From landscape to meat, Chris Dambech of the Bacon Bandits food truck sells burgers and sandwiches full of bacon, energizing the Syracuse community
nybaconbandits.com
Sitting on an army vehicle in the middle of Iraq, Chris Dambech made a bet. With a few days remaining before returning to American soil, Dambech, 31 and stout with hair razor-cut to his head and a tattooed arm, pondered about what he would do upon returning with his fellow Marines. Most of the guys talked of using the GI Bill to go to college. But for Dambech, college would only restrain his ticking head, constantly looking for action—from becoming the youngest real estate agent in the south of New York or a hero in the eyes of his three and a half year old son, after shoveling snow. Instead, Dambech told the guys, he wanted to start a business.
The start-up idea came from one of the guys lounging on the truck, but the ignition sparked when the group dared Dambech he would not follow through on launching it. Taking the bet, Dambech used $5,000 from his Iraq savings to found Veteran Lawn Care Services, a grounds maintenance company manicuring veteran cemeteries. “If I tell you I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it,” says Dambech, who credits his father for developing his entrepreneurial spirit and dogged determination. Watching his father, a traveling salesman, work, Dambech learned about self-motivation early on. “The harder he worked, the more he’d make. If he didn’t work, he didn’t get paid. No heat, no food,” he says. “I was helping him lick envelopes and send them out. Then he taught me a little bit about money. And then I got hooked on making a dollar.”
Watching TV about one year ago, Dambech found a show about food trucks and thought ‘why not start one?’ He began researching, talking to other owners, listening to podcasts about the industry, and discovering what other local vendors offered. Looking to stand out, Dambech observed that other trucks in the area weren’t using bacon. “I felt comfortable throwing my money down on that kind of gamble,” says Dambech. The truck, Bacon Bandits, opened in 2013, and incorporates the meat into every dish.
Bacon Bandits offers an eight-item menu featuring sandwiches like grilled cheese with bacon jam—a signature recipe Dambech developed—and a triple bacon burger. After the meal, it offers desserts like cupcakes with flakes of bacon on top. Parked in an abandoned building’s lot, Bacon Bandits is open from about early April until the end of September, selling out of burgers and the grilled cheese nearly every day. Dambech is hoping to expand his truck to a second location at Syracuse University and sell his jam at stores like Wegmans and Trader Joes in New York State, upon approval from Cornell University, where the long process is underway.
The gamble Dambech took paid off, but reaching his level of success, now in his second year, wasn’t so simple. “When I was first doing landscape and said you know what, I think I’m going to start another company, the people told me I was crazy. And you know what? I thought about what they said. I said, ‘Oh man, maybe I shouldn’t do this,’” says Dambech. “But then my brain kicked back in and I said, ‘Fuck that, I’m going to follow my damn instincts here in my gut and I’m going to do it anyways.’” Starting Bacon Bandit’s parked in Armory Square, Dambech and his chef spent winter nights outside until three a.m., toughing out blizzards and negative temperatures. “You have to do that in the beginning. Suck it up, tough it out. Because we did that, people started knowing who we are.” One year later, Bacon Bandits sold its cramped trailer for a plain, shiny silver one, four times the size with the name stuck on the side and a small window in the upper right corner. Its signature giant pig—a large, bronze rooftop statue—mounts atop the truck, serving as a beacon for customers who drop by for a product that has the taste of something different, on a quick walk or lunch break.
“At the end of the day, it’s really important to remember that product counts,” says Eric Weiner, founder and president of FoodTrucksIn, a website for locating U.S. trucks. “And I think that people definitely also still like something that’s unique and different…the trucks that do four or five things and do it really well, that to me is a key to success; having a smaller menu and doing everything perfectly rather than having larger menus.”
“We’re not doing this to get rich,” says Dambech on his own success. “It’s fun. We enjoy it. We enjoy when people bite into our sandwich and they smile and say ‘Wow, you guys rock.’ That’s why we’re doing it.”
For Dambech, it’s all about providing this enjoyment for customers and about finding ways to give back to others. Dambech offers his time by talking to people about his business and helping the Boy Scouts as a Merit Badge Counselor. Currently, he is thinking of ways to aid inner-city children without the funds to eat. Learning about these children listening to NPR in his truck, Dambech became distraught that they will not eat between Friday’s school-provided lunch and Monday’s school-provided breakfast. “I mean, what the hell. Can you imagine that? Like really imagine a kid,” he says. “That’s what I want to focus on. That’s going to be my next big thing.”
Dambech wants to create an engine of profit to provide food for these children, but according to his wife, Meg, who helps oversee the Bacon Bandit’s books, he has another two years before he can. “He said he was going to take a little break from starting new businesses and we’ll focus on me,” says Meg. “That’s a little reassuring.”
Though the urge to manage another business, like that for the inner-city kids, clicks away at Dambech’s mind, he agreed to wait three years after the inception of Bacon Bandits before starting something new. It’s a compromise he was willing to make, especially as his other establishments expand. Veteran Lawn Care Services, featured in a 2015 Super Bowl commercial, has more customers to cater to. With Bacon Bandits, Dambech has goals too. In addition to launching his bacon jam and setting up a second location, Dambech wants to create an original burger sauce.
His entrepreneurial instinct started as a boy watching his father work, but coming back to the U.S. after serving in Iraq and hearing one line during a podcast sparked Dambech’s daily motivation. The quote, “What are you going to do with your one and only life,” became that one cheesy line Dambech constantly refers to.
“There’s no reset after the games over. This is it,” says Dambech. With only one shot, Dambech will make it worthwhile. As the snow settles over the Syracuse grounds and the temperatures continue to drop, Dambech is full of energy as he talks of his Bacon Bandits truck, tucked away until the clouds part. A few months left to go, Dambech plans for the spring, when his truck comes out, figuring out a way to flip his menu, simplifying it while tweaking his recipes to crispy and marbled perfection.