Tara Murray
The owners of a food truck company whose business has been destroyed by fire have been blown away by community support.
Fire tore through Happy Camper Pizza’s factory in Braybrook on Wednesday, destroying one of their 1960 food trucks and severely damaging two others.
One of the owners Sonia Lear said the fire had been the latest blow after an exhausting two years and not being able to operate their catering businesses throughout the lockdown.
She said support from the local community had made them want to continue on and find ways to give back.
“It has been full on,” she said.
“We’ve been blown away by the community. A rival pizza food truck company has set up a GoFundMe page and another one has offered us the use of one of their trailers.
“West Footscray Primary School has said we can use their commercial kitchen. Other people have offered to help with working bees.
“It has been amazing and we want to fight on and keep going.”
Ms Lear said the fire had damaged one side of the building, which they had structurally been able to prop up.
One of their 1960 trucks was destroyed, while two others were damaged. The kitchen and regfrication container were on the other side of the building and survived.
The trucks aren’t insured, as a consequence of the pandemic.
“It takes a long time to build those trucks,” she said. “We don’t even know where to find the people to fix them at this time of year.
“We cut the insurance during lockdown. We couldn’t afford to pay $4000 a month so we cut it. We had only been back open two weeks and hadn’t got around to it.”
The money from the GoFundMe page will go to help complete another truck based in the country, which they had been working on before the pandemic hit.
Another consequence of the fire, is work on a pizza bar at the factory, will have to be postponed.
“We started doing takeaway pizza for the locals during lockdown,” she said.
“We started renovating it into a permanent pizza bar. We were looking to make it into a social enterprise as well. We had been supplying the Duke Street Neighbourhood House with pizzas.
“That will have to stop for now, as we’re more about rebuilding structurally.”
“We’ve got big plans. We want to keep going and give back.”
