Frances Juru’s aunt had a pretty good recipe for mac ’n cheese, that delectable table treat that enjoys sharing a place on a Venn diagram with side dish, dessert, and righteousness.
However, the aunt played stingy with the recipe. She wasn’t giving away table secrets to the heirs just yet.
Well, Irving Berlin, cue up your classic — “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”
Juru came up with her own twist on it, something so good for Thanksgiving, with her own seasoning, that some in the family had a suggestion.
“They said, ‘This is really good. Maybe you should sell it,’” Juru said. “I didn’t think people would buy it.”
Some six years or so later, Juru has been perfectly pleased to discover that she was wrong about that. Her Smackin Mac food truck is as sought after in North Texas as a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl, but, clearly, more accessible.
She has been recognized. In 2023, she earned the title of Best Food Vendor at the North Texas Fair and Rodeo and secured a contract with Six Flags Over Texas for special events, including Fright Fest and Holiday in the Park. She has also held seasonal partnerships with major universities such as UT Arlington and Texas Woman’s University in Denton.
Her culinary talent has been spotlighted on Texas Today on NBC, as well as in DFW Child, Voyage, and Discover Denton. She is a regular participating chef at the Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival and has collected honors like “Best Comfort Food” at the North Texas Food Truck Challenge and runner-up in Fort Worth’s Mac Attack Competition.
Her media appearances include features on Fox News, ABC, and NBC, and each year she can be found serving crowds at some of North Texas’ most celebrated festivals and fairs, from Mayfest and Southlake Oktoberfest to each and every one of the 23 days of the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo.
And, yes, she also has a semi-regular place at Dallas Cowboys home games. She invited me to find her there last week against the Packers. I called her on the phone instead.
Juru is a native of Baltimore. She grew up in Los Angeles. Today, she lives in Aledo, a single mother to three. It was divorce that was her mother of invention.
She needed to make a living.
Juru, 38, attended a magnet school where she studied culinary arts. She earned a bachelor’s in business administration in college.
To get this venture off the ground, however, she went to YouTube University.
“Ideas started to pop up,” she said of her YouTube experiences. “So, I said, ‘OK, I need a tent. I need some food warmers. I need an oven.’ I just started building from there. When I got into Six Flags, it really gave me that experience that I needed to figure out how to make it a full operation.”
She went into the Six Flags venture with very little experience, “but I just learned along the way.”
“I continued to do more and more festivals in the tent, and they just got bigger and bigger. Then it was time to get the food truck.”
The combination of mac ’n cheese and mobility have become her contribution to the glorious philosophy of capitalism, innovation, and perseverance.
The great achievement of capitalism, Milton Friedman once said, was not the accumulation of property, but the opportunities it has offered to men and women to extend and develop their abilities. The “great virtue” of a free market system, Friedman went on another time, was that it doesn’t care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is. It only cares if one has a product people want to buy.
Juru has a regular eight menu items, plus a “Mac of the Month,” which varies depending on how the spirit moves her.
Juru also uses her business to give back to the community. Through Smackin Mac, she has donated meals to shelters, first responders, and families in need. She partnered with LVT Rise in Fort Worth to bring the truck out to serve free meals to those in need, according to a family friend.
Juru has made a rewarding life out of her business and a second full life after divorce. It was separation from her marriage that led to the need to pick this up full time, full speed. Though she had conceived of the idea of a food business pre-pandemic, the shutdown forced her to cast the concept aside until normalcy returned.
She has three young children, one of whom has special needs. She is the one and only full-time employee. She hires help on days the truck is on duty. One of those is her Aunt Brenda.
Is that the same aunt who wouldn’t budge on her recipe, I ask?
“No,” Juru said laughing. “That aunt is in Baltimore. My Aunt Brenda is a big supporter and one of the hardest working people on my food truck when we have busy events.”
But otherwise, Juru runs every aspect of her food truck operation on her own. In the days leading up to festivals or events, she juggles long hours of preparation with trips to multiple suppliers — Ben E. Keith for her primary food orders, Restaurant Depot for extras, and even Sam’s Club for odds and ends.
She is able to do it all, she said laughing, “With little sleep. very little sleep.
“But I make it work. I just don’t get much sleep. But other than that, I just juggle it all.”
She has also been accepted into the Dallas Mavericks accelerator program as part of the fall cohort. Small business owners go through courses over several months. At the end, each pitches his or her business to a panel of executives and investors.
Juru has much to do to scale the business. The goal is a brick and mortar location.
With her heart, enthusiasm, and hustle, it feels less like a question of if she’ll achieve that dream — and more a matter of when.
With mac ’n cheese, all things are possible.
Find Frances Juru and Smackin Mac on the socials