Here’s some of what we’re working on in the early parts of this year:
**Launching our second Kasa Truck
After being granted six locations for the Kasa food truck, and the subsequent Appeals hearing with its hotly debated issues (and tempers rising high in some cases) of restaurants vs food trucks and trying to interpret poorly written legislation, we are happy to have secured four spots out of the six that we applied for in the Financial District, Union Square and South Beach.
Our new spots include:
Weekday lunches at 2nd/Mission and California/Sansome
Weekend lunches outside the Apple Store at Ellis/Stockton
Weeknight dinners in South Beach at 2nd and Townsend
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for exact times and locations.
** More Vegan Specials
** More street food specials on the truck (Pav Bhaji and Indian Nachos in particular)
** Possibly putting out a couple of Fish Curry specials
If you work near Mission St between 1st and 2nd, get ready to get your Kati Roll fix regularly starting tomorrow from 11-2pm!
After many months of scouting locations, filling out applications, sleeping in the rain and debating in public hearings, we are officially approved by the City of San Francisco to serve lunch from the Kasa Indian Truck on Mission St between 1st and 2nd on Wednesdays!
So starting tomorrow, put your computer to sleep, push off that boring lunchtime meeting, break away from your regular lunch routine…and stroll down to that beautiful bright pink and brown Kasa truck on Mission St! We’ll be slinging Kati Rolls and Rice Plates with Chicken Tikka Masala, Lamb Curry and Gobi Aloo, as well as yummy Samosas with Mint and Tamarind chutneys, plus our famous Chai and Mango Lassi and more!
We promise to be smiling while keeping the lines moving quickly, so you can get back to your office routine!
Look forward to serving you all! And don’t forget to follow us @kasaindian on Twitter to find out where the truck is each week. (Early scoop: expect to see us in several more FiDi locations in the not too distant future!)
I have not written forever because things have been CRAZY! And crazy is a state that we are grateful for at Kasa, even if it does mean that we have been worked to our bones.
After months, I am finally able to breathe calmly after having gone back to back with:
Dealing with the city extensively for truck permits
The launch of the Kasa Indian Truck, aka The Kati Roller aka KIT
Three grueling days of vending at Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park
The sheer and utter madness of the SF Street Food Festival
In the midst of all this chaos, we’ve thankfully hired some great new additions to our team. Welcome Charles, Mike, Sarah and Juan!
This post is a quick update to share that I am madly in love with the truck. It is beautiful and bright and brings a smile to my face. As an added bonus, being only 5′ 2″, I also love being taller than everyone else on the street for a change. It’s still blowing my mind that we’re able to simply load up and drive down to Berkeley or the Financial District or outside of a wine bar and further Kasa’s mission of serving up simple, delicious, Indian food from scratch.
People have been asking me about the phrase ‘Horn Ok Please’ on the back of our truck. This was a nod to India and its many many trucks. If you’ve ever visited India, it would be hard to miss this phrase painted colourfully on most trucks and commercial vehicles. The origin of the phrase is not clear, but there are some interesting theories (Wikipedia):
In WW2, trucks ran on kerosene engines. Kerosene, being highly unstable in nature, would cause the trucks to explode at the slightest accident. Hence a warning would be painted on the back saying “Horn Please, OnKerosene”.
Most trucks in India are manufactured by TATA. In India, when wishing someone goodbye, one commonly says, “OK TATA!”, where TATA means goodbye. Since most trucks had the TATA logo on them, truck owners often painted the word OK above it. The HORN PLEASE phrase surrounds the OK TATA vertical combination. Thus, a person reading just the first line would read, “HORN OK PLEASE”.
The Tata Oil Mills unveiled an economy detergent powder called OK. This brand had a symbol in a shape of a lotus flower. To market this detergent better, it is believed that the symbols were painted on trucks and lorries. Since the trucks had HORN PLEASE already painted on the left and right edges of the back flap, the lotus flower symbol and OK were painted in the center of the flap. That is what got OK in between HORN PLEASE, making it HORN OK PLEASE.
I believe the current use, other than for pomp and circumstance, is also to let cars know that they simply can’t see them and so they should horn if they want to overtake. Either way, if you are a Kasa fan and the bright pink colour brightens up your day, give us a horn too!
We have LOTS to share in the next couple days as this is Kasa Indian Truck launch week! The truck wrap is done, permits are completed and events are locked down.
We’ll do a small test run for the kitchen on Tuesday night and will tweet out the location earlier in the day. Free food for anyone that shows up! Bring your friends, kids, neighbors, whatever. Probably 50 people’s worth of food will be cooked.
Separately, we’ve been catering these fun Bollywood sunset cruises in the Bay with the Red & White Fleet. Yes, it is touristy, but you know it’s still breathtaking to be out on a boat in that magnificent setting. Plus you get Kasa food, Indian dance performances by our dear friends at Cree8 Productions and you can have a few drinks before busting a move yourself. Check the details here and email cruise@kasaindian.com as we may be able to get you an insider’s hookup!
We’re in the final sprint preparing for next week’s Off the Grid launch for the Kasa Indian Food Truck. The truck is completely built out, the wrap is being wrapped as we speak, our Public Hearing is this Wed Jun 29 to secure our FiDi locations (not too late to help!), the initial menu is more or less decided and the operating plan is operating.
One of our goals is speed — we want to keep our (hopefully long) lines moving quickly!
At first, we figured we should keep it simple and launch the truck as cash only. But that didn’t sit right with us for a few reasons:
We pride ourselves on being tech savvy. You can’t have a Kasa co-founder from Google and be behind on this stuff!
We always try to do right by our customers. You don’t always have cash, ATM fees suck and credit cards are more convenient.
Square made it so damn simple to accept credit cards on a truck! Square is this super cool startup in SOMA designing beautifully simple transaction systems for local merchants. We signed up on Friday, got a free square fob in the mail on Tuesday and were up and running swiping credit cards within minutes.
Even better, we shamelessly begged the Square team and got into the beta test for their new Square Register point of sale app on the iPad. This hopefully will allow our truck customers to set up tabs where they can order and pay for our classic Indian street food without having to even take their credit card out of their wallet!
So…beta Indian food truck, beta point of sale system running on a 4G iPad 2. Only in San Francisco!
