When a friend says they are starting a food cart business you know you’re in for something interesting. Susi Kim is my childhood neighbor who just happened to also move to Colorado. She decided to start a Korean BBQ business because, well… If you tasted her food, you’d understand. She bought a cart and was looking for some help to modify it to her needs, but when we looked at all of her needs, they didn’t line up with the size of the cart she bought! So we started over.
The team included myself and Dave Lehl, both photographers and both all round crafty guys. Susi gave us pretty free reign on the design and we started with a 4×8 harbor freight trailer that we cut down to a more appropriate size.
The requirements for her cart were, functioning grill, functioning hot water sink, a cooler and a chilled toppings rack on the top of the cart. We toyed with different ideas for designs and came up with a center mount grill, multi rack Cooler, Sink and storage.
The chassis was designed with 1″ square tubing and all the sides were skinned with plastic using aluminum angle to finish the corners. The plan is to wrap the cart eventually, initially however budget says no.
With the entire cart built out, skinned and ready Susi drove it over to a sheet metal guy to have the top fitted. One sheet of Stainless steel with proper cuts and folds to fit our design. This piece fit nearly perfectly with only a few odds and ends to final fit to the grill and cart.
We used proper insulation and heat reflective elements to keep temperatures from the grill in control and we ducted proper ventilation for the grill using a sheet metal skin.
Overall the cart took us about a month to build, we typically worked on it maybe one day a weekend however so the number of hours was minimal. Susi has been all over denver since cooking up a storm!
