Brittany MisencikPensacola News Journal
The owners of the Pensacola fan-favorite What the Cluck Chicken Truck have spent almost two years proving to the Pensacola area that they can cook home-cooked chicken, and they can cook it well.
With a new second trailer, What the Cluck Ever, the owners are set out to prove that chicken is only the beginning.
Third-pound burgers, ribs, Cubano sandwiches, New Orleans debris, crab leg seafood boils and pork belly BLTs are all on the table for their new venture, What the Cluck Ever.
"With the trailer, now we can get our food to the masses and show our versatility," What the Cluck co-owner Jermel Humble said. "Chicken was just the first concept, but that's not all we are."
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Unlike What the Cluck Chicken Truck, which is permanently stationed outside East Hill’s Wisteria Tavern, What the Cluck Ever be out on the streets at community events, the same way co-owners Humble and Demetrius Perry built their following in their early days.
“We probably spent 12 hours a day for a 2-hour job,” Humble said of What the Cluck’s early days. “We just had to grind.”
What started as a pandemic-prompted job shift has become their full-time career. The longtime friends built the business from the ground-up, from the refurbished food truck to their delectable fried chicken recipe.
“The idea came up in 2020 during the pandemic,” Humble said of a starting the food truck. “A lot of people were out of jobs, and I worked through the whole pandemic, but my brother (Perry) wound up not being able to work and he came up with the idea, he was like ‘I think we should start a food truck. You in?”
“I was like, ‘Of course I’m down, that sounds like a plan right there,’” Humble said.
They remember back when it was just the two of them setting up at any business or neighborhood they could get into to serve lunch, resetting, then doing it all again for dinner.
“We knew we were going to do fried chicken; we knew we wanted the best chicken this side of the Mississippi,” Humble said. “So, we started working on recipes and stuff like that and figuring out what we’re going to do with the chicken to make it the best and came up with some stuff, did some taste tests, and we found a winner.”
They started out with three or four menu items before growing into the menu they have now, which they brand as “decadent Southern food” featuring wings with over a dozen sauces, juicy collard greens, 2- or 3-piece chicken meals and sandwiches like the fan-favorite “Clucking Club” featuring grilled or fried chicken thigh topped with rich Havarti cheese, crispy bacon, creamy “What the Cluck” sauce and fried green tomato.
The owners have fun with their name, naming sandwiches like “The Dirty Bird” made with “Holy Cluck” and “What the Cluck” sauces and the “Cluck it Up” option to add a drink and a side for $3.50.
The two came up with the business name as a joke at first but saw how well their family and friends responded to it and had to keep it.
Finding a fixed spot at the Wisteria grew their business in new ways, eventually leading to their ability to add the new trailer. The constant business allowed them to dive into the community headfirst, through hosting events like their annual hot wing challenge coming back on July 29 at the Wisteria Tavern. Last year's winner, Martin Zomerschoe, will be making a return to defend his title.
"We gotta go up on the heat, make it a little harder on him. He (Zomerschoe) ate them easy. Everybody else was suffering and he ate them easy," Humble said.
Now, as an established favorite, the two began thinking of new items they wanted to bring without distracting from the original mission of the truck, which was to bring good, quality chicken to Pensacola. Doing so, they established an easily recognizable brand. But they felt limited in how far they could expand beyond the chicken theme.
“We have to stick to this concept — there’s a big old chicken on the side of the truck,” Humble said. “We can’t go doing ribs and stuff like that.”
Perry added, “We came up with the concept (for the second food truck) after thinking, 'What the cluck are we gonna do next?’ And it was ‘What the Cluck Ever.’ There, we can do everything. That’s the next concept, we can show them we can do more than just chicken."
Follow the What the Cluck Chicken Truck Facebook page for more information.
