Newspaper Page Text
BUSINESS
CHAM I*JOM
April 28 - May 4, 2016 • Page 16A
Petite Auberge hits the road
by Kathy Mitchell
Petite Auberge Restaurant
has been a fixture in the Toco Hills
shopping complex for more than 40
years. Now fans of the restaurant’s
food can find it at fairs, festivals
and concerts around the metro-
Atlanta area. Brothers Michael and
Anthony Gropp, owners of Petite
Auberge, recently announced they
have acquired the Scratch Cuisine
Food Truck, formerly owned by
Matt Grigg.
Grigg worked at Petite Auberge
under the restaurant’s founder and
original chef Wolfgang Gropp
while studying at Le Cordon Bleu
College of Culinary Arts Atlanta.
“Matt and I worked together at
the restaurant and remained friends
over the years,” said Anthony
Gropp, who remains the head chef
at Petite Auberge. “He went on to
work with some of Atlanta’s top
chefs—people like Paul Albrecht
and Tom Colicchio before he
opened his own business, Scratch
Cuisine Food Truck.”
When Grigg decided to leave
Georgia, he approached the
Gropps about acquiring his truck.
“We were having dinner together
one night,” Anthony recalled, “and
I told him that if he ever wanted
to sell his business, we were
interested. Within a week, he
called and said he was ready to go
forward with the deal.”
Anthony said Petite Auberge
had been considering the possibility
of a food truck for a while and
he found the opportunity perfect
for its needs. “Scratch Cuisine
Food Truck had been in midtown
Atlanta throughout the week and
at festivals and concerts around
the metro Atlanta area for years.
It already had a following and a
reputation for excellent food.”
The food truck business has
changed dramatically in recent
decades, Anthony said. “Food
trucks have come a long way
from the lunch wagons that sold
coffee and pre-made sandwiches
to people at temporary work sites.
Today, many of them, and Scratch
is certainly an example, are mobile
restaurants capable of preparing
and serving fresh, high quality
food.” The name Scratch, he said,
was chosen to convey that food
is prepared on site from fresh
ingredients.
Under its new ownership,
Scratch will continue to offer freshly
made upscale food, some from
Petite Auberge’s menu “The great
thing about the food truck is that
we are not pigeonholed by the type
of food we can serve. We don’t
have to stick to one type of cuisine.
We can mix traditional food truck
offerings with many of the dishes
that put Petite Auberge on the map
for the last 42 years. Usually, we
have one or two of our signature
dishes. We recently visited a
festival where the attendance
was less than had been expected
because of the weather and we still
sold out of bread pudding.”
A combination of improved
technology and changes in dining
habits has turned food trucks into
a booming trend, according to
Anthony. “A food truck today can
prepare anything a restaurant
kitchen can. They are now more
energy efficient and everything from
food storage to the cooking itself
can be done with no more effort
than is required in a restaurant
kitchen. I was actually amazed the
first time I tried cooking in one.”
He added that Americans now
eat out more, but want variety
beyond hamburgers, hot dogs and
pizzas. “You see that everywhere.
Even sports stadiums these days
offer seafood, pasta—things you
were unlikely to find there 20 years
_ _ »
ago.
Petite Auberge acquired
Scratch late in 2015 and now, in
addition to the midtown location,
visits festivals, concerts and
community events throughout metro
Atlanta nearly every weekend. It
is, for example, scheduled to be at
the Atlanta Food Truck and Music
Festival at Stone Mountain June
11-12.
“Right now, during the warm
months, there are outdoor events
every weekend. That will slow down
during the winter and we’ll focus
on catering. A lot of movie and
television production companies
shoot in this area and we expect
to get a lot of business from them,”
Anthony said.
Petite Auberge has for years
had a catering service and the
food truck, the owners say, is a
natural evolution. Calling the food
truck “a fun, interesting and new
way” to bring the restaurant’s
food to customers, Anthony said
there are still some differences
between catering and food truck
operations, but overlap between
the two is increasing. Catering
usually involves delivering food
prepared at the restaurant to an
event, but the food truck’s mobile
kitchen opens up new possibilities,
he commented. “We’re talking with
some of our long-term customers
about what can be done,” he said.
The food truck, he said, takes
catering to the next level. “We can
cook items fresh on the spot and
expose a whole new market to our
classic Petite Auberge dishes.”