Kelley Dalley is the owner of The Lunch Box, a food truck located next to the Spudnik potato harvesting equipment company in Blackfoot.
Since July 2021, she has supplied breakfast and lunch for the Spudnik employees but encourages the public to stop by for a quick and affordable meal as well.
Dalley’s menu features some classic American cuisines, including breakfast sandwiches and cheeseburgers. She offers a new special daily, and every once in a while, she includes some baked sweets as a reflection of her past as a baker at Kittie’s Kitchen.
“My son and his wife both work at Spudnik and they talked me into buying it, so I quit my other job and now I do this and it’s definitely paid off,” Dalley said.
Lunches range from $9 to $10, and breakfast sandwiches are currently $4. Though she’s reluctant, she has to raise her price of breakfast sandwiches to $5 to accommodate the price inflation in eggs.
“It’s nice meeting new people, but just like owning any business, there are your stresses and your worries,” Dalley said. “I go through around 60 eggs a day, and my eggs went from $5 a day to $20 a day. With food prices going up, I don’t want to have to pass that on to my customers.”
One of Dalley’s biggest challenges has been dealing with the wear and tear on her trailer from the bitter winter months.
“The cold has been tough,” Dalley said. “I had to buy a new generator this year, and sometimes it doesn’t want to start so I have to build a little tent around it with a heater to get it going.”
The Lunch Box can be spotted at Food Truck Friday in addition to the Spudnik parking lot and occasionally around different bars at night.
In the past, Dalley gained experience in catering at the fair which is part of where she found her love for the food industry.
“Food makes people happy,” Dalley said. “I never thought that I would do this after catering for the fair, but that was a lot of fun. We met all the bands and we took care of the bands for three days. Then (The Lunch Box) just kind of fell in my lap, and I don’t regret it, it’s just fun.”
When she isn’t running The Lunch Box, Dalley spends time with her five children and 19 grandchildren.
“It’s nice to be able to take off on the weekends, and where I don’t work on Fridays, I’ll go visit my daughter and her family in Utah or have my kids come up here and hang out,” Dalley said. “My grandkids love it, they want to go out to grandma’s trailer and fry some french fries up.”
Dalley expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to run her food trailer as well as the support she has received from the Spudnik employees. Currently, she sees about 50 customers a day on average and is eager to serve more.
Dalley encourages her customers to call their order ahead of time because she often sells out of her specials of the day. The Lunch Box is open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
“I drive it back and forth to Spudnik. I park in my driveway, and then I get up in the mornings and I make breakfast and start prep for lunch,” Dalley said. “Then I drive over to Spudnik and serve breakfast, and then finish making lunch and clean up a bit. I’m done at 12:30, they go back to work and I head for home and clean up and restock for the next day.”
Spudnik is located at 584 W. 100 Road N., where The Lunch Box will be found in the parking lot. To learn more about The Lunch Box, visit her Facebook at facebook.com/lunchboxllc or call Dalley at 208-681-5523.
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