What goes better with cheesecake than poke bowls? For the Lundie family of six, it’s an unusual pairing that just makes sense. Enough sense to open a food truck offering up the sweet and savory dishes, along with a rotating cast of other menu items ranging from loaded macaroni and cheese to stuffed potatoes to gourmet brownies, depending on the day.
Kelly and Patrick Lundie opened the Wild Child Food Truck in 2021, originally as a bakery truck, and now a food truck that also offers catering. With a goal of creating a new flavor of cheesecake each week, Kelly has baked over 235 flavors of cheesecake since opening in 2021, with flavors ranging from brownie berry to tiramisu to jalapeño pepper.
Right now, the family-run food truck can be found most often at Beargrass Gift & Drug in Columbia Falls on Thursdays, the U.S. Chef Store in Kalispell on Fridays, and Lowe’s Home Improvement in Kalispell on Sundays. The Lundies also offer catering and hope to open a second truck in the spring. In the summer, the truck can be found at the Columbia Falls Farmers Market on Thursdays.
Flathead Living sat down with Kelly to discuss the food truck’s origins, what it’s like operating a family owned business, and the creativity behind the food selections and cheesecake flavors. The following interview excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.
FLATHEAD LIVING: How did the Wild Child Food Truck come to be?
KELLY LUNDIE: I’ve been baking my entire life. I learned from my mom and my grandma. My husband used to be a nurse and so I was always baking for his coworkers, and they kept saying, ‘you should open something, you should open something.’ Then post-covid, he wanted to be done with the medical field, and I wanted to be able to work around my kid’s schedule. We started doing this on the side and then next thing we knew, we do this full time now.
FL: What has that journey been like?
KL: It’s been very chaotic. We like to laugh that we choose which eight days a week we want to work. My kids work for us and to see them come out of their shell and learn customer service skills and how to run a business and see how hard we work has been really great for our family.
We have a full-time employee now. I used to coach volleyball; she’s one of my past players and we’re looking to hire one of my other players this summer. Being able to employ the youth and train them in the proper way to run a business has been really great for us.
Also, I mean, we love our desserts. We love to eat our food. Even on our days off, I still come on to the truck and get a poke bowl when Patrick’s working because I still crave it. We love sharing it with other people.
FL: What inspired the pairing of cheesecake and poke bowls?
KL: We started as a bakery truck only. We wanted to build a kitchen on our property for cheesecake because we couldn’t find any fresh made cheesecake out here. When I called the county health department they said, ‘well, you can’t have a kitchen on your property, but you can have a food truck.’ Our intention was to buy the food truck and bake in it, just cheesecakes.
But then we started taking it out and we loved the interaction with the community and becoming friends with our customers, so we just decided we’re going to keep taking it out. Then we wanted to expand our menu.
We make poke bowls at home all the time. But it is a lot to cut up all the veggies just to have it one time. My husband was like, ‘if you’re cutting all this anyways, why don’t we just put it on a food truck and then you can have it every day of the week?’ So that’s what we did.
FL: Do you have any favorites right now?
KL: Cheesecake is definitely anything lemon. We eat poke bowls probably five days a week. Our teenagers love the Wild Mac.
We always are trying to come up with something new. For our first cake this year we made a jalapeño pepper cheesecake. It sold out every time. It wasn’t my favorite, but it’s one of those things. If you love cheesecake and you want it more savory, it was just something different.
We constantly want to push our boundaries and keep giving. We know our truck’s not the cheapest. We know we’re kind of pricey. We want to make sure that you’re getting what you pay for and an experience, not just a dessert you can get anywhere, but something you want to tell other people about.
FL: Tell me a little bit about your family.
KL: We have a 16 year old that works for us. Our 12 year old works for us. And we have an 8 year old. Those are my three boys. Then we had our surprise little girl who we named Wild Child after because she is the wild child. She’s 5.
FL: What’s your favorite part about the food truck?
KL: My favorite part is seeing people enjoy what we’ve created or tasted for the first time or just seeing the happiness that it brings other people to get dessert. Dessert especially is such an indulgence, right? You don’t have it every meal. When you get it and you’re thrilled with it, that’s really rewarding to see that other people are enjoying it as much as we do.
FL: How was the transition for you from going to baking for family and friends to the truck?
KL: It’s a lot. The dishes are a lot, and keeping up in the summer gets a little rough. It’s nonstop. We put the kids to bed, and then we go out and bake. Sometimes we’re baking until 2:30 a.m., 3 a.m. in the morning to get it all done. But we’re fine tuning it five years in. Sometimes we think we had a slow day and then we realize, no, we’ve just gotten better at what we do.
One of my biggest accomplishments is my dad. When we said we were going to open this, my dad thought that was insane, and that was never going to work out, and he was never going to eat raw fish from a food truck in his life. Now, my dad is one of our biggest customers. He looks for us whenever we are out to come get a poke bowl.
To find out where Wild Child Food Truck is or see what’s on the menu today, visit their website online at wildchildfoodtruck.com or call (406) 885-2088.