When Kona Surento’s father started searching for a retirement job, he bought a mini donut machine from Lil’ Orbits and a food truck. He and Surento spent nine months repairing the truck and installing their machine, which took up one-third of the available space. After their venue was sold and the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they closed their mini donut business.
But Surento didn’t give up on the truck.
Now, the donuts are gone, but Love the Food Truck, located at 834 E. University Ave., has been serving customers organic, locally sourced meals for almost a year. For 42-year-old Surento, the process has been a learning experience.
“I just spent the first five months figuring out what is it that I want to be? Who am I trying to serve? What am I trying to do?” she said. “Twenty-five years in the service industry, and I didn't have any kitchen experience. I just love to cook, and I love to feed people.”
Because of her restaurant experience, serving food to customers came naturally to Surento. But the business side of owning Love the Food Truck has presented her with some challenges, like social media. Surento said she doesn’t naturally think to pick up her camera and film content for her business’ Instagram.
Working festivals like Big: Culture & Arts Festival are good for promoting her brand outside of social media, but she also struggles to find ways to make her product more affordable for the underserved communities she hopes to reach.
“I'm sacrificing the business side of things to provide what I'm trying to provide,” she said. “So now I'm kind of reeling it back to learn both. I'm trying to balance.”
Locally sourced, organic foods are the focus of Love the Food Truck’s menu, which Surento has changed it three times since the truck’s opening. Her priority is to provide customers with healthy dishes. When it came to creating the menu, it came down to following her intuition, she said.
“I didn't want to just go, ‘Oh, I can't change my menu again,’” she said. “Because yes, I have to, because I want to get it right.”
Love the Food Truck’s smoothies were a hit before any of its other menu items. They are made with coconut water for added electrolytes, as well as other ingredients like spirulina and beet powder. Surento places emphasis on providing customers with dishes and smoothies that will fuel their days and also prioritizes local produce, which she gets from farmers’ markets around Gainesville.
For her, organic labels on foods at the grocery store aren’t enough. She values being able to see where her food is coming from, which means getting produce from farms like Frog Song Organics and Nicoya Farm, Surento said.
However, she also realizes many people don’t have access to local produce sourced directly from Gainesville farms, and it’s more important to avoid stress over what one is consuming than it is to go out of the way to find organic food.
“You have to get what you can get to sustain yourself and go for it, get through it,” she said. “It's more about positive mindset than the quality of your food.”
Surento shops for her ingredients at local farmers’ markets, where Gainesville farms like Nicoya sell their produce. She met 42-year-old Daniel Robleto when she was looking to buy kale for the food truck at the Grove Street farmers’ market.
Robleto founded Nicoya Farm with his wife 10 years ago and emphasized the freshness of local produce, which doesn’t have to be stored and transported for long periods of time. He found people are more passionate about the food they consume than ever before, especially because of local agriculture’s connection to the economy.
“When the going gets rough, people really think about where their sustenance comes from,” Robleto said.
For Surento, running her own business has called for community support beyond just sourcing ingredients. She had friends help her operate and fund the food truck, and one of her friends who works as a chef trained her how to quickly make food for large amounts of people.
Her “first investor” was her friend, 53-year-old Stephen Forguson. After selling his partnership in an engineering firm, Forguson started investing in restaurants and businesses around Gainesville to fuel community building.
He has known Surento for eight years and knew her health-conscious and locally based vision would appeal to a new generation of food consumers. He invested in Surento’s vision and enjoyed seeing her succeed over the past few months.
“Honestly, the return on the investment isn't the main thing,” he said. “It's just seeing if someone can get their dream realized, and she's making it work. She hustles. It's amazing.”
Surento hopes to continue working local festivals and making her product more affordable. Much like her dad, whose retirement job is now painting pet portraits, Surento has come a long way from her Lil’ Orbits donut machine and continues to balance business and passion every day.
Contact Juliana DeFilippo at jdefillipo@alligator.org. Follow her on X @JulianaDeF58101.
Juliana DeFilippo is a first-year journalism major and general assignment Avenue reporter. In her free time, she loves to read and work on crossword puzzles.
