Jace Krause and Ryan Lynch of Fried Egg I’m in Love food cart (photo: Behind the Food Carts)
Interview by Megan Cole
I first stumbled upon Portland’s Fried Egg I’m in Love a couple years ago when I was researching and writing an article on food carts. As a fan of The Cure and fried-egg sandwiches, it was hard not to be drawn in by the clever pun in their food cart name. After chatting with Jace Krause, one of Fried Egg I’m in Love’s owners, I wasn’t surprised to find out that he and his partner, Ryan Lynch, hadn’t just come up with a great concept for a food cart, which includes sandwiches named “Smells Like Protein Spirit,” “Built to Spill” and “OK Commuter,” they are also part of the Portland band Fort Union.
It’s been a while since we’ve talked, like three years, I think. What’s going on with the food cart now?
Has it really been that long? We must have been in our first year then. We’re still kickin’ and that’s good. We’ve got two carts now and we’re in the middle of summer, so things are good right now. Winters are always the hard part for food carts.
How are things going with food carts in Portland? Are they still as popular as they once were, or has it settled down a bit?
I think there are still a lot of people starting food carts. I think that’s not going to stop. Everyone has their own little dream sometimes, and I think they want to get a food cart and try it out. I definitely see food carts popping up everywhere. Some people don’t last very long and some people have a cool thing and it takes off. It’s definitely not an easy thing to do, but it can be fun. We have a lot of fun doing it, and we are three years into it now and it still doesn’t really feel like work.
What’s been the best part about owning a food cart like the one you guys have?
Probably the freedom to run things how we want, and we have employees now so we have some flexibility, and I don’t feel like I have to be there every day. I can have employees run it and they do a good job. The business is kind of flexible around my life, which is great, but the flip side of that is I still need to be sort of available. I’m not working today, which is nice, but I will probably be doing some office/admin work on my computer later. I have two kids now, too, so I’m just chasing the little buggers around. So the best part is that it’s flexible, but I do have to be available. I guess the other thing I like about it is that it combines a lot of my favourite things, like cooking, meeting new people and it’s sort of like working outside, too, because you’re pretty much out there; you’re not in an office building or anything. And every day is different. Yesterday I went to a business association meeting for the street we’re on,0 so I met a lot of people from our area that I’d never met before. We got to meet a lot of people who are in the same boat and we have similar goals, and then later that day I was back at the cart serving sandwiches.
The Fried Egg I’m in Love food cart (photo: Behind the Food Carts)
You and Ryan have been doing this together now for three years. How did you guys meet originally?
We met through a mutual friend, and Ryan was living in California and I was in Seattle. I was playing music in a band and we were touring down to California and we played a bunch of shows down there. One of the shows was with Ryan’s band. We played a show together and we hung out, and he seemed like a really cool guy. That was in about 2007. For the next couple of years we would go to California once or twice a year with my bands and we’d always run into him and hook up with him in the Bay Area. He started to come up to Seattle to visit; we saw each other a couple times a year and every time we saw each other we got to know each other a little bit more. In 2011, Ryan moved to Portland and we started working on a music project together remotely, and it was coming to a head. I thought it would be cool to be in Portland. The band I was in broke up, so I started a new project and he was more involved with that, so it made sense to move to Portland and be close to him, and I needed a change. My wife and I had also started a family, and we wanted to be close to family and there was more family in Oregon than Seattle.
And how did the food cart come about?
I had to figure out what to do with myself, so I had some rainy day money set aside and I started to put together these plans for a food cart. I wanted to design it so it would fit my life, where I could work during the day and have my evenings off to play music and be with my family. That’s why we do breakfast. Ryan was interested in what I was doing and decided to get involved. He matched me on funds, so we went 50/50 in it and he’s got a sales background so he would sit at the front of the cart by the window and talk to everyone that walked by on the sidewalk.
Are you and Ryan still doing music together as Fort Union?
Yeah, the first year we were here we started writing a lot of music together, and the second year things fizzled out with the people we were playing with and we’d already written all these songs. We didn’t do much the second year and I also had another baby in that time, but now both my kids are a bit more manageable and work is more manageable. I’ve been diving back into music and another friend moved down to Seattle that we’ve been playing music with, so there are three of us all working at the cart and playing music together, and we’ll hopefully be starting recording next month on a new record.
It seems like you’ve managed to blend your two passions together with the name of the cart, and the names of all the sandwiches.
I guess I’m kind of lucky in terms of the fact that I’ve managed to take what I love and turn it into a job for myself.
How did you come up with the name for the cart and the different sandwiche names?
For the cart, we came up with the name. I had a few different names in mind, and they were all going to have a theme. Originally, I was leaning towards this NPR-themed cart called All Eggs Considered, and all the sandwiches were going to be NPR personalities or reporters. I thought that idea would maybe do well, but at the last minute I decided to go with the Fried Egg I’m in Love idea, which was kind of the runnerup idea I had. It was just a bit more broad, fun and playful, and we could do a bit more with it. Then, from there, I was able to come up with all these great puns for sandwich names and it seemed to fit a little bit better.
And everyone loves a good pun.
Yeah. I pretty much had to start with the fact that I wanted to do breakfast, and then I came up with the general menu and the name was one of the last things I came up with. I had probably three or four ideas and concepts for the cart, and they were all breakfast. Then the Fried Egg I’m in Love one just stuck; it seemed like the right way to go.
Do you find a lot of people stop by the cart because of the great name and The Cure reference? Do you think it draws people who maybe haven’t heard of you before?
Yeah, and we’re kind of at the point now where people have heard of us, and we meet random people around town and I tell them what I do, and they say they’ve heard of our cart or have actually eaten there before and like it. We’re also on a street that’s pretty well visited by tourists, and they are often visiting Portland and will see our cart and will laugh and take a picture. Sometimes they will get a sandwich, but we are definitely one of the most photographed carts because of our name. It’s fun to see people stop and look at our cart and get a kick out of it.
How has food tourism affected business for food carts in Portland?
Portland just has so much great food and the stuff you hear about is barely scratching the surface. If you don’t live in Portland you hear about something online or in a magazine about Portland. It seems like the same places get mentioned all the time and I feel like it’s the same two or three food carts that get mentioned in all the magazines and blogs, and the same five to 10 restaurants get mentioned. We’ve had a few mentions, but I feel like we aren’t really up there as far as the food tourism thing. We probably get a little bit of it, but I would say we’re one of the hot carts to visit. We haven’t had a write up in a magazine in a while, so I think a lot of other carts are getting some of that. I think what we do isn’t too fancy. It’s pretty basic food. It’s just fried egg sandwiches. I think what makes us stand out is our concept and our name. I do think our food is really good, but the food tourism thing is geared towards foodies, I hate that word but we’ll go with it, and I think maybe our cart to foodies isn’t that special because there’s food in Portland that’s really pushing the envelope and adventurous, and are using ingredients you’ve never heard of. That stuff is great and it makes places stand out, but for us we know what our thing is, and we do these really good breakfast sandwiches and a fun concept, but we’re not reinventing the breakfast sandwich.
Fried Egg I’m In Love is located on SE Hawthorn Blvd. in Portland, Oregon.
Fort Union’s self-titled, self-released album is out now.
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