Hutzell: Maryland food trucks launch onto the Chesapeake Bay this summer

Thousands of food trucks roam Maryland, turning up in parking lots and at festival grounds, private parties and popular meetups as a sort of motorized smorgasbord.

So, this had to happen eventually.

Food trucks are now going where few have dared before — out on the Chesapeake Bay.

“It’s like the whole aesthetic of the thing, right?” said Toby Denues, owner of Soggy Bunz. “Like they come up, they get our food, and then they’re blown away because our food is top quality.”

Denues and his wife, Ola, run the brightly colored pontoon boat, selling burgers, barbecue, chips and cold drinks in its maiden season.

“Food boats are huge on the Gulf Shore,” Denues said. “We loved the concept, and that’s how we came up with it.”

Why in boat-loving Maryland, where it can seem like all 160,000 licensed boats are out on the water any summer weekend, has no one tried this before?

They have. It just didn’t last.

Thirty-some years ago, Joe Lacher ran a pit beef stand from his 30-foot pontoon boat Beef Wave out of Bowleys Quarters. He served thousands every summer at Hart-Miller Island until shutting down.

Nauti Foods launched in 2014, selling hot dogs, drinks and treats for about five years on the Potomac River.

Mission BBQ, the region’s biggest purveyor of smoked meats, launched Sea Brisket in 2016. A refurbished Coast Guard RIB boat with a smoker on deck, it was more of a promotional effort.

So while there are cruise ships with kitchens, floating tiki bars and excursion boats that take you to waterfront restaurants, Soggy Bunz appears to be the only boat cooking food for sale in Maryland.

“We do between 70 and 100 burgers a day,” Denues said.

The Denueses have floated to popular raft-up spots like the Magothy River around Dobbins Island, and gone to Hart-Miller State Park. They’ve motored to floating concerts in Annapolis, and soon will cross the bay to a Kent Island vineyard.

“I only buy my meats from a high-quality butcher shop. I make my own seasonings. We make our own barbecue sauce,” Denues said. “So everything’s in-house.”

The bay’s weekend boating culture helps explain why floating food trucks aren’t everywhere. Boaters pack food and share it. Some can grill. And a business on a boat makes everything harder.

Brian Troupe learned that when he opened Troupe’s Treats last summer on the upper bay’s Bohemia River. Cecil County determined his ice cream boat needed a license once he expanded from a dockside cooler to an 11-foot jon boat with a trolling motor.

This summer he borrowed more than $25,000 from his guardian to buy a 13-foot Sea-Doo pontoon with 13.5 cubic feet of freezer space. That led him to the nearby Elk and Sassafras rivers.

Then Troupe grounded with the motor still running. Damage to his impeller cost $1,300. That was followed by a beach campground manager who was so angry about customers wading out to buy ice cream that the dispute landed in court.

“Once you hit the water, are on a boat, it is a way different type of business experience than anything else,” said Troupe, now 16. “You can be impacted by weather. You can be impacted by equipment.

“There’s all types of new factors that come into play.”

When Denues asked the Anne Arundel County Health Department about licensing a food boat, it was a new idea to them. There’s a snowball boat floating around Annapolis, but the county gave its owner a waiver from getting a license.

Officials steered the couple toward getting a trailer.

An Army veteran, Denues was working as a maintenance director for a regional bus company. What he really wanted was a job out on the water.

He and Ola, a nurse, saw food boats around his family’s home in Florida. But Maryland law doesn’t mention food boats, only regulations for “mobile food units.”

“All mobile units, whether a trailer, truck or boat, have to meet state law,” said Don Curtian, Anne Arundel environmental health director.

The Denueses quit their jobs and opened Soggy Bunz as a trailer last summer. They learned to cook, clean and operate on dry land.

When cold weather arrived, the couple discovered the major drawback of a seasonal business — no offseason income. They retreated to his family’s home. Converting a new boat was going to be hard — a $75,000 to $80,000 investment.

When Florida friends going through a divorce put their 25-foot food boat up for sale, the Denueses jumped. It was outfitted with a gas-fired cooktop, coolers and storage units.

Denues added a $10,000 fire-suppression system, operating lights, a vinyl wrap with Soggy Bunz graphics and a 150-horsepower outboard. After a rickety drive to Maryland, he invested in a new trailer.

“I’m surprised it even made it up here from Florida because it was falling apart,” Denues said.

With no extra safety requirements from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources or the Coast Guard, the couple set sail from their Pasadena driveway.

The job is a grind. The Denueses start early and finish late. They juggle the trailer — where Toby smokes brisket, pork and chicken while Ola prepares mashed potatoes and mac and cheese — and the boat.

Denues launches from his neighborhood boat ramp into the Magothy River, or trailers to a convenient ramp for events farther away. The couple ends the day cleaning and restocking.

The key to the boating food culture may be events where boaters learn to expect food boats. Or maybe the secret is a routine, patrolling the Sassafras or beaching at Hart-Miller.

In Cecil, Troupe sells 500 treats a weekend, generating about $2,000. He’s thinking about buying a second Sea-Doo.

“I can’t be at three places at once,” he said.

The Denueses are thinking about next steps, too. No bleak winter for them this year.

“We’re gonna winterize the trailer, shutting that down and locking it up,” Denues said aboard the Soggy Bunz. “Then we’re taking this down to Florida.”