Wraps and the open road: How a food truck carries on a SLO County food legacy

Brittany Gonyer grew up working the Mid-State Fair in the 1980s.

Surrounded by food vendors up to her ears, one caught her eye.

Tacone, a stand selling a taco shell cone with all the “guts” of tacos inside, which allowed customers to wander without losing hold of their grub.

Gonyer was beside herself.

“I love it, this is amazing, I want to do this forever,” Gonyer told The Tribune of what she thought that day. “Then I go to high school, life keeps going, I move to Hawaii, do a bunch of things, but I always had this in the back of my mind.”

Gonyer’s childhood was spent at The Crushed Grape, her mother Gretchen Gonyer’s wine and gift shop that has lived nine lives — at the Central Coast Mall in the 1980s and 1990s, before moving to its SLO Promenade spot in 1999.

She would organize the shelves while sitting on the floor of the wine bar and saw herself building her own business — one where food was in a cone.

Years later, her own business would come to fruition: Wandering Eats, a healthy eating food truck that today travels the Central Coast serving feel-good grub.

In its years in operation, the food truck has become a staple throughout at festivals and events the county — even if the food isn’t cone-shaped.

How did food truck Wandering Eats come about?

While she did not have a clear idea what her business would exactly be, Gonyer hustled in the food service industry, gathering all her tips and storing them in a gaming console box.

When she turned 30, she decided to “pull the trigger.”

“I was just saving for this unknown trailer of dreams that I have no idea where I’m going to get it, or what it’s going to look like, or anything,” she said.

Gonyer’s original concept remained cone-shaped, where quesadillas could be placed in a paper cone for easy traveling during music festivals, fairs and events. But she needed a place to sell her cones.

She found a parrot green ice cream trailer that was going to be auctioned off at 777 Auction Company in Atascadero.

While working at the Fremont Theater’s bar in May 2018, Gonyer was mid-way through serving customers and bidding on the trailer.

In a flurry, the bids went up to $20,000, and in between her co-workers yelling, “Bid, bid, bid!” Gonyer got the trailer.

The next day, she and her mother picked up the trailer and parked it in Santa Margarita and took a break to sit on the side of the road.

“I’m like, ‘What am I going to call it?’” she said. “We’re just throwing these ideas around, and in the back of my mind, I was like, I can’t be tied down to something. I don’t want people to think I only do quesadillas, because what if that’s not all I do?”

The name was decided then and there: Wandering Eats.

“We’re wandering because we’re on the road, and we’re eats because, what are you going to eat? We don’t even know yet,” she said.

Gonyer then flipped the ice cream trailer into a quesadilla truck, moving in a griddle and heavy equipment for the quesadilla cones.

Trouble came in the form of the fire department telling her she needed a sprinkler system inside the trailer, which would cost $6,000 — money that Gonyer did not have.

The pivot

Right before her first event at Avila Beach, Gonyer needed to do something; the quesadilla cones were not going to work without the sprinkler system.

She pivoted back to her childhood memories of making wraps back at The Crushed Grape in its deli section. The cold wraps did not need to be cooked, only refrigerated ingredients, so the complicated system melted away.

“We did that at the first event, and it was a huge success,” she said. “I’m like, ‘OK, I can totally do that.’ Re-outfit the truck again, just kept making it work and kept twisting around and it just kind of grew from there.”

Wandering Eats was booked and busy since its first event at Avila Beach — until it wasn’t. With the pandemic lockdown, Gonyer hit another wall. The trailer was in standstill until 2021 when restrictions lifted, and its wheels began rolling again.

“We were back in business, and then it hasn’t stopped,” she said. “The traction just took off. We started doing all kinds of stuff from smaller local festivals all over the county to now expanded into Monterey, Ventura, Carpinteria Avocado Fest, we did Strawberry Festival last year, that was cool.”

To get into the sought-after events in SLO County and beyond, Gonyer would handwrite letters to the organizers, always looking for Wandering Eats’ next stop.

The trailer’s most recent event? Shabang Music Festival at the start of the month

What’s on the menu at SLO County food truck?

Wandering Eats specializes in feel-good grub, with plenty of vegetables and options for vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free diners.

The trailer’s menu mainly includes wraps or bowls, with its most popular barbecue wrap with roast chicken, bacon, cheddar cheese, pepperjack, ranch and barbecue sauce all surrounded with greens inside a 12-inch tortilla.

Other wraps and bowls include the Clubb with ham and turkey and the Veggie with marinated sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts.

With many other wild menu names on Wandering Eats rotating list, the Lil Hottie is pesto chicken on a toasted tortilla with jack cheese and baby spinach, served with a dip and tortilla chips.

“All the creativity on the menu comes from my roots of just growing up working there as a kid until I was a teenager and into my 20s,” Gonyer said about how The Crushed Grape inspired Wandering Eats’ menu. “It’s 100% a legacy, but something really beautiful, something that can really transcend time.”

Although The Crushed Grape officially closed in 2023, Gonyer continues the business legacy by serving its chill dill mac, a Crushed Grape original recipe for $6 at the truck.

Its overall menu prices change based on its venue, and whether it is catering an event or for a larger festival, but the usual price range runs from $6 to $18.

“For me, it’s something when you say, ‘I could do that in my sleep,’ it’s really one of those things for me,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of those things, but I’ve made it my whole life, pounds and pounds of this stuff, and people love it.”

When working an event, Gonyer will be making a wrap for the first person in line, but will be having a full-blown conversation with the fifth customer waiting to order.

“Everybody needs to always feel welcome, and I appreciate them coming and for me, that is very important,” she said. “It’s very important to recognize like, ‘Thank you for supporting something that I love doing, and I love showing you what I have to give.’ I stand by that. That’s huge for me. If you provide that, then everything else is secondary.”

For more information

For more information on Wandering Eats, or where it might be next, visit instagram.com/wanderingeatsgirl.