For a three-person staff to fill short-order requests for 150 people in the space of two hours on a gorgeous autumn Saturday takes a special kind of teamwork. For Jamie Hocking, Faith Heyer and Ryan Householder of Perry, it is all in a day’s work.
It helps that they are related and are roommates in Perry. Hocking leads the team and hails from Storm Lake. Her cousins, Heyer and Housegholder, come from Emmetsburg, and together the three fit the bill at the Frontier Shack in Madrid.
The Frontier Shack is an outpost of the Hotel Pattee in Perry, serving hungry bikers alongside the High Trestle Trail. The portable food trailer offers some 40 menu items, including black bean burgers and fully loaded veggie nachos.
A party of 150 cyclists was served Saturday, and the three kitchen laborers had a well-used kitchen to show for their efforts by the time the rush was over.
“We started at 7 this morning,” Hocking said, “and we’ll be here until 11 tonight and then turn around and do the same thing tomorrow. It’ll be like this until the end of the season.”
