A Big Career Change Led to This New Food Truck Serving Made-to-Order Crêpes

Before launching the Crêpes de Soissons food truck in April, owner Adam Soisson had never cooked professionally. After interning with a company in Fort Collins before his senior year of college at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, he “just fell in love with Colorado,” he says. “I enjoy the mountains a lot more than the cornfields.”

So when he graduated in 2016, he moved to the state and took a corporate marketing job with Dish in Englewood before moving on to work in various nonprofits.

Eventually, he landed a role at an organization focused on combating child abuse where he served as a victim advocate, “It was just really wearing on me,” he recalls. “Having to deal with the subject on a daily basis was difficult. … A lot of it was talking to survivors and taking down their experience. I had to write transcripts for this podcast, and so I had to write word for word people describing their abuse in graphic detail.”

In January 2022, Soisson reached his breaking point. “My wife had, for years, been like, ‘You should just start your own business, like start a food business and do something that you really love,'” he says. “I really do love to cook, and I just started making crêpes on the weekends for my wife, and I’d make a little tiny one for our dog, Winston.”

Last year, he decided to make the leap to farmers’ markets, selling crêpes as a sort of proof of concept/staging ground in order to determine whether it was worth investing time and money into. “I did it with my wife, and she took the orders,” he says of his first time at the market. “It just didn’t go well. I thought she was going to follow me home, but she went to a bar with her friends instead. … That probably saved our marriage,” he jokes.

After that, she no longer thought the crêpe business was a good idea. “But nevertheless, I persevered,” Soisson quips.

As the farmers’ market season drew to a close last October, Soisson made the decision to go all in, with support from his wife, and began looking for a food truck. “I ended up finding one in El Paso, right before Thanksgiving. So I drove down there with my wife’s father and we picked up this thing, and when I say that we dragged it back here, we really dragged it back here,” he recalls. “Turned out both axles were broken, the taillights weren’t working, it kept blowing fuses, and I think we were getting like four miles to the gallon.”

While he had the truck, he still needed to get it properly licensed. Despite the fact that his wife works in the City and County of Denver’s Excise & Licenses department and offered a lot of support, the process took nearly six months. But despite the delays, Crêpes de Soissons hit the streets on April 1.

Its name is an homage to Soisson’s heritage. “There’s a small town outside of Paris called Soissons. My family is from that region, and that is where our family name came from. … We got to visit there on our honeymoon. It’s just a small farming community, but it’s a really pretty place,” he says.

Soisson’s approach to making crêpes is inspired by his time in France. “One thing I realized when I was in Paris is that some of the places we would go to there were smaller shacks, and they would always make the crêpes fresh,” he says. “It was so much better than the places that just had a pile of already-made crêpes, so I have been adamant about making everything as fresh as possible.”

His personal favorite is one of the savory options, the sausage and Brie, dubbed the Saucisson. “I really love it. It’s a nice melted Brie that goes really well with this sort of mildly spicy sausage,” he says. On the sweet side, he adds, “I really love strawberry and cookie butter,” aka Nutella, a combination that he calls the Champs-Élysées.

In addition to his two favorites, the menu include seven other staples, which range from classics like ham and Gruyère or banana and Nutella to less traditional options like pizza with marinara, mozzarella and a choice of ham, pepperoni or sausage; and vegan meat and cheese, all priced from $7 to $11. Any crêpe can also be made gluten-free for an additional $2.

Crêpes de Soissons serves up specials from time to time, as well. “I’ve done some collabs with places where I’ve been working,” Soisson says. At Mile High Spirits, for example, he did a bourbon-braised pulled pork.

To find the truck’s schedule, visit crepesdenver.co or follow it on Instagram @crepesdenver.