Kevin Spenla’s Dang Brother Pizza stands out like a blazing inferno in the universe boasting a smorgasbord of pizza-on-the-go options. That’s because the entire operation is housed within 1974 American LaFrance fire trucks that are not racing to emergencies but delivering piping hot pizzas to hungry crowds. A sight that stops traffic and starts conversations wherever it pops up.
“I found the truck on eBay,” Spenla says almost nonchalantly. This chance internet encounter occurred over a decade ago while he was checked out of architecture school following his service in the Marines. “My grandfather and I spent months turning it into a pizza oven. We had no clue what we were doing at first, but we figured it out as we went along.”
Spenla isn’t kidding. He did everything backward, starting with buying the truck first, then figuring out how to turn it into an oven, and then, finally, learning how to make pizza on the fly. That DIY spirit paid off when Dang Brother Pizza hit the road for its first major event, RAGBRAI, in Iowa. “We served 20,000 cyclists in our first week of business,” Spenla says. “It was baptism by fire, literally and figuratively. We learned more in that week than we could’ve in a year of normal operations.”
Since then, Dang Brother Pizza has expanded to multiple trucks, each one with pizza-making capabilities, which he says was initially inspired in part by his architecture training. Two of his brothers have also joined the ranks, re-outfitting trucks and slinging pizzas. And their ambitions haven’t stopped at merely owning a pizza truck fleet. Their latest brainchild, Pizza Camp, takes the concept to literal new heights. (During this episode, Spenla also debuts a new invention, lovingly called The Ranch Cannon.)
“Pizza Camp combines a food truck with a fire truck,” Spenla explains about Dang Brother’s mobile pizza festival of sorts. “We’ve got a rooftop beer garden, a giant pizza sign… it’s an experience. It’s about creating a whole vibe.”
To that point, it’d be easy to say that Dang Brother’s success is just about novelty—who wouldn’t enjoy the party trick of a roving pizza party fire truck? But the pizza’s actually really damn good. “We’re always working on improving our pies,” Spenla says, adding that he’s become a master tinkerer when it comes to fermentation, often testing different dough batches at once to see which will become the optimal mix. He says it’s about delivering a quality product in a memorable way rather than the opposite. Even if you’re not one for theatrics, it’s impossible to deny that the pizza is really…dang good.
“There’s something about seeing a fire truck roll up and start serving pizza that just makes people happy,” Spenla says. Whether you catch one of their trucks at an event or luck into a Pizza Camp experience, you’re in for more than just a meal—you’re in for a show. “Maybe it’s the unexpected nature of it, or maybe it’s just that pizza and fire trucks are two things almost everyone loves. Either way, it works.”
