Nom Eats food truck of Reno burns; community reaches out
Johnathan L. Wright
Nom Eats, a pioneer of vegan food trucks in Reno, burned the evening of Monday, June 10, with the cause yet to be determined.
Ian McIntosh owns the truck with sisters Robyn and Carly Gurinskas. Between outings, they park the truck at a home off West Ninth Street in Reno because their Sparks neighborhood does not allow commercial vehicle parking.
Around 6 p.m. June 10, McIntosh said he received a telephone call from one of the residents of the home, alerting him the truck was on fire (the resident, who was away, had been alerted moments earlier by neighbors who had seen the flames.)
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The Nom Eats owners arrived at the home before 6:30 p.m. McIntosh said Reno Fire Department was already on scene.
"Everything had been hosed down. The whole roof was melted. Most windows were melted or blown out from the heat. The right side of the truck and the front of the truck were pretty melted."
"Everything inside the truck that you could imagine catching fire had caught fire and was now black soot or goo."
McIntosh said fire department officials told him the fire could have been caused by cleaning rags damp with vegetable oil that spontaneously ignited in the truck interior on a hot day.
The community gets behind the truck
Nom Eats announced the fire on Facebook late on the night of June 10. In the subsequent hours, words of support and offers of assistance from Nom Eats fans and members of the food truck community filled the Facebook page and were conveyed to the owners of the truck, McIntosh said.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise $10,000; it had exceeded the goal as of this morning. McIntosh said he'd filed insurance claims this morning under the truck's event insurance and vehicle insurance. He said the owners had put at least $50,000 into the truck since they began working on Nom Eats in 2012.
The truck went mobile in October 2014 and, over the years, gained a reputation for dishes like vegan tacos anointed with crisp soy curls, vegan burritos stuffed with jackfruit, and vegan mac and cheese.
Another direction?
McIntosh said it's unlikely Nom Eats would return before the end of the summer, at best. Still, he said, "we're not the only vegan options. People should try other vegan food trucks."
In the meantime, McIntosh said he and the Gurinskas are considering temporary incarnations for Nom Eats — pop-up tents, perhaps — and awaiting decisions on their insurance claims.
"Nom Eats will exist in the food space. This business isn't over or anything like that," he said. "We just have to figure out how sound the truck is and go from there. It would be nice to maybe go in another direction because we've been doing this for five years."
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Johnathan L. Wright is the food and drink editor of RGJ Media, part of the USA Today Network. Join @RGJTaste on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
