Truckin’ Good Food at the BMW Championship

What are you serving and pouring when fifty of the best golfers in the world, their families and about 25,000 fans a day arrive on your premises for the 2024 BMW Championship?

Spectators looking to grab a bite before heading to the next hole August 20 through 25 will discover a bona fide, only-in-Colorado surprise. Castle Pines Golf Club will host a food court filled with well-known and award-winning food trucks serving everything from burgers and pizza to burritos and lattes.

Those who think food trucks dishing “street food” is too downscale for a classy event like the BMW Championship, clearly haven’t become hip to the state’s celebrated outdoors dining aesthetic.

Coloradans are serious about enjoying the outdoors and have embraced food truck cuisine at festivals, markets, tasting rooms, fairs and suburban intersections.

According to 5280 magazine, “Denver offers one of the country’s largest mobile dining economies” with more than 600 food truck businesses dishing global cuisines. In 2023, the website Tryother.com ranked Denver as one of the “8 Best Cities for Food Trucks in the U.S.”

The detailed logistics in feeding fans on the field and guests, golfers and members in special viewing areas and in the clubhouse has consumed every available moment for months for Travis Teague, Executive Chef of Castle Pines Golf Club.

“It’s been a great collaboration for the whole food staff working with Spectrum Catering integrating the trucks into the setting near the Clubhouse,” Teague says.

His laser focus has been on serving about 1,500 guests daily within the clubhouse during Championship week.

“We’ll be taking care of the players, the families, the caddies and all of our members. Each day we’ll have six buffets going simultaneously Thursday through Sunday,” Teague says.

The buffet menus will feature main dishes like miso salmon, carved New York Strip steaks, chicken tacos, seared tuna and blackened chicken. Bars will be pouring several signature cocktails and Coors will provide a specially brewed beer for the event. Wow-worthy wine dinners are scheduled down in the Club’s celebrated, well-stocked cellar.

Preparing for the penultimate event of the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Playoffs is especially thrilling for Teague. He was a line cook in the kitchen the last time Castle Pines hosted a PGA event, The International, in 2005 and 2006.

“I remember that Jack Vickers wanted everything to be world-class and The International helped put Castle Pines on the map,” he says. A Denver oilman, Vickers created The International, a Colorado PGA Tour event that lasted 21 years.

Topping off the event’s culinary attractions will be the most famous dish associated with Castle Pines over the decades: a super-creamy milkshake.

“We expect to go through 70 gallons of vanilla ice cream a day making shakes – just in the Clubhouse. The shakes will also be available in the food concessions area along with a bar serving batch cocktails, beer, and wine,” Teague says.

The BMW Championship Food Challenge

According to Teague, the food trucks chosen are experienced in serving crowds quickly with handheld items, so fans end up standing in long lines and miss the action on the course.

Talking to the local owners of these food truck businesses, it was clear that invitations to serve at a PGA event don’t come every day.

Dos Gringos food truck has been serving locals since 2016. Two lifelong friends and Colorado natives, Jesse Trujillo and Santino Lochi, bought the two-truck business two years ago. Dos Gringos typically serves its tacos, burritos and bowls at brewery tasting rooms and private and corporate events. The last thing the duo expected was an e-mail invitation earlier this year from the PGA.

“I usually text, but this news was definitely in need of a call. I told Santino: ‘Hey, man – I think we just hit it big,’” Trujillo says.

“It was a pure excitement moment,” Lochi says.

“The fact that we are golfers and we’ll get to serve our food at Castle Pines and be part of that experience is amazing.”

Dos Gringos’ distinctive 24-foot-long truck will be dishing its most popular items including battered fish tacos. As the mother of five, Melinda Carbajal is used to serving crowds. As CEO and co-owner of 10-year-old Simply Pizza in Centennial, she operates pizza trucks as well as hybrid pizzerias in shipping containers selling at busy places like the Denver Zoo and Buckley Air Force Base.

“We bought the business about five years ago. I got my husband drunk and we decided pizza would be a good new career,” she says with a laugh.

Carbajal’s Simply Pizza pies have since taken home awards in pizza competitions from Naples to Las Vegas.

At Castle Pines, Simply Pizza will sling slices made from Italian flour baked in a hickory-fired oven out of its heavy-duty 26,000-pound truck.

“We make a very thin, New York-style crust that makes it easy to carry,” Carbajal says. (Think of the opening scene of “Saturday Night Fever.”) Bringing the flavors from Colorado’s farms and ranches into down-to-earth settings is the vision behind Farm to Truck Colorado, which has served its comfy cuisine at Denver-area tasting rooms and corporate and private events for a decade.

“We’re especially proud of the Colorado-ranched meats we use, the grass-fed beef and lamb in the burgers,” says Bronson Kandel, owner of the mobile food business. The pork for pulled pork sandwiches on brioche buns comes from another local business, Denver’s Tender Belly. “This would be the biggest event we’ve ever done, but we decided to go for it. We’re ready,” Kandel says.

Even the food truck’s vegetarian wrap has a local connection with a unique crunchy high-protein mix of Colorado-grown hempseeds with chia, quinoa and lentils.

From dawn until dusk, Debbie Ingle will supply the essential fuel for any mammoth PGA event. “Over the past two years, we have brought caffeination to a lot of workplaces including schools and events, but not one on the scale of the BMW,” says Ingle, owner/operator of Tom’s Travelin’ Coffee of Englewood.

“We’ll be there with hot coffee drinks in the morning.  expect to go through a ton of ice during the week for iced tea and coffee,” she says. The truck’s perennial summer bestseller is a not-too-sweet lemonade that is an essential ingredient in its cutely named Tommy Palmer.

ON THE MENU AT THE BMW

Here just is a sampling of the dishes available at the food trucks serving during the BMW Championship. Other food and drink concessions will also be available.

Dos Gringos Food Truck

Tacos, foil-wrapped burritos and bowls topped with Carnitas (shredded pork), Carne Asada (steak), Chipotle Grilled Chicken, Beer-Battered Fish or Black Beans. Tacos on corn tortillas include shredded lettuce or picked red cabbage, chipotle sauce, pico de gallo, cilantro and shredded cheeses.

The Moby Dick bowl is Mexican rice topped with beer-battered fish, black beans, chipotle sauce, pickled red cabbage, pico de gallo, pickled jalapeno and fried tortilla strips. Also available: Gringo Fries and Funnel Cake Fries.

Simply Pizza Truck

Pizza varieties will include:

Belgium Farmer: Crust topped with extra virgin olive oil, smoked bacon, roasted Brussels sprouts and goat cheese sauce

Right Hand Man: Crust topped with red sauce, mozzarella, and hand-cut uncured pepperoni. Also available: Vegetarian pizzas; Caesar salads; and, for dessert: Sliced strawberries with freshly whipped cream.

Farm to Truck Colorado

Western Showcase: Beef burger on a brioche bun with Cheddar, pulled pork, bacon, fried onions, pickles and BBQ sauce

The Lamb Burger: Lamb on a brioche bun with greens, fried onions, goat cheese and mint aioli

Farmer’s BLT: Thick-cut bacon, greens, tomatoes, pesto, and garlic aioli.

Sandwich sides include Apple coleslaw, pesto macaroni salad, and yellow curry potato salad. Also available: Chicken sandwiches; Vegan wraps; and the entrée-sized Salad Bar Salad.

Travelin’ Tom’s Coffee

The beverage truck will offer fresh lemonade, Tommy Palmers, iced tea, iced coffee drinks, iced chai, hot coffee drinks, hot chocolate and two iced fruit refreshers: Strawberry Açaí and Peach Mango.