Best Spuds Is a New Food Truck Serving Fresh Fries and Good Vibes

“I’ve always loved cooking. It’s been a huge passion of mine since I was little, and owning a restaurant was always one of my pipe dreams,” says Zack Snyder, who launched the Best Spuds food truck last month with his wife, Jenny, and friend Josh Urdiales.

All three were born and raised in Denver. Snyder actually met his now-wife in middle school (though they didn’t start dating until later), and Urdiales was his college roommate. “The three of us have just been a tripod ever since,” Snyder says.

“After we graduated, Josh and I ended up working at the same place together. We worked there for probably four years, and just had one of those everyday conversations about, how do we leave this place?” Snyder recalls. “A restaurant seemed like a long shot, so we settled on a food truck and came up with the idea to do French fries because potatoes are cheap and people love fries,” says Snyder.

The three, none of whom have restaurant experience, “threw the idea around for a while,” Snyder says. Then one day, “my wife sent a link for a key chain off Etsy. It was two halves of a potato that came together, and it said “Best Spuds.” That was kind of the ‘aha’ moment.”

As the team began seriously developing the idea, they wanted to test recipes, but they didn’t have a key piece of equipment: a fryer. They began searching Facebook marketplace and happened to find a deep fryer available nearby – for free. “We picked it up, came back and started hand-cutting potatoes and trying all kinds of different stuff,” Snyder says. “Eventually, we had some people over to try it, and everyone’s like, ‘This is awesome. You guys have to do something with this.'”

With that encouragement, they immediately began searching for a food truck. Initially, the team worked with a local builder, but after being ripped off and losing a significant amount of cash in the process, they had to start over from scratch. After about a year and a half, they recouped their funding and found a business in Texas that offers food trailers on a rent-to-own basis. “It was a wild 36 hours, but, yeah, we got it back here, and that’s kind of all she wrote,” Snyder says. “We’ve been up and running since.”

The best buds officially launched Best Spuds on September 5 at Chain Reaction Brewery. “We finished service and closed up the window. We all kind of just stood there and looked at each other like, this was pretty cool. Like, we actually did it. Our dreams came to fruition and we’re actually standing here doing it,” Snyder remembers. 

The truck offers nine types of savory fries and two sweet options built on sweet-potato fries. Snyder’s favorite is the  Buffalo Blues. “It’s our fresh-cut fries with our own hand-breaded chicken tenders topped with housemade ranch, hot sauce and blue cheese crumbles,” he says. “If you like blue cheese, they’re phenomenal.”

His wife’s go-to is the Mmm Elote, which are smothered in housemade queso blanco and topped with fire-roasted corn that’s mixed with crema, mayonnaise, lime juice and chili powder.

Along with the set menu, “we always like to have a special on Fridays,” Snyder says, like the Porker – fries topped with homemade smoked pulled pork, barbecue sauce and crispy onion strings.

The truck’s motto is “Fresh Fries, Good Vibes.” “We want everybody to have a good time,” Snyder notes. “We want it to be a good, genuine interaction with people. But we also do a lot of stuff with charities, and we work with a lot of local schools.” The goal is to support a different organization or campaign every month; in November, Best Spuds will give customers that bring a Coats for Colorado donation $1 off their order.

To find the full schedule for Best Spuds, visit bestspudsfoodtruck.com.