Check us out!

MAGnolia Journal

WHEN ABBY RHODES PRESENTS A CUSTOMER with a grilled cheese sandwich—whether a two-cheddar classic on sourdough bread or a sandwich bread with bacon jam or guacamole—they’re getting much more than a mighty fine meal. They’re also part of the ridiculously charming story of how that sandwich—and the food truck that produces it, Cheddar Box—came to be. And Rhodes can only marvel at how the whole story has unfolded.

“There are two things I said I would never do in my life, and I’ve done them both,” Rhodes says. After 9/11, Rhodes said she’d never move to Iraq. Then she did—she taught English for a nonprofit organization there several years ago. And the other thing she said she’s never do was open a food business. “And here I am,” she sys with a laugh. 

One could say that she has been prepping for this role—nay, this calling—since she was a kid. “At age 10, I wanted to pretend to run my own business,” instead of playing with dolls, she says. When she hit her teen years, she actually did operate a couple of one-person shops—as a babysitter and car detailed—which she marketed with flyers mailed to families she knew. And in college she sold about $2,000 worth of her own handmade jewelry and seemed to be on an arrow-shot trajectory to business school and an MBA.

Well, except that “I was insecure about whether I’d be good at business,” Rhodes says. “And my parents always advised me to do what makes sense, to have job security—and there’s wisdom in that. They wanted to be sure i had a job and wasn’t struggling. It just so happened that I loved communication and I loved people, so I went into speech pathology in college.”

But from the get-go it was clear that Rhodes had a gift not only for entrepreneurship but also for hospitality.

She was always the go-to gal for planning parties (birthday, engagement, holiday, what-have-you), “and food is always a really big part of the event,” she says. “I’m not a great cook, but I know how to pair things well. I happen to know that tastes good, and other people seem to agree. I can’t tell you. Ow many times people. Have told me over the years that I should be in the food business.”

But she was not in the food business—she’d vowed never to be, remember?—and instead spent dearly a decade as a speech therapist at a Waco, Texas clinic.

Right around her 30th birthday, in 2013, Rhodes sensed a shift in her soul. Random idea after seemingly random idea popped up, all pointing in the same (seemingly random) direction: crafting grilled cheese sandwiches as a business venture.

For example, Rhodes remembers hearing about a food truck in another city that serves gourmet grilled cheese, and her interest was piqued. She filed that tidbit away in her brain. And then one day while driving around town, the name Cheddar Box popped in mind. “That sounds like a grilled cheese sandwich,” she remembers thinking to herself, “because a sandwich is square, and it’s like a ‘cheddar box.’

Rhodes barley hesitated. “Then I went and talked with my bosses at the clinic,” she says. “They were like, ‘Abby, we love you. We support you. There’s no way you’re not doing this. Whatever we can do to help you, let us know.”

Rhodes quit her job, bought a food truck, renovated it, closed on a house purchase, and launched Cheddar Box at the Silos grand opening—all within two whirlwind months. “The timing was ridiculous,” she says, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It just lined up exactly.”

For two years now, Rhodes and the Cheddar Box team have served a streamlined but sublime menu of cheese sandwiches and mac ‘n cheese, all cooked to hot, melty perfection on the truck’s flat-top grill.

Five sandwiches (including one that’s on the sweet side) and three flavors of macaroni round out the options, and customers can even opt for gluten-free bread or vegan cheese. Many of the products are sourced locally.

“I love to refer to Waco as ‘a small town with big ideas,’” Rhodes says. “It’s a great place to start businesses, and we have a lot of them. I feel passionately about showcasing and supporting them, as well as giving people a more holistic taste of Waco. I like to really live and experience where you are.”

She also feels strongly that she’s “called to make money to give money.” It’s an axiom she inherited from her grandmother. Rhodes is learning what that saying means for the owner of a business that went form selling 5,000 items in its first year to 100,000 items in its second.

“I thought it meant giving money to the poor or to a friend in need,” she says. “But now I see that it also means giving people jobs, paying them what they’re worth, and donating to nonprofits. Recently, I’ve also realized that when we sell a sandwich, that money goes to a local vendor too—now our cheese supplier and bakers have money to pay for their needs. It’s really cool to see how everything is connected.”

CEDAR GANDY

Baylor Magazine

More, Cheese

Together, Waco and Baylor have created an environment that embraces businesses born inside the city limits. Support for those businesses does not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Omari Head, M.Div. ’12, who founded Head Hospitality Properties LLC along with his wife Abby, describes Waco as a “small town with big ideas.” Their company mirrors the beginnings of restaurant groups that now dominate food scenes in Houston, Dallas and Austin. The Heads offer three concepts to the Waco community.

Cheddar Box, a grilled-cheese food truck, is a Waco fixture thanks to the combination of artisanal cheeses and epicurean ingredients, crafting a “basic” grilled cheese that is anything but basic. For example: “The Boss” adds basil and bacon, elevating a meal that many associate with adolescence to five-star status.

Similar creative combinations exist at Mac House, a quaint drive-up on Franklin Avenue that is home to the “Mr. T,” a rosemary, gouda and white cheddar spin on elbow macaroni in sauce.

Conversely, Pop’s Lemonade is straightforward and simple, but it is no less impressive. The base recipe was derived and modified from Omari’s father’s original recipe. Whether it is the addition of strawberries, pineapple and coconut, or blackberries and mint, Pop’s Lemonade has become a summertime hallmark in Baylor circles.

Head Hospitality’s expressions quickly became favorites with Baylor and Waco audiences. This hardly came as a surprise to Omari, who believes that Waco and Baylor love their own, creating a good incubator for new ideas.

“We’ll see more and more local businesses,” Omari says. “And current local businesses will have the opportunity to expand and do more because they are from Waco.”

Abby agrees that the sustained local support of new culinary endeavors will power perpetual expansion of Waco’s food scene as Baylor and the city continue to grow.

“We’re going to see a more creative food scene,” Abby says. “People are getting more creative. If you go to the East Coast or West Coast, they’re doing different things that we’re not doing yet. It’s paving the way for new ideas for people to be more and more adventurous.”

Waco is well on the way towards distinguishing itself as more than the stop for fast food and convenience-store snacks between Dallas and Austin it was years ago. These Baylor alumni-owned businesses are a vital part of that transformation, adding their unique flavor to the emerging Waco food scene.

Click HERE for the full story.

ESPN

Our time: Baylor Basketball