Conversations with the Inspiring Samantha Keeley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Samantha Keeley.

Samantha, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
12 schools & 4 career pathways brought me to where I am today. My life has been one change after another, until these past couples of years where I feel like I have found & stuck with my true passions and have persisted forward.
Never in my life would I have imagined owning a food truck and going to school for nursing. It was always psychology. Being a psychologist was my dream job since I could remember. I wanted to help kids get through tough times because I endured depression and anxiety throughout my childhood and wanted to learn more about mental illness & the way our brains work. Psychology just fascinated me.

After taking a couple of psychology classes at community college, I realized I do absolutely love the subject, but ultimately I was not willing to put in the effort to get the degree. I was young & I was in and out of school for the next couple of years- working as a barista, bartender & bank teller. Nothing fulfilled me though. I just kept chasing after what I thought would be easy instead of planning out what I really wanted to do with my life. My boyfriend (now husband) owned his own catering and wholesale distribution business; he made lunch & breakfast items for coffee carts & pharmacies throughout San Diego. While it did take a lot of work and effort for him to build his own business, he was happy and was following his dreams of being an entrepreneur.

Meanwhile, I was jumping from job to job, never finding complete satisfaction in my decisions. Gnarly Nachos (my food truck) was created as a branch from Adam’s Lunchbox (my husband’s catering business). We were working an event at an ice hockey arena and had some time to kill so we started making nachos with a variety of ingredients- whatever we had there. Nacho Cheese Doritos, cheddar cheese sauce, onion, jalapeños, shredded cheese is the combination that birthed the idea of serving at festivals & events creating nachos with all kinds of “gnarly” toppings. We texted our family that day and asked “if you could put anything on a nacho, what would it be?”, and it took off from there. We booked our first gig at Adams Avenue Street Fair in Sept 2015 with absolutely no equipment, business license, health permits, or employees and gave ourselves less than a month to get all of our ducks in a row. It was beyond stressful, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t run away from this opportunity. I was passionate about this little business of mine and I stuck with it. This was my own, and I wanted to embrace it and continue to grow it to its full potential. From there, we booked weekly events, festivals & breweries, sold my husband’s catering business, and decided to run with this passion of ours. We now have a food truck (actually a trailer, but permitted the same), and have expanded our clientele to business parks, catering, & corporate lunches along with our usual events. This business gave me the confidence and drive that I never knew I had, and sparked other dreams & interests of mine and it’s my goal to conquer them all. Along with this, I am taking classes for nursing (a newfound dream of mine) & am a stay at home mom to two beautiful identical twin boys. Many people tell me that I take on too much, but I don’t feel like that will ever stop; we get one life, why not chase every dream that you can?

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Absolutely not. Most of my life, I have taken the easy way out, hence the 12 schools. As soon as I didn’t like a school or didn’t feel like I “fit in”, I’d beg my parents to take me out and put me in a new school. That process happened 8 times in my k-12 years. What I didn’t recognize at the time, is I was dealing with anxiety and the only way I knew how to process it was to run away from any difficult problem at hand. This led to the many changes thereafter in my college years- hopping from one college to another (4 in total) and taking years off in between. I guess you could say I never have had a goal and stuck to it.

What I’ve learned from this, and from my four years experience with Gnarly Nachos is- you have to keep moving forward. Don’t dwell on past mistakes, don’t beat yourself up for what you have/haven’t done, just keep moving. Stop paying attention to what everyone else is doing, and focus on your own dreams. Time is going to pass regardless- why not spend that time doing what you love and reaching for that goal you find impossible to achieve? For the first three years of Gnarly Nachos, we had a 10×10 pop-up tent that took hours to set up and breakdown, exhausting ourselves every event. Now, we have a food trailer that’s easy to set up and be ready to serve quickly. A food trailer was an impossible goal in the beginning, but persistence & confidence in our business & concept helped me move forward. Life is hard and no one has an exact equation on how to get to where you’d like to be; but, I know that with consistency and reminding yourself that you can accomplish anything you want in life will propel you forward toward a future you want. Once you achieve a goal you deemed impossible, it becomes addicting and you just want to achieve more and more- just have to believe that you are invincible.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Gnarly Nachos & Tacos story. Tell us more about the business.
I own a food truck called Gnarly Nachos & Tacos. We serve at special events, festivals, street fairs, business parks, breweries, catering gigs and just about anywhere that wants a food truck. We have a wide variety of unique nacho & tater tot creations- from cheesy bacon Hot Cheeto nachos, to BBQ bacon mac n cheese tater tots to our most popular, “The California Burrito Nacho” (tortilla chips, tater tots, carne asada, guacamole, sour cream, cheddar cheese sauce & shredded cheese). My favorite food is nachos; trust me- my family teases me when we go to a restaurant and I always order nachos. It’s fun for me to start with a base and build up to what makes a “Gnarly Nacho”. We think outside the box with what we offer, while also keeping the classic options for those who want something basic. We recently introduced tacos to our menu, and have a “Tater taco” option which is tacos (carne asada or marinated chicken) with added tater tots INSIDE the taco. It’s a game-changer. We offer catering options that include a “build your own nacho/tater tot bar” where each individual builds their own gnarly creation and names their nacho for us to call out- this is a lot of fun and kids & adults alike love naming their nachos and hearing it called out by us. We cater to a wide variety of customers from backyard birthday parties to 1,000 person school events. I’ve been doing this for over four years, and it never gets old seeing the “oh my gosh” look on a customers’ face when we hand them their mountain of mouthwatering nachos.

Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
A couple of years ago, I read a book called, “Girl, Wash Your Face” by Rachel Hollis. I read this right after we sold my husband’s catering business and we were trying to figure out what our next step would be- either keep the pop up tent we had and just work Friday-Sunday (due to permitting, we couldn’t just serve anywhere we wanted to), or invest into a food truck. I was confident that our business could thrive with whatever decision we made, but I was not confident in myself to make a huge decision like this; this was ultimately going to set the course of the next few years of our lives. I wanted to take the easy route and not take the risk for such a big investment. What I took from Rachel’s advice is- you have to take leaps to move forward. You have to follow through on your dreams, no matter how big or small, and if you make a mistake- you learn from it and and move on. I was so consumed with feeling like I was unable to make a decision like this. I had to keep reminding myself that if this decision went poorly, I would be okay and I would still be able to progress in my life- learning from whatever mistake I made.

Rachel Hollis is a motivational speaker who empowers women to become the best version of themselves. She stresses the importance of not fitting the role of what is expected of us, and to say our dreams out loud and achieve them. She explains that if all women lived out their dreams and didn’t succumb to societal pressure to fit a role, that the world would completely change. I agree.

Needless to say- we bit the bullet; I crossed my fingers (and toes & eyes), and ran with confidence to this new chapter in our lives with the food trailer. In this industry, it is important to pay attention to what people think of our products and what is trendy in the food scene, but it is also crucial to not get stuck in a rut completely consumed by everyone’s opinions and make them truth on what I am able to accomplish. In the end, it’s not going to matter what other people think, what’s going to matter is that I chased every dream I had. I am so glad I took this particular leap, and I really feel like Rachel Hollis’s mantras help reassure the confidence I had that was covered up by fear.

Pricing:

• Catering: $3-$12 per head, depending on the event size and food options selected.
• $6-$9 per serving to the public wherever you find us in San Diego; Festivals, markets, food truck meet ups, and so much more!

Contact Info:

• Website: thegnarlynachos.com
• Phone: 6193685200
• Email: bestnachosever@gmail.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/gnarlynachos
• Facebook: facebook.com/gnarlynachos

Image Credit:
Brendon Keeley

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