Update 1.21.15: Due to family health issues, Griddler on the Roof is temporarily suspending operation. For more information, visit http://facebook.com/GriddlerTruck .
Kim Bayne likes new challenges. Although she’s been a business and technology writer for most of her career, memories of cooking for the Jewish holidays with her mother and grandmother have wafted in her direction — and changed her life.
Around three years ago, Bayne started blogging about food trucks. When an opportunity arose to start her own truck, she took it. “Not only am I interested in the Ashkenazi foods I grew up with, but I’m also learning about Sephardic foods, food from places like Uzbekistan,” Bayne told the AJP.
Her food truck, Griddler on the Roof, was launched this fall offering “classic and modern versions of traditional Jewish dishes” (though not kosher) such as latkes, blintzes and kugel, says Bayne, who grew up in Tucson and graduated from Rincon High School in the 1970s. As for tradition in her life, Bayne’s daughter, Kaitlyn, became a Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Anshei Israel in 2003, as did Bayne decades earlier.
“I’ve been a business, marketing and technology writer since college” at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, she says, adding that her articles have appeared in publications from Advertising Age to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Bayne has written for the Food Network’s Eat St. Blog about food trucks in the U.S. Southwest. She authored “The Internet Marketing Plan: A Complete Guide to Instant Web Presence, 2nd Edition” in 2000.
“I traveled around the world speaking about online marketing,” says Bayne. “My husband, daughter and I moved back to Tucson in 2003 to be closer to family.” She worked as a design writer at Intuit from 2005 to 2012.
“I’m still tech savvy,” she says, “but the new high-tech world is really for younger folks. I don’t have a culinary background. Everybody seems to be [preparing] the food they grew up with.”
