When Steffen Zinn rolled up with his food truck, The Red Ember, to his first farmers’ market, he brought 50 balls of pizza dough and sold out in two hours.<\/p>\n
Fast forward eight years: Zinn’s food truck has become a staple on Broadway, at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market, at Manitoban festivals and in people’s private ceremonies. Staff have gone on to create four eateries throughout Winnipeg. An average season sees between 24,000 to 25,000 pizzas pass from truck to hungry customer.Now, Zinn is putting The Red Ember in park for good.<\/p>\n The COVID-19 pandemic led to cancelled weddings, festivals and other gatherings last summer. As a result, Zinn’s business slowed down. He’s not giving up his keys for financial reasons — if anything, he could park the food truck for a year and get back to it when things normalize, he said.<\/p>\n But Zinn, 40, has two young sons. When food truck season hits (from the end of April to late September), he’s gone often, working up to 18 hours a day and travelling around Manitoba.<\/p>\n “Every summer, I would just put my head down until fall and then come up for air, and then see what happened around me,” Zinn said. “With having a little extra time last summer … I was kind of able to see what summers were all about.”<\/p>\n The Red Ember will be around, making pizzas in its wood-fired oven, until later this fall. After, Zinn plans to sell the truck outside the province.<\/p>\n “I don’t think I could stand to see it still cruising around the city streets,” he said.<\/p>\n And, should the new owner do a less-than-swell job, Zinn doesn’t want people to think it’s connected to The Red Ember — after all, the food truck’s spin-off restaurants are still open, and the network keeps expanding.<\/p>\n First, Zinn found an opening at The Forks. He had an employee, Quin Ferguson, who he said “shone” on the food truck. Ferguson wanted to be a firefighter, but Zinn thought he’d have talent as a chef. Zinn asked the young worker to be his business partner, and soon, Ferguson was head of Red Ember Common.<\/p>\n In January of 2018, Zinn and Ferguson hired Michael Sung. Sung ended up at the food truck, and within a few months, Zinn was asking the new worker what he wanted to do long-term.<\/p>\n Zinn was looking at opening a New York style slice shop — one that makes 18 inch pizzas — because there weren’t any in Winnipeg. By fall of 2018, Zinn had found an affordable shop on Wall Street. Sung and his business partner, Edelma Miranda were put in charge. There was cleaning, there were permits, and now, there’s Wall Street Slice.<\/p>\n “We’re very fortunate to have had our goals align at the same time,” Sung said of his partnership with Zinn.<\/p>\n Zinn works behind the scenes, finding new locations, doing payroll, ordering pizza boxes from Italy. He’s a shareholder in the restaurants, and the restaurant leads are shareholders in each other’s spaces, too.<\/p>\n
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