When the ABC Catering LLC food truck pulls up, a line tends to quickly form.
That’s because this mobile business serves up plates like salmon, shrimp and grits topped with a special sauce, Tuscan chicken lasagna with a homemade Alfredo sauce and garlic buttered steak bites with sauteed shrimp.
“It’s not the typical food truck,” said owner and self-taught chef Allegra Lowe of Byron. “I can go as Southern as people want to go or I can go as top-tier as people want to go.”
Sometimes Lowe, who first started cooking “in the kitchen with my grandmother and mom,” rolls up with a themed menu such as Soul Food.
On those days, customers may choose a single protein from fried chicken, fried pork chops, baked chicken and BBQ ribs and two sides from mac and cheese, collard greens, yams, and dressing with cranberry sauce.
Or Lowe might open up with Taco Tuesday with choices such as chicken tacos, loaded nachos, shrimp and steak tacos and street corn.
“I have a plethora of things on my menu,” she said. “It ranges from stuffed salmon one day to lamb chops another day to garlic buttered steak bites with sauteed shrimp to brunch.”
Salmon, shrimp and grits anyone?
When the Telegraph recently caught up with Lowe and her food truck parked outside Advanced Auto Parts off Ga. 96 in Warner Robins, she was serving three plates.
The choices: salmon, shrimp and grits; oxtails with rice and gravy; and honey-mild, honey-lemon pepper or buffalo flavored wings and plain or loaded fries with a cheeseburger topping.
That Saturday was also “Waggy’s” first birthday celebration.
Waggy is the name Lowe gave her food truck and the day marked one year since she started operating it.
“It was just so big — just wagging all over the road when I first started driving it,” she recalled.
Other days, Lowe may roll up with menu options like salmon bites with sauteed shrimp and sauteed broccoli over risotto rice with her special sauce, a boneless steak, sauteed shrimp, sauteed broccoli with garlic mashed potatoes with a her special sauce or stuffed chicken breast, risotto and sauteed broccoli.
Her special sauce appears on the menu as “love sauce.”
“I just created it,” she said of the sauce. “Whatever it goes on, people love it. So, I just kinda went with the name of it.”
Sometimes Lowe sets up in the parking lot of a local business, which she says is a “win-win” to get her name and product out as well as drawing customers to the partnering business. She also travels to events like Food Truck Friday in Perry.
Lowe gets the word out about where she’ll be and what she’ll be serving via her business and personal Facebook pages. Sometimes, people see the food items pictured on the food truck and stop to check it out. She also has a website.
Other times, Lowe said she’s invited to a subdivision, a school or a church. She’s also adopted a school or two.
“If we do a subdivision, we want to give them a meal that’s sit-down restaurant quality at their front door so they don’t have to get dressed up and take their family out and that kind of thing,” Lowe said.
“They can eat good: get their food, go back home and enjoy their family without having to get dressed up after a long working day and without having to cook as well.”
Lowe uses her food truck about 50-50 for food truck events and for catering weddings, birthdays and other special occasions.
Of her catering jobs, she mostly uses her food truck except for jobs under 20 people, or about 15% of her total business.
Lowe said she can cook more food with the food truck. Also, many venues don’t have a kitchen, which makes the food truck ideal for catering, she said.
Most of the food she prepares for food truck events Lowe said she also serves at catering events, except for charcuterie boards and the like.
Lowe has a large menu selection that her catering customers can choose from. Other times, they’ll bring her a menu and ask her if she can do that, or they’ll ask her to design a menu for the event.
From teacher to food truck operator
A Fort Valley native who graduated from Wilkinson County High School after her family moved to Irwinton when she was 9, Lowe followed her brother into the U.S. Army. She served from 2008 to 2012 as a signal support systems specialist helping to maintain and secure communication systems.
While working on her undergraduate degree at Fort Valley State University, Lowe was a substitute teacher from 2013 to 2016.
Graduating with honors with a bachelor’s degree in education in 2017, she started teaching in Bibb County schools. She taught sixth grade science her first year.
She then moved over to Central High School, teaching health and physical education for two years while also serving as the head boys and girls varsity cross country coach.
During the weekends, Lowe was busy catering weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and other events.
When it was time to renew her teaching contract in April of 2020, her husband, Darius, “kind of” talked her into not signing it.
“He was like you love teaching but I was just very passionate about cooking,” Lowe said. “I still get a chance to help people like I did when I was teaching but it was just like so comforting mentally and I just didn’t sign my contract.”
Lowe also had been taking food plates to employees at Blue Bird Corp. in Fort Valley, where her husband worked for 10 years before transitioning to truck driving.
“My husband at the time was working at Blue Bird and he would take leftovers or either he’d run by the house … He would come by the house and get what I had prepared for lunch and people in his office would be like, ‘Hey man, what are you eating? It smells good. It looks good,’ ” Lowe said.
“It kinda went from one person and another person told another person and it went from doing his lunch to one more lunch to I think my very last day of doing food at Blue Bird I think took like 58 plates out there.”
The food truck, Lowe said, just happened.
She and her family were out to eat when they saw that Two Guys and a Pie off Ga. 247 in Warner Robins was selling its food truck. Her brother encouraged her to check it out.
“After like looking at it in February and it was still there in October after (the owner) said so many people tried to get it and inquired about it. But it was still there. So, it just felt like heaven-sent, like a God-thing,” she said.
Going from teaching to owning and operating a food truck was “one of the best decisions” Lowe said she’s ever made.
“Now, I’m able to actually plan my schedule around that,” she said. “I’m able to take my kids trick or treating because before I had practices and stuff being the head cross country coach … Now, I make my schedule for the most part around family time.”
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