ENTERPRISE — After 15 years in the catering business, Chuckwagon Sisters Catering and Concessions has added a new feature — its CWS Coffee ’N’ Grub Truck.

Owners Jake and April Strickland bought the former All-American Coffee truck last spring and have been learning the ropes of operating the truck around town.

“We’ve had a good first season with the coffee truck and learned a lot,” April said on Wednesday, Nov. 29. “We’ve learned what events we should be at.”

She said they also have learned that locals are their primary clientele, rather than the tourists so many businesses in the county rely upon.

“We get more locals than tourists,” she said. “We haven’t really dealt with tourists that much. It’s mostly locals. I’ve been cooking in the county for several years since I was a kid, so I had a following.”

Although the truck is usually parked in front of their house on Residence Street, it also gets around to various sites for lunch, most often in front of Ed Staub & Sons Propane on Highway 82 in Enterprise.

But they’ve also taken it to various events, such as the annual Wallowa County Stockgrowers fundraiser, Main Street Show & Shine and a golf tournament at Alpine Meadows Golf Course, Jake said. They also do the concessions at Ferguson Ridge Ski Area east of Joseph.

They did, however, miss the biggest event of the county this year, Chief Joseph Days. They’d taken the truck to Wallowa for Tamkaliks and the brakes went out as they arrived home.

“Our truck was in the shop all week of Chief Joseph Days,” April said. “But Stangel did a great job of getting it done. So we didn’t get to do Chief Joseph Days this year, but we had so many events on the books already.”

They also use the truck to help with their catering business at weddings.

“We did a 320-person wedding in the spring,” April said Wednesday, Nov. 29. “We did a lunch for 20 people today. We can do weddings for 200-300. Most weddings in the county are around 200, but we did pull off that 300-person one. That was fun. We can handle just about anything that’s thrown at us. We do a lot of smoked meats and meals from scratch.”

Although the truck is the new feature, they still rely heavily on the catering aspect of the business. They’ve even turned the garage behind their house into a licensed kitchen to support it.

“The catering business is the biggest part of the business right now,” she said. “We run the truck during the week because Jake worked in construction for 18 years and he wanted to get out of it. This truck came up for sale locally and we decided to buy it.”

Deep roots“My mother-in-law, Diana Wortman, started this about 15 years ago,” April said. “I took over the catering about three years ago and we bought this truck in February to add to our catering business. We go all over town. People call us to come to different functions.”

The “Chuckwagon Sisters” in the business’ name refers to Wortman and the women who regularly helped her out.

Now, the Stricklands are moving onto a new generation of sisters with their own daughters, Violet, 9, and Hazel, 6.

“We updated the idea of the Chuckwagon Sisters,” April said. “They really like being in here and helping, handing drinks out or making Italian sodas. We’re training our future generation.”

Jake wanted to try something new after nearly 20 years in construction, so he joined April early this year.

“I worked for Charlie Kissinger from 2005 and retired this year,” he said.

April has a long history as a cook in Wallowa County.

She spent many years cooking at Calderas Restaurant in Joseph until it closed in 2013. The building that was Calderas is now a private home.

“I was the head chef for most of the time they were open,” she said.

She also cooked in a restaurant that was located where the current Thai Enterprise is. She worked there for a year until Violet was born.

“That took her out of the workforce,” Jake said.

Now, in addition to their burgeoning catering business, they have the Coffee ’n’ Grub Truck serving a variety of hot and cold drinks. Jake said they serve coffee, tea, lemonade, Italian sodas, energy drinks and espressos, while April said they serve homemade sandwiches, soups and salads.

The sandwiches run about $12 each and the cups of soup about $3.

According to their website, “Preparing and serving food is a love of April’s. She has been involved in the community helping with dinners and concessions a good portion of her teen and adult years.”