Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.173 | feat. Nick Sanford from The Food Truck Battle

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Inside the Syracuse Food Truck Battle: 55+ Trucks, Live Music, and Wood-Fired Pizza with Nick Sanford Host Noah Chrysler interviews Nick Sanford, owner of Toss & Fire Pizza and head of the event committee for the Syracuse Food Truck Association, about the annual Food Truck Battle happening May 8–9 at the Great New York State Fair near Chevy Court. Nick says the event will feature over 55 food trucks offering $3–$5 samples and full menus, two days of live music (including Dangerous Type and Mayday Parade), an artisan village with 50+ vendors, a kids’ zone, games, craft beer, and wine slushies. Attendees can vote for favorite trucks while judges—including local media and the Syracuse Fire Department—award custom wrestler-style belts, including a uniqueness category. Nick shares advice for new food trucks to be visually appealing and unique, highlights items like a vodka cutlet sandwich and Colombian empanadas, and recounts building Toss & Fire from a trailer into multiple locations. He directs viewers to syrfoodtrucks.com for tickets and bookings, and Noah plugs Click Stream Studios’ free marketing plans and sponsor Ads on the Go. 00:00 Tomato Talk Cold Open 00:22 Meet Nick Sanford 00:39 Food Truck Battle Preview 01:41 How Judging Works 02:31 Championship Belts 02:53 Live Music Lineup 03:20 SFTA Origins and Booking 05:10 Food Truck Success Tips 06:06 Must Try Trucks and Samples 07:57 Picking a Winning Sample 09:03 How The Event Evolved 10:25 Chef Movie and Recap 11:42 Toss and Fire Origin Story 12:46 Learning Wood Fired Pizza 00:04 Tomato Varieties Deep Dive 14:08 Kitchen Culture and Service 16:36 Final Plug and Thanks 17:04 Show Outro and Sponsor

I obsessed about tomatoes and different toppings and all those kind of things. Teach me about tomatoes. There's a million of them. I want to know more. There's a million of them. So there's all kinds of different varieties of tomatoes. There's Italian tomatoes. There's California tomatoes.

There's different thicknesses and all of these crazy things. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler. And today I am with Nick. Nick, welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.

go ahead and introduce yourself. Who are you? Yes, so my name's Nick Sanford. I am the owner of Tossifyr Pizza, and I am the head of the event committee for the Syracuse Food Truck Association. Beautiful. I hear that there is a big event coming up for the Syracuse Food Truck Association this weekend on May 8th and 9th. There sure is. We've got our annual food truck battle happening this weekend, May 8th and 9th at the Great New York State Fair, all in and around Chevy Court. It's going to be an awesome weekend. Beautiful. What can people expect at that event? Everything. So we've got over 55 food trucks from across the state. We've got trucks coming from Buffalo, Ithaca, Utica, obviously Syracuse in the surrounding areas. They're all going to be doing low-cost samples plus their full menus. So you can get samples between three and five dollars

from every truck. We're going to have two days of awesome live music, a bunch of local bands, and then headline by May Day Parade on Saturday. We've got an artist in Village with over 50 handmade vendors and artists. We have a kid zone. We've got games. There's craft beer. There's wine slushies. The list goes on. Wonderful. Cool. That sounds very exciting. I've never been to the food truck battle. So I want to learn all about it. Wonderful. So you also told me that basically there's a winner that is crowned at the end of the battle. Yeah. So there are, you know, so it's a friendly competition, right? So all the trucks kind of put their best foot forward. They come up, you know, you'll see a lot of new menu item.

they might do it only for the food truck battle. We'll have like our spicy vodka pizza that we did at the fair this last year, so we're bringing that back up for the food truck battle. You know, there's going to be people can vote so you get little tabs where you can take off the tab, vote for your favorite truck. Then we have judges. We've got some like local media personalities. We've got the Syracuse Fire Department sends a crew that's part of the judging team.

It's a lot of fun. You know, you can help vote for your favorite truck. They win these really cool belts that we got made. And we have one for most unique as well. So there's a lot of cool stuff going on. Cool. Tell me about the belts. Where did you get those made?

That sounds sick. So we get these custom belts. They look like a wrestler belt would wear, right? From like the 90s. So you get to win one of these belts. We've been doing it. This is the sixth or seventh food truck battle. But we've been doing these belts every year.

And people would like display them on their trucks and stuff. And they win them. And, you know, it's really cool. No, that's sick. I also heard that there's live music. Yeah. Yeah. So two days of live music.

Friday's headline by Dangerous Type. We've got a bunch of other great local bands on Saturday. Jess Novak band's going to be there. And then we're headlining with May Day Parade. The full list of everything is on our website, on our Event Bright page, all that stuff, too. What is the website? S.YR Food Trucks.com. SYR Food Trucks.com.

This sounds sick as hell. That's really, really cool. You also mentioned that you've been in business for about 11 years. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Cool. When did the food truck, you know, thing come about? A couple years into that? Yeah. So the SFTA has actually been around the same amount of time as tossing fire.

So that started back in 2015, started doing like really small food truck events. We had these like little food truck rodeos. Our first one was on West Fayette Street. And then we were in Lynn Court. We were in Clinton Square for a year. We were doing all these kind of different things. We have a really big one at Great Northern Mall that's been going on for 60. years now, as well as Finger Lakes Mall. It's kind of grown from there. You know, we work with like different like corporations that will bring in food trucks for stuff and we help them schedule food trucks, get trucks in there. People who are looking to book a food truck for like a graduation or a wedding or any kind of special event, then go to SYR Food Trucks.com, fill out the book a truck form and that connects them with 60 locally owned food trucks from around the area. It's a great,

great way to get connected. Wonderful. And then and then do they like bid on the job like oh like you know reach out to you and like oh I have cupcakes so it depends on the event right so sometimes people are looking for very specific trucks you know they they want a truck that does hot dogs they want a barbecue truck they want you know whatever it is so sometimes you're looking for specific trucks they'll kind of put that in there sometimes they're just looking for food trucks right so they'll put that in there and then trucks will reach out they'll send them pricing and menu items and kind of how it works and everybody does it a little bit different so it really depends what you're looking for but it's a great way to connect with trucks it's an easy way to

connect with trucks for all kinds of events. That is very cool. I also like your guys name, the Syracuse Food Truck Association. It sounds like, you know, you guys all wear hoods. And I don't know. I think that's cool. It sounds like you're the Illuminati of food trucks. Something like that. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So tell me about, so I'm assuming that you're an expert as head of the SFTA. I'm assuming you're a food truck expert. What goes into, you know, a unique food truck experience? What, what tips do you have for somebody who might be buying a food truck for the first time in launching a food truck. Yeah, I mean, be different, right? So people ask me this all the time, especially as food trucks have grown over the last 10, 11 years in this area, you know,

they want to do something. And the first thing I tell them is make sure you're unique. Make sure you're not doing something that 10 other people are doing, like create something that is specific to you that people can get excited about. You know, our thing was wood fire pizza. We were fortunate enough to be the first truck doing wood fire pizza in central New York, at least at the time, I think there might have been somebody before us, you know, but doing something that's different to you and for your brand is huge. And it's, you know, that's the best advice I can give to people. Cool. At the Syracuse food truck battle here this weekend, are there going to be unique trucks? Are there any trucks that people should be on the lookout for? Like, that's super cool, that's super unique. Anything

that you can highlight? Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, there's almost 60 trucks there. You know, There's some really cool, unique stuff that people make kind of specialties. You can get everything from lobster rolls to different kinds of empanadas to barbecue, to obviously pizza. I mean, it's, there's, there's quite literally something for everybody. The full sample list is on our, on our website and on our social media. So like every truck has to pick one sample that they're going to put forward. The judges are going to taste that. And then people obviously are voting on whether that they think that's the best

sample they had or the best truck they had. So there's there's tons of unique stuff. I can't really pick one per se, but I would say that there's plenty of stuff. There's plenty of stuff that I know I'm going to try. I'm excited for it. What are you excited about? Maybe don't, maybe don't pick one. Maybe give me a list of a few, right? But I don't know. I saw Utica. It's a Utica thing is doing this awesome like vodka cutlet sandwich that sounds awesome. I love the, the, there's a new Colombian truck that's in the group this year that's doing like these Colombian empanadas that I'm super excited to try. I love traditional empanadas.

So I'm sure I'm going to love those too. There's I mean there's just so much. I can't even like you put me on the spot. No, I'm sorry Nick. I appreciate you play a ball though. That's great. Cool. If you were to if I'm a new food truck joining the SFTA, which again, I love.

I get my hood. I get a best. You guys have best. You have no uniforms. No uniforms. T-shirt. What do you get? No, I think I think like four of us have these T-shirts. Got it. Okay, cool. Well, I think you need some swag, dude, because I think that that's a cool thing.

There's stickers. You get stickers. Oh, sick. Okay, great. Okay, great. I've got my sticker on. And now I'm joining my first food truck event, right, to win the food truck battle. What would you recommend to these food truck owners and restaurant owners, right? What would, like, how do you pick that dish to be a sample? Anything that works really well for samples? Yeah, I mean, so you want it to be visually appealing. You want it to obviously to taste great, you know, and you want it to be different and unique, right? So one of our words is just uniqueness, right? It's so I think the truck that won the last couple of years with the unique thing was doing like these crazy drinks. And one time they put like cotton candy on it. Oh, cool. There's all these, all these like wild kind of things.

You know, I think those are the things that kind of get the judge's eye. Those are the things that obviously get the customer's eye. They're looking at this food and they're like, wow, that looks really awesome. People eat with their eyes first, right? So you want something to be visually appealing and to taste great. Cool. You've been doing this for this is the 11th year of food truck battle? Well, no, it's the sixth or seventh year of food truck battle.

Gotcha. Okay. Over those six, seven years, what have you learned each year? I'm assuming you did this event. You learned a bunch of things. then you change the event year to year, right? What have been those changes over the years and how is it better than it was with the beginning? Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously we as food truck owners, we go to festivals all the time, right?

We do these festivals. We see what works, what doesn't, what we would like to be different, what we think is awesome. So we like to think that food truck battle is kind of the best of all the festivals that we love in central New York, right? We have changed it every year. We started adding in national acts. This was four years ago, or three years ago was our first national, or three years ago was our first national act. And so that's been something that's been new and exciting that we've been doing the last

couple years that makes it a bigger event, that draws a whole other kind of set of customers that they love, everybody loves food, right? But like now they have this great music. That's a part of the event. So yeah, you know, it was like, I think, 20 trucks the first, the first time we did it. And now it's, it's about 60. Wow. So it's been growing.

We just kind of keep adding new features to it. We add new entertainment aspects to it. We, you know, we just try to make every year bigger and better than the last and do our thing. Beautiful. That's very cool. I got another question here. What do you think about the movie chef with John Fabro? I think it's awesome.

I actually watched it the year before I opened Tossing Fire. Really? And I don't know that I'll say like that's the only reason I did the business, but it definitely was an inspiration. Sure. It's also very not true the way they go and like set up in random places without permission. Like you can't do that anywhere. Right. But, you know, from a movie aspect, it was awesome.

Yeah, it was exciting. It was, it was cool to see. And, you know, I think that it's definitely inspired people to open food trucks across the country. And, you know, it's, it's. It was a cool movie. I'm a fan. Absolutely. Does anybody at the event this weekend make, like, Cubanos?

Doesn't he make Cubanos? I believe some vendors do, but I'm not 100% sure. That's exciting. Yeah. Or that, like pasta that he makes for Scarlet Johansson. Oh, yeah. I like that. That's a good.

Anyway, cool. Fantastic. Beautiful. So cool. So people can show up this weekend. There is food trucks. There's a competition. Samples, $3 to $5.

There is beer, wine, drinks. There is live music both days. Very cool. Wonderful. And there's giant belts that the food truck owners can win. Yeah, absolutely. Very cool.

Well, Nick, thank you so much. You owning your restaurant. Tell me about that. Tell me the story of that. Sure, yeah. So Toss Empire turned 11 years old last month. We started with a pull behind trailer, kind of going around, doing events, farmers markets, festivals, catering, wherever we could go.

We would set up in coffee shop parking lots and ice cream shops and, you know, whatever we could do, right? So just trying to get our name out there and making pizza and doing our thing. We had a little wood fire oven on a trailer and we would go and pop up and do all this different stuff. And it's kind of grown from there. You know, we needed a commissary kitchen. So that's kind of how our first restaurant came into place. We opened up in North Syracuse.

It would be 10 years this October. And yeah, it's been a wild, a wild journey. We now operate multiple locations in food trucks and, you know, have, it's been really, really cool being part of the Central New York community. Absolutely. Where did you learn to make Woodfire pizza? So funny enough, I worked in a pizza shop when I was a kid, but it was not Wood Fire Pizza.

I knew nothing about Wood Fire Pizza. I just knew that most of it. that mobile wood fire pizza trucks were like a big thing in Connecticut where I'm from originally. Oh, cool. And when I moved up here, there was nobody doing mobile wood fire pizza. So I was working like a corporate job with Panera bread. I was a manager of Panera bread. And I really just wanted to do my own thing and kind of get out of that.

And that's when I started looking into these mobile trucks. And then I like, I taught myself. So I was like, all right, well, I can make pizza. But how do I, you know, how to make wood fire pizza? And what are the different flowers that you use? And I obsessed about tomatoes and different toppings and all those, all those kind of things. Cool. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Teach me about tomatoes. There's a million of them. I want to know more. There's a million of them. So there's all kinds of different, different varieties of tomatoes. There's Italian tomatoes. There's California tomatoes. There's, you know, different thicknesses and all of these crazy things.

So I tried probably 12 different varieties at the time to, to figure out what I liked and what I didn't and like what kind of like had a little more acidity and like it was just like this whole this whole process but I've I've been a pizza nerd kind of my whole life like my first job ever was in a pizza shop I was 14 I got hired to bust tables and I walked into the kitchen and I describe it like I fell in love with the chaos of the kitchen like I there was something there's like some like magic about like seeing the hustle and bustle in a kitchen. Yeah, everybody's mad.

And I don't know. You have a bunch of like, you have a bunch of kind of ex-convicts that are making. All walks of life, right? You've got all of these personalities. You've got all of these different things. And like, I don't know, to me, it like felt like home immediately. I was like, this is, this is awesome. Like, I love this.

Like, I love the, you know, the guy who's been making pizza for 20 years and the, the kid who's just fresh out of culinary school. and, you know, all of these different skills and personalities and mindsets and, like, it's always just been my thing. I've always, I've always thought it was cool and I've always gotten a lot out of it. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think that that is a whole culture that I, I don't know, I started bartending a few years ago. And it was awesome. I learned all about, you know, restaurant service and, like, I was exposed to that culture for the first time.

And, you know, it really, like, solidifies you as a team, right? And that was a really cool, you know, it's kind of like you versus the public a little bit. But then, like, you know, when you're having a good night, it's like, you know, you're, there's something really to be learned about service, I think, that changes you as a person. So I think that's beautiful. I think everybody should have a service job at some point. Yeah. Like you should either either work front of the house or work back of the house or both, ideally, right? So I've done both over my, over my career in the restaurant industry.

I waited tables. I cooked in that same restaurant to be able to kind of feel what both sides feels like. It's a really powerful thing. Yeah, I love the industry. Honestly, it's been such an incredible journey to be in this industry for 24 years now. It's been awesome. Cool. Well, thank you very much for teaching me about tomatoes and for telling me more about your

story. seriously I appreciate it this event sounds awesome it seems like you like are very passionate about this and it seems like you guys really care and I love that Syracuse has a food truck association so thank you so much for building one that's sick and I I don't know I'm excited beautiful Nick cool one more time give the audience a plug here where can they go to find out more not just about this event but also they can hire food trucks from the Syracuse food truck association tell tell the people absolutely so s yr food trucks.com you're gonna see all of our different events like

our weekly food truck takeovers. We've got, you can book a food truck on there. And then obviously the biggest event of the year is the food truck battle, May 8th and 9th, great New York State Fair. You don't want to miss it. You can get your tickets online, slyr, food trucks.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for watching. My name is Noah Chrysler. This show is Good News, York. It is put on by Clickstream Studios. We just took over the old spaghetti warehouse location. And out of here, we do all sorts of different content marketing. If you are interested, one promotion that we are doing to launch Clickstream Studios is we are doing free marketing plans with local business owners. If you own a business, if you have a brand, if you have a podcast that you're trying to get off the ground, you can book some time with me if you go to call.

Clickstream Studios.com. I will sit with you. I'll learn about your business for about 45 minutes. I'll take those learnings. I'll go do a bunch of insane research on the internet and just like take a day and use my career as a marketer and all of my research. and I'll build you a marketing plan and give that to you for free. You can use that on your own or if you want to, you can do it and execute it with us and we can get you started. But yeah, it's just like a free thing that you can get by visiting call.clixtreamstudios.com.

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