The past six years of our truck business have been tumultuous to say the least. The pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 were massive in terms of sales, but the extraordinary sales coincided with unpleasant growing pains as a business owner. I looked forward to a new beginning in the summer of 2022, but many of you know that we canceled our summer road trips in 2022 and 2023 due to back-to-back failures of the peach crop here in Georgia.
The disruption of business as usual was initially distressful, but I was ultimately relieved to spend a summer, which became two summers, at home in Atlanta.
During those summers at home, I repeatedly said that I did not want to go on the road again unless a road trip included the fun and adventure that I experienced during our first few seasons of operation, which began in 2016.
We finally got back on the road in the summer of 2024, which I naively assumed would be an easy relaunch of Georgia Peach Truck. While we succeeded in reviving the business, I would describe that experience as arduous as opposed to fun or adventurous. Nevertheless, we reconnected with thousands of customers and built momentum for the summer of 2025.
This past summer was ultimately the most fun and adventure that I have ever had on the truck, and the credit for that experience begins with our two full-time employees in Atlanta, Jack Deese and Amanda Newsom Penn.
Jack runs our local business at weekly farmers markets and also gets behind the wheel for shorter trips to our truck locations within the Southeast. Amanda manages the bookkeeping and communications for every aspect of our business, from local farmers markets to the truck schedule and mail order shipments. Jack and Amanda are foundational to the livelihoods that all three of us derive in common from Georgia Peach Truck.
In addition to Jack and Amanda, I am grateful for the seasonal employees who traveled with our trucks this summer. The traveling team included two experienced crew members, Jake Isaac and Steven Ypma, as well as three new hires, Evan Carrobis, Emily McInerney, and Maddy Gerrish. They are an exceptional bunch of individuals who efficiently self-selected for specific tasks according to their wide range of complementary skills.
With the support of so many capable people, I was able to delegate almost any operational task, which enabled me to spend more time in front of customers, where I am in my happy place at work. Similarly, the option to disengage from routine operations presented more opportunities to visit friends and family along the way, where we pursued all of that fun and adventure that I desperately needed to reclaim on the road.
With our summer sales recovering toward the unprecedented numbers of 2021 and 2022, we are successfully rebuilding our business without the same growing pains, and the summer of 2025 restored my seasonal sense of work-life balance and optimism for the future of Georgia Peach Truck.
Looking forward to this fall, we expect to offer a fresh crop of mandarin oranges and shelled pecans for your holiday delight. We will announce our holiday mail order and road trip details in mid-October. As a newsletter subscriber, you’ll be the first to know.
Watch your inbox for updates, and say hello if you see me on the road again this December!
Brandon Smith
Owner, Georgia Peach Truck
