Reno’s niche food truck debuted less than one year ago.
To say Reno has an impressive food truck community is an understatement. Between events like Food Truck Fridays and Feed the Camel and the need for late-night kitchens open near bars in the wee hours of the morning, there are a robust number of eclectic eateries on wheels.
Many have found so much success that they are expanding into the pods at Reno’s first food hall, whenever it finally opens, Reno Public Market, as well as other small kitchens throughout northern Nevada.
Wok & Roll is one of those trucks with a creative vision – and a dynamic duo behind the wheel. Ryan Weeks is the sole owner of Wok & Roll, a fusion restaurant heavy in Asian influence, and he runs the truck with his partner, Daniel.
“We have an amazing food truck community here that has made [the experience of owning a food truck],” Weeks says. In fact, he doesn’t know if he’d still be in business if that sense of community didn’t exist.
“I’m full time on the food truck right now,” Weeks says. “We’re doing the prep, doing the cleaning, doing it all.” Wok & Roll, which opened in December 2021, has no other employees, but Weeks hopes that will change after RPM opens and they move operations mostly to the storefront.
While food is at the center of the mission, so is giving back to the community. Weeks has purposefully created a business model that donates to local charities, and he is a proud LGBTQ food truck owner, of which he says there are not many in Reno. In fact, he may be the only one in northern Nevada, but it’s hard to say for sure.
“We like to do a lot of charity things,” Weeks says, including donating proceeds to various nonprofits such as the Reno Philharmonic, Northern Nevada Pride and the SPCA.
The food truck is also a way for Weeks to “meet the community.”
“Being able to meet all the people and get the chance to feed them is an honor and one I don’t take lightly,” he says. “We are doing our very best to bring elevated dishes right to [customers] at different events.”
While most people see Weeks show up and cook, a lot more goes into a food truck business than that. He has a space at Magic Carpet Minigolf that he plans to expand into a concession stand eventually. For now, he uses it for food prep and storage.
“A lot of my things are prepped and then frozen and then deep fried,” he says. So, he’s doing the initial cooking in the Magic Carpet kitchen and then deep-frying items on the truck.
“We are doing our very best to bring elevated dishes right to them at different events,” he says.
While he does participate in the weekly food truck events, using the help of family and friends to pull it off, Weeks puts an emphasis on appearing at local gatherings that draw big crowds. Many may have seen him at Pride and various American Craft Fair events. Ryan says, “we try to stick to places that are high volume.”
While food trucks are aplenty in Reno, Wok & Roll has its own niche. Weeks spent months perfecting wok cooking techniques in order to turn out his menu of bacon jalapeño corn fritters, Korean vegetable pancakes, fried wontons, crab rangoons and entrees he’s dubbed “woks” and rolls. “It’s an amazing piece of equipment that you can cook a lot of dishes [with],” he says.
Weeks’ cooking is influenced by many cuisines, from Thai, Korean and Chinese to American, and the menu focuses heavily on good food with a distinctive twist. It’s a skill he learned from his grandmother who taught him the basics, too. Not only did he learn from her the ins and outs of perfecting meats and making doughs, she, too, would take a simple recipe and make it her own. You could argue that skill is the basis of Weeks’ menu at Wok & Roll.
The other skill he learned from her? “It’s all about the pairings for me so I feel I have a talent there.”
Getting the business from its beginnings to where it is now has been a busy but steady process. In December 2021, Wok & Roll was mostly surviving as a ghost kitchen. Weeks and his partner would put in seven days a week serving up celebrity brands such as Mr. Beast Burger and Tyga Chicken Bites with DoorDash and GrubHub picking up the orders right from the truck window. It wasn’t the creative work he first envisioned, but it was paying the bills.
In small moments, they showcased their own food and Weeks perfected his cooking skills behind the scenes. Over the past year, he says his main takeaway has been learning how to cook at volume. Paring down ingredients, doing the prep work – it all led to his ability to feed people in a timely fashion.
From here, he’s going to park the food truck for most of the winter, only pulling it out for select events until food truck season picks back up. Then, he’ll operate it for 4-5 months of the year.
Meanwhile, he’ll focus his energy on RPM where the facility gives him the ability to do more. For the most part, the menu will stay the same, but Weeks plans to add specials he couldn’t reasonably cook in the truck such as bao buns, Korean fried chicken and black spaghetti. With a big range, two fryers, a charbroiler, and ovens, “I’ll be set up to really do everything and anything I want to do,” Weeks says.
Eventually he envisions his own brick and mortar, in addition to that planned concession stand at Magic Carpet. He wants to offer 7 to 9-course tasting menus with wine pairings on a reservation-only platform that lets him sit down with his customers and explore the cuisine. That vision, for now, is a few years off. But if Weeks has learned anything, it’s that the food business can move fast. Just look at the progressions he’s experienced during just one year in business.
Wok & Roll also isn’t Weeks’ first food business. Weeks once owned Manila Bakery & Café in Sparks with a business partner, though they parted ways and Weeks didn’t have the confidence at the time to go it on his own. “It’s been a learning process the whole way.”
“The dream is to continue to amass a large following and, in the future, bring new innovative ways to share my culinary experience and adventures with them.”
