Southern Oregon team competes on TV’s ‘The Great Food Truck Race’ 

Published 6:00 am Friday, August 1, 2025

Fat Kid Food Co. with roots in Rogue Valley is vying for Food Network’s $50,000 prize; premiere is Sunday, Aug. 3

A Southern Oregon-based business that began partly as a response to the COVID pandemic and a desire to feed customers food its founder calls “stoner-munchie, cheat day, hangover eats” has now earned a spot on the Food Network series, “The Great Food Truck Race.”

“We just stuck to what we know, and what we’re comfortable with,” Chaz McKenna, owner of the Fat Kid Food Co. food truck, said about appearing on Season 18 of the “The Great Food Truck Race,” which is subtitled, “Truckin’ Awesome.”

“The Great Food Truck Race,” which is hosted by Tyler Florence, brings together teams from food truck businesses around the country. Each season, the teams are challenged to drive food trucks along a route, making stops to cook and sell food to customers, trying to hold on until the end, and win the grand prize of $50,000.

The new season, which premieres Sunday, Aug. 3, begins with nine food truck teams, who start the competition in Savannah, Georgia. The episode, according to the Food Network, involves “a challenge from baseball’s funniest team the Savannah Bananas, followed by a first elimination with a shocking surprise.”

The Fat Kid Food Co. team consists of McKenna, Tristan Keroles, and Tristan “Milkshake” Compton, who joined McKenna for a phone interview, during which Compton explained that he got his “Milkshake” nickname after he accidentally dropped a milkshake that he had waited in line for an hour to get.

Though McKenna and Compton couldn’t reveal specifics about how their team fares on “The Great Food Truck Race,” McKenna said representatives from the show had originally reached out a few years ago, but it didn’t work out. “And then, they reached out again, and I was like, we’ve got to make this happen.”

Fat Kid Food Co. was the only team from the West Coast to compete in this season, in which the food trucks take a road trip up the Atlantic coast.

The Fat Kid Food Co. food truck came about when McKenna, whose food industry experience includes working as an executive chef, and opening a bar, got the idea to operate a food truck.

“And then the pandemic hit, and it was like, let’s make the truck happen,” McKenna recalled. With many restaurants forced to close, “We threw the truck” — an old Red Cross disaster relief vehicle — “together, and we never looked back. And that’s been my story for the past five years.”

McKenna has been joined in running the food truck by Compton, who came on about three years ago.

“I used to work at Dutch Bros,” Compton said. “I was a manager, and (McKenna) would always come by my shop, and I always just knew his drink, and he was always super-hyped that I knew his drink. He kept asking me to come work for him,” which Compton decided to do.

To assemble a three-person team for “The Great Food Truck Race,” McKenna was able to recruit Tristan Keroles, who works at Nama restaurant, in Ashland.

The three were living in Ashland when they filmed “The Great Food Truck Race,” but McKenna says the Fat Kid Food Co. truck regularly travels all around the region, appearing at pop-ups, and serving customers at the Britt Music & Arts Festival, in Jacksonville, among other events.

“Our menu changes every day,” McKenna said of the Fat Kid Food Co. truck cuisine. An early, popular item was a smash burger, back when “nobody was doing a smash burger, at least in Southern Oregon.” Other examples include a yakisoba noodle dish, Korean fried chicken sandwiches, short rib tacos, wood-fire pizza, a sushi-burrito mash-up, and other treats.

McKenna said that they want the food truck to welcome hungry customers “whether it’s cheat day, the munchies, hangover cure, late nights, when somebody’s off work.”

People may look at such food as, “Oh, it’s just a burger,” McKenna said. But it’s taken years to dial in what noodles or bread to use, what sauces to make, and so on. “There’s a lot of refinement behind it.”

Of their experience filming “The Great Food Truck Race,” both McKenna and Compton said they appreciated the connections they made with other teams, and people who worked on the show.

McKenna said it was helpful to hear from the other teams about their businesses. “We were all rolling together,” McKenna said. “We have connections that we made for life.”

“The Great Food Truck Race: Truckin’ Awesome” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 3, and streams the next day on HBO Max. Food Network shows also stream on Philo, which offers a free trial; and Fubo, which also offers a free trial.