seasonal, you're gonna be swamped," Speranza said. "You pretty much eat, sleep and breathe this business for three months. You only have that time to make an impression on people so that they remember you for the next season."
Carroll compared his hopes for Rollinred's to the successes of other local seasonal restaurants, such as Captain Scott's in New London and Sea Swirl in Mystic. He said customers' loyalty stems from his products, citing his hand-cut fries and fresh ingredients as major contributors to his success.
"That's what we want to get to here," Carroll said. "They'll wait for Rollinred's to open now. You have very loyal followings at those types of places."
When asked about how they plan to bring people back season after season, Speranza emphasized the importance of quality products that Rollinred's prides itself on.
"Randy's product is so good that that's how you keep them," Speranza said. "They want to come back. When you look at the Facebook page, there were people significantly disappointed because they were used to Red's coming to them, but now you have people who will come and get it. Once you take the product away from them in that off season, they'll want to come back next time around."
"It's nice to have a base, but in order to reach the level of success that we want, we need to reach farther than the community," Speranza said. "We definitely need to come in and make an impression on the local community ... but we also need to make them so happy that they tell their family and their friends about it, so people outside of the community come, as well."
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.