For Ryan Carlos the holy grail location for his mobile food trailer was the Calgary Stampede.
He not only succeeded in getting his trailer, International Perogies, into the stampede but he roped the best new food award and continued his success at the Pacific National Exhibition, where he snagged the Best New Food Award again.
“If you can get into the Calgary Stampede you know you made it,” said Ryan. “It’s almost impossible to get in.”
He originally got his foot in the door last year with an ice cream trailer.
“We got in because it was a unique ice cream product,” said Ryan. “That ice cream trailer opened the door for me.”
Ryan with the support of his wife Wendy and young daughters Kaylee and Kaitlyn, spent most of May to October on the road travelling all over Western Canada from one fair or exhibition to the next.
The trailer was originally built seven years ago as the Temptasian Chinese food trailer and a year ago they adapted it so that it could house their new business International Perogies, as well as continue as the Temptasian truck.
Temptasian is a family business, owned by Wendy’s parents and Wendy runs the front of the restaurant with her sister.
“He is always brainstorming he doesn’t stop,” said Wendy, about her husbands drive to succeed in the food trailer business.
The idea behind their perogie trailer came from their love of perogies.
“We got bored of the same kind all the time so we decided to put a twist to them,” said Ryan.
Their teriyaki chicken perogies bagged them the top honours at the stampede and PNE but they have a total of five different perogies representing different countries around the world.
They have a taco perogie to represent Mexico, a butter chicken perogie for India, a poutine perogie for Canada, teriyaki for Japan, and the classic Ukrainian perogie, with a new one in the works.
“We need to keep up and evolve,” said Wendy, about the nature of the food tailer business.
Ryan travelled to Calgary with Lorne Becket, also of Vernon, who won the award for Best New Sweet at the stampede, for his deep fried coffee.
“Vernon is now known to be the home of this year’s top hitters in Canada’s biggest carnival/exhibitions,” said Ryan.
With the carnival season over for the year Ryan will be spending the winter helping at the family restaurant and thinking up ideas and a plan for next year.
His vision and dreams are big and with three food trailer businesses already he isn’t stopping there.