Meet the Vendor - Double Dutch Fries

Meet Tim from Double Dutch Fries (co-owner of Food Truck Collective)! 🙌

Since 2015, Double Dutch Fries has been changing the chip game and revolutionising the way people view fries. No longer just a side dish, their hand cut chips make fries the star of the show.

⭐️ Why did you start a food truck?

After arriving in New Zealand from the Netherlands, I struggled to find anyone selling decent fries. It was all sloppy chips straight out of a freezer. Back home we eat fries like Kiwi’s enjoy their barista coffee and it’s standard for people to meet at least weekly to share a cone of fries with Dutch mayo. On every corner in each major city you can find a place selling delicious crunchy golden fries so it was strange to no longer be able to find something similar in Auckland.

After 15 years of searching, I had no choice but to try to make them myself. After countless nights hand cutting and frying potatoes in the basement of my flat and force feeding my flatmates hundreds of chips from different potatoes I finally had it sorted.

After everyone urged me on, I decided to head out and see if anyone would like to buy these fries. Armed with two tiny benchtop fryers, gazebo and a mate we decided to give it a go. The first few times was utter mayhem but so much fun. Mind you I was working as a Risk Manager at the time and had no experience in hospitality so I was learning everything on the go.

After a year of working in my corporate job Monday to Friday and selling fries on Friday night to Sunday I realised I had fallen in love with the food truck and entrepreneurial scene and decided to give up my job to risk it all in hand cut Dutch Fries (My dad initially thought I was an idiot for this decision, now he’s one of my biggest fans).

⭐️ What was your biggest challenge?

Initially it was selling the concept of fries with mayo. People just didn't understand why they should pay a bit more for hand cut fries and the idea of putting mayo on them was just plain weird! For years we went to all types of events, literally anything we could find. Schools, churches, car meet ups, CrossFit competitions, awards ceremonies. You name it, our little food trailer would be there. It definitely was tough but every customer that came back excited saying they loved the fries helped us push through. Now we have a long queue of customers at every event and we go through about 400 litres of Dutch mayo a season as people have discovered how good it is.

Another challenge was a lack of events at the time. When we started, Food Trucks were still a largely unknown concept, especially ones that only sold hot chips... After a while we figured, why not create more events ourselves? So with the enlisted help of Maggie we Founded the Food Truck Collective to start creating our own Food Truck focused events. This definitely created a whole new set of challenges as it's easier to attend an event as a Food Truck rather than host the event itself! But over time we managed to work out a great formula and now we're proud to host amazing events all over Auckland.

⭐️ What advice would you give to your younger self?

Probably to check the numbers a lot more as you go. For ages we would attend as many events as we could. Literally anything... Turns out this isn't the best long term strategy as some events weren't earning us anything and a few were even costing us money. Now we evaluate every event we attend and are very careful of the ones we accept and those we don't.

⭐️ What are your plans for the future?

After a rough couple of years with lockdowns and restrictions I am just looking to enjoy a year or two of having the business run as it should. There is constant pressure to continuously expand and upgrade but I reckon it's ok to just enjoy and refine what we've already built so far. Having said this, we are currently building another Food Truck but when that's finished, that's it!....

To see where you can find their delicious eats, follow their journey @doubledutchfries

For more information on all our food vendors head to our website using the link in our bio!