Grab ‘N Growl and Cookin’ from the Hart are living out their dreams and shaking it up with their homestyle menus including mac and cheese, pot pie, chicken and waffles, tacos and quesadillas.

“My husband, Ryan, and I have always had a goal of owning and operating a business, ” Jessica Holmes, owner of Grab ‘N Growl, said.

“After COVID, we kind of kind of thought about having a restaurant, but said, ‘you know, it’s not going to be likely to succeed in case COVID would ever happen again,’ Jessica said. “We tossed around the idea of getting a food truck, and then by chance in April of 2022, we found one for sale in the Sunbury area, and on a whim, ended up purchasing it.”

“Our name is what I always said to our children when dinner was ready. Instead of something like, ‘it’s time to eat,’ I would always say, ‘okay kids, it’s time to grab n growl,'” she said.

“It’s special to us and our family,” Jessica said. “Our logo is our beloved fur baby, Maci, she’s now 14 and has always been our favorite taste tester.”

Unfortunately for the couple, moving forward was not smooth sailing.

“Our first event was Sept. 11, 2022, but then our food truck was in an accident in January 2023 that totaled the truck,” Jessica said.

Luckily no one was hurt in the accident, and it in fact paved the way for Grab ‘N Growl to expand.

“We have a food trailer now, which was custom built by Remux Food Trailers, out of San Antonio, Texas,” she added.

Grab ‘N Growl offers a variety of menu options, some with a spin that only they offer.

“We do specialty quesadillas, and, with help of a friend, we coined the term ‘grabadilla,’ to play off of our name, and quesadilla,” Jessica said. “Our most popular quesadilla is pulled pork and macaroni and cheese, with a side of barbecue sauce to dip.”

“It happened by chance,” Jessica says of the item’s creation. “Our friend, Orlando, who owns The Empanada Shack was like ‘just throw me something together.’ So my husband made him a pulled pork and macaroni and cheese quesadilla. It was the first one, and was such a hit that we decided to just switch our menu to all specialty quesadillas.”

As to how the truck turned to specialty quesadillas, it was a mix of the reaction to their first one, as well as a money and food saving decision.

“We’re not fond of bread because it doesn’t last as long, and gets hard or gets moldy. We were throwing away a lot of bread products, so we wanted to really focus on maximizing what we have, food-wise and lessening our waste,” Jessica said.

With the holiday season right around the corner, Grab ‘N Growl is looking to spice things up with desserts.

“We just started to roll out dessert quesadillas, so we are looking to change the dessert menu items, depending on the seasons,” Jessica said. “We’ve started with just your basic s’mores type quesadilla.”

Additionally, they have a deconstructed pumpkin roll and caramel apple quesadillas for the fall season.

“We did a poll at Rich Port Adventure Company, for the dessert quesadillas, so the individuals could vote on which one was their favorite, to kind of get the crowd and our patrons involved,” Jessica said.

The couple has no plans of slowing down when the snow begins to fall.

“We are scheduling things into the winter months. We have made contacts with local businesses to set up and provide lunch to them. So I’m hoping that will continue throughout the winter months,” she added. “We provide good, wholesome food that fills you up. You’re getting a whole meal in a quesadilla. We’re kind of reinventing the wheel as far as when you hear ‘quesadilla.'”

For more information, and to find out where Grab ‘N Growl will be next, shoot them an email at grabngrowlfood@gmail.com or check out their Facebook page.

Cookin’ From The Hart is well known in the Sunbury area, but has set their sights on bringing their home cooked meals on the go to the Williamsport area.

“We’ve been in business since 2020,” said Michelle Hart, who owns and operates the food truck. “I always thought about having a restaurant, and my husband, Don, had one before we were together, but that really wasn’t his thing, so we decided we would look into doing a food truck.”

Similarly to Grab ‘N Growl, Hart also began searching for food trucks on sale and happened to run into someone via Facebook Marketplace who had a Brazilian food truck.”

“We bought it and revamped it to make it look like it does now,” Hart said. “She was just really sweet.”

“I didn’t have a lot of food service history,” Hart said. “I was a waitress when I was younger, but as far as this kind of thing, not really any experience, so she really helped us a lot getting started.”

In fact, the food service industry is worlds away from Hart’s previous career.

“I was a nurse when we first started doing this,” Hart said. “Then the next year I quit, and we started doing this full-time.”

The career change may have been big, but Hart says it was definitely the right one.

“I love it because we can go different places,” she said. “We could be in Sunbury one day, then we could be up here in Williamsport, another day. You get to meet a lot of fun people, and it’s not stressful, because people are just out having fun.”

The Harts dipped their toes in the water with the food truck to find their footing.

“We started going to the Muncy prison for employee lunches once a month. It was nice starting out slower, rather than jumping into a fair or something where it’s really busy,” Hart said. “Having the positive feedback from them just kind of made me feel more confident about going out into the world so to speak, and presenting our product.”

And, it’s not just Michelle and Don that are involved, as their son has also chipped in his time.

“My son, Christian, developed our website,” Hart said. “He went to school for computer science and he actually did ours as kind of an experiment, because he was just learning how to do it.”

Cookin’ From The Hart may sound like a play on words, but one look at the menu, and it becomes obvious that their focus is on good old fashioned home cooking.

“I just wanted to do something that was more like your kitchen, like you’re going home to mom or to grandma’s,” Hart said.

“It started with the chicken pot pie, but it’s not like an actual pie with the meat inside of it and the veggies, we do it as a soup,” she added. “In the fall and spring when it’s a little cooler, that’s probably my number one.”

Hart added that the truck’s taco menu and chicken and waffles are also big sellers.

“We don’t have a menu that’s the same all the time. It changes depending on where we are and what requests we might have when we’re setting up,” she said.

When asked what makes Cookin’ From The Hart stand out in a crowded field of food trucks, Hart returns to the theme of their food.

“I would say it’s our family atmosphere. We pride ourselves on serving homestyle food, keeping a clean ‘kitchen,’ and serving in a timely fashion, along with a smiling face,” Hart said.

“I have always enjoyed cooking and getting to see the pleasure of the people enjoying what I was serving, whether it was family dinners that took hours to prepare, grilling for friendly gatherings, or just a late night snack,” she said. “It has always been and will continue to be, cooked (and served) from our ‘Harts.'”

To find where Cookin’ From The Hart will be next, please visit their Facebook page or www.cookinfromthehart.com.