Editor's Note: We have corrected Phoenix Food Truck Coalition to Phoenix Street Food Coalition.
The business: White Eyes Fresh Fry Bread, not your average Indian fry bread, brought to you by Alice Roach and her husband, John.
What you need to know: For the past six years, the Roaches have been serving their fry bread at special events, concerts, and fundraisers, but with the explosion of mobile eateries, they've decided to take their show on the road. So what's so special about White Eyes? They've created what's reportedly the only frozen-dough fry bread in the country.
The story: Alice learned to make fry bread (the good old fashioned way) when she was living near Fort Defiance on the Navajo Nation. She continued to make her fry bread by hand for years, and when her friends and family couldn't get enough, Alice eventually realized the labor-intensive process would never let her keep up with mounting demand. With the help of a chef who specializes in making frozen pizza dough, Alice created a way to make fry bread dough that could be frozen, stored, and shipped, and then prepared in less than a minute.
"It's obvious to us it's a very widely needed product on many levels," says John. "We've found this product has its niche."
In addition to serving her fry bread at special events, Alice sells her product online, allowing fry-bread fiends to cook up their own bread at home.
Where the name came from: With neither Alice nor John having Native American blood, they wanted to stay away from any Native American connotation. "We didn't want to infringe on any of that," says John. Thinking back to old country movies where cowboy snipers were called the "white eyes," John settled on the name and adopted a depiction of a "camp cook" as their logo. Thus, White Eyes was born.
The driving vision: Although White Eyes says they'll stay north (in central Arizona, Prescott, and Flagstaff) during the upcoming months, the pair hopes to make appearances at 25 to 30 special events a year. In the future, Alice envisions seeing her frozen fry bread at retail stores and says White Eyes already has their sights set on a brick-and-mortar location. As new members of the Phoenix Street Food Coalition, they hope to have their trailer on the streets daily for lunch sometime soon.
"We really want to see how far we can go with this," says Alice.
Check out the White Eyes website for future updates.
