MNN Extended Interview: Anne O’Keefe and Frankie Jackson of Wanna Wotapi

Transcript

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Marie Rock [ANCHOR]: Welcome to Minnesota Native New. I'm Marie Rock. This week, we're sharing a special extended conversation with voices you've heard in earlier reports. Here's Travis Zimmerman's interview with Wanna Wotapi food truck owners Anne O’Keefe and her husband Frankie Jackson.

Frankie Jackson: What's going on, brother?

Travis Zimmerman: Hey, how you doing, man?

Frankie Jackson: I'm doing all right.

Travis Zimmerman: To start right off, what is the name of your food truck?

Frankie Jackson: Wanna Wotapi.

Travis Zimmerman: And what does that mean? Or what's the significance of the name?

Frankie Jackson: You know, if you're from a Dakota family and you had a grandma that you grew up around, it was pretty common for you to hear the phrase wanna wota, which means "Come and eat." You pluralize it by adding the P at the end, I guess, to make it grammatically correct. But for those of us who grew up in a Dakota household with, you know, a mom or a grandma who spoke or an auntie who spoke—that phrase, wanna wota, is very familiar.

Travis Zimmerman: Nice. What do you serve in your food truck?

Anne O'Keefe: Right now, we've been doing a lot of chicken chipotle bowls. We've started some beef chipotle bowls as well. Always some form of fresh fruit, like we'll do fresh strawberries and cream. We try and have, like, a little bit more of the whole foods, healthy foods. We do buffalo at different times for more catered events. Wild rice salads.

I'll just throw in this a little bit too. How we even came up with the food truck was originally we have the art bus, and we have our nonprofit Mni Sota Arts. But, originally, we looked at getting the food truck because all Native communities, right, when you gather, you eat. So anytime we were going to have our art bus at an event or be at a powwow, gathering, eating as part of that process as well. So that's why we wanted to make sure that we could feed people.

Travis Zimmerman: Sounds delicious. I did try some of your food when you catered that event at the History Center, and I enjoyed that.

Anne O'Keefe: Thank you.

Travis Zimmerman: So who owns the food truck and who are your helpers? Who do you got to help running it?

Anne O'Keefe: So it's myself and Frankie are the owners. And then usually working the food truck is either my sister Eileen, who's one of the best cashiers I got—able to talk and work the crowd at the same time taking orders—and then my daughter-in-law, Sandy. Yeah, usually it's my sisters, and then our kids. When we can get our daughter Kyla to help with us too. So, but Frankie's behind the scenes, and really anywhere he's needed, he steps in.

It's a tough learning curve of not only food trucks in general, but just food, you know. When you need to have your food manager's license, when you need to find wholesalers for your food and distributors and having commercial kitchen space. And you know, there's just a lot to it that people don't see. And finding people to help you, people that you can trust. And you know, can work really hard.

And for both Frankie and myself, it's hard, because when we do these events, we want to always represent ourself, our family, our community. So you want to make sure people are happily fed, and you want to make sure you leave good impressions in your communities. And so that's important. My mom's a big cook. Frankie's mother's a big cook. So when you have people who've cooked for you your whole life, you know how important that is to have good food, making sure that we could do events well. You know, have suppliers for ourselves, and we need it for events. But then also, you know, try and put out something good. And sometimes you do things because you just want to see if you can do it. Because my sisters will tell you, I'm the least of the cooks in this family. I have a lot of sisters who cook, but I look at it more at the business end of it.

Travis Zimmerman: Yeah, that's great. Where'd you find your truck?

Anne O'Keefe: Actually, it was in our community. Another community member had it who actually does fry bread, and she just said, "It is just too much work." When we bought it, it was four years old, but it looks seriously brand new. It looks brand new. She even like purchased it originally from Texas, drove to Texas to pick it up, and everything was custom made. So we're lucky to find that so close and in such great shape, because some of them are pretty rough, like when you see some food trucks in general, they're pieced together pretty creatively. And it's orange. That was like a selling point for me. You can ask Frankie, most of my things now are orange. Everything follows the food truck. A lot of our floral work now that we're putting on our art bus too is going to be orange.

So it was like a no brainer. And that was pre-pandemic too, or right around the same time. So you could get a food truck for a decent price. Right now, food trucks are outrageous. Ao I was very lucky to have the opportunity. And I thank her a lot since then, because it's been a great thing, a great add for our family and for our business to have that.

Marie Rock: That's all we for this week's episode. Join us next time for more voices and stories that inform, uplift, and shape our communities, right here on Minnesota Native News.

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Marie Rock: Minnesota Native News is produced by AMPERS: Diverse Radio for Minnesota's Communities. Made possibly by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.