Togather meets Waffle + Co

We were lucky enough to catch up with the lovely Tori, co-founder of the wonderful Waffle+Co, a stunning combo of converted black horse box or modern food truck (and now bricks and mortar location!) serving the most ridiculously delicious savoury and sweet waffles.

How did you get started? And why waffles? 

We are Ana and Tori and we had both retrospectively moved out of London up to Saffron Walden in 2017 with a yearning to change life up a bit. We didn’t know each other back then but met at a night out at a pub in the local village welcoming new women to the area. As cringy and uncomfortable as we felt on this night; trying to make friends in our late 30’s; we ended up sitting next to each other with a glass of wine in hand. Realising that we both had passions in hosting and food we quickly became friends with an idea to run a Food Truck all around waffles. Tori is half Peruvian and Ana is half Greek-Cypriot so we talked over food and ideas for quite some time before deciding to go into business together. 

We began our quest to change opinions of the humble waffle back in July 2018 by creating events called Women Who Waffle; the idea was to bring together local women through a love of wine, conversation and good food (waffles!). The events quickly became popular and we began collaborating with local businesses to host events that welcomed everyone.

In June 2019, we purchased our beautiful, vintage Horsebox, which was converted into our waffle kitchen. We travelled in and around the local area, bringing our exquisite waffle delights to the community, serving waffles from the hatch…and so, the waffle revolution began. In 2021, we expanded our business to our incredible new stylish van and now we cater from both Horsebox and van at private events, pop ups, corporate events, film sets and more. Our ever-growing following are hard pushed to decide between savoury and sweet toppings. You can find some truly delicious combinations on our menu board, such as the incredibly popular Southern Fried Buttermilk Chicken with whipped chive butter and maple syrup; all on top of our fresh, homemade waffle of course and our Chocoffle and Banoffle waffles. 

We chose waffles, as it was in fact Ana’s Mum’s idea. Mums are always right hey, so we believed her and here we are now! 

What is it about events that you love so much?

The buzz! Isn’t it incredible to create a menu so fabulous that people spend their hard-earned earnings on your food? We are always so humbled every time someone books us for a private event or comes up to us at an event to choose our creations at the hatch over anyone else’s food. We love creating food that people love and then want to come back for more. 

We are all about making new friendships within the industry and sharing tips and tricks with other vendors so it’s always fabulous for networking . We also love trying other people’s Street Food at public events too - the love that goes into Street Food is so special and we love seeing that. 

If we are working a private event, we love changing people’s opinions of the humble waffle, introducing them to our savoury as well as sweet flavours and turning heads with our wondrous waffles. 

Traditional Just Isn’t Our Nature. 

What's your favourite event you've worked on?

It has to be at Wembley Stadium in 2023 when we worked at the Harry Styles concerts in Summer. The Summer of Love quite literally! 

How do you find being a female-owned business in such a traditionally male-dominated industry? 

We have found that working as females in a hugely male-dominated environment has been on the whole very rewarding and interesting. We have formed some great business relationships and incredible friends with many male-owned Food Truck businesses, event organisers and clients and we have gained the trust and respect of many people in general within our industry since we launched our business. 

Being proud, independent and very hands-on female founders with two Food Trucks and now a cafe has meant that we have wanted to learn everything that needed to be done from the very outset in the Street Food World. We didn’t ever have to rely on anyone else for our business if we could help it. So from learning how to manoeuvre a horsebox trailer, changing gas canisters, lugging heavy stock around and dealing with some extremely high end corporate and celebrity clients along our journey has meant we are able to be in total control of our business from the beginning to the very end of the event. 

Of course, there have been some opinions cast our way over the years but we always like to stay in our lane and achieve what we aim to achieve. 

How did you find the switch from food truck to bricks and mortar cafe? What unexpected challenges did it bring?

We are still running both the Food Truck and the Cafe businesses in tandem now. Each of us has taken one of the businesses to run from an operational and management perspective however we are both very much involved in both of the businesses; flitting between the two to stay abreast of the important stuff happening. 

Challenges-wise, we have very quickly had to put into place certain management aspects to run the businesses as effectively as we can. We have had to learn how to make excellent coffee and continue to create our excellent waffle menu but this time in the cafe over 7 days a week which is pretty intense. 

Also with Bricks and Mortar; the expectations from the general public seem to be much higher than in the Street Food World. In the Food Truck industry you can be more relaxed when dealing with people even those at a senior level. They seem to have more patience at the hatch than at a table in a building. 

The biggest challenge is sadly not spending as much time with each other as we ever did when we ran one business together. We’ve got a brilliant friendship and we are really close and so we had a lot of fun running the trucks together. We then stepped it up a notch - meaning dividing and conquering and also stepping away from as much time together at events. 

Quickfire questions

Favourite item on your menu?

Signature Chicken+Waffles with buttermilk-marinated fried chicken breast, maple syrup and whipped chive butter

Favourite comfort food to make at home?

Sri Lankan Chicken Curry with homemade naans or Jamie’s Steak, Cheese and Guinness Pie with creamy mashed potato and chargrilled veg. 

Favourite restaurant to go to? 

Restaurant 22 in Cambridge - incredible 

What would your dream event be?

A huge Street Food World Supper Club with awesome DJ music, warm weather, good vibes and authentic, fabulous Food Trucks from all around the World. 

Finish the sentence: What makes an event unforgettable is…

Precision organisation, off-the-scale food flavours, experienced event organisers, fun people, excellent food feedback (and a cheeky champagne truck somewhere along the way…….)

All that got you craving waffles!? If you'd like to book Waffle + Co for your next event, check out their profile!