What a Loaded Potato Bar Is

A loaded potato bar is a meal built on a base rather than a plate. A baked potato or a bowl of pasta goes down first, and then whatever the person in front of you wants goes on top of it. One kitchen, one line, and forty different dinners coming off it.

It has become a standard for events for a practical reason: it solves the problem of feeding a room where everybody wants something different, without asking anyone to choose weeks in advance.

The base

Ours is a russet, baked and split, or cavatappi in a bowl. Nearly every build on our menu works either way, so a guest who does not want a potato is not stuck with the vegetarian afterthought that usually sits at the end of a buffet.

The base is doing real work. It is filling, it is cheap to scale, it holds heat while somebody carries it across a field, and it can be eaten standing up with one hand. Very little else on a catering menu does all four.

What goes on it

Seven builds, each one a finished idea rather than a pile of options. What is in them is the part worth checking against anyone else offering the same category:

• Pulled pork and chicken slow-roasted in the truck, with our house spice blend.
• Real shaved ribeye where a build calls for steak, rather than chopped and formed steak product.
• A four-cheese sauce made from scratch, cheddar-based. Not a squeeze bottle from a distributor.
• Applewood bacon.
• Bleu cheese crumbles, rather than dressing poured over the top.

The menu was developed with two professional chefs. That is unusual for a truck, and it is why the builds read as dishes rather than combinations.

None of this is health food and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A loaded potato is a substantial dinner. That is the point of it.

Why it works at an event

Everybody finds something. A table with a vegetarian, a child, someone avoiding pork and an uncle who wants as much meat as possible is a hard table for a plated dinner and an easy one here. There are vegetarian options; there are no vegan ones, and we say so rather than improvising.

Nobody chooses in advance. No response cards, no counts by table, no seating chart that tells a kitchen who ordered the fish.

It absorbs a moving guest count. Numbers change in the last two weeks at every event that has ever happened. Food assembled as people order copes with that far better than portions counted out in advance.

It is fast. Our lines go just as fast as any normal buffet, and the buffet stays open afterward for seconds. When you send an inquiry, we'll give you an estimate of how long it will take to serve your guests.

Self-serve, or served

Worth being clear, because plenty of potato bars are a table of bowls and a spoon.

Ours is staffed. On the Loaded Bar our people top each plate as it passes, which keeps the line moving, keeps portions consistent, and means the last guest through finds the same spread as the first. Guests are not building their own and the toppings are not sitting out being handled all evening.

Choosing the menu for your event

You pick, not your guests. For Loaded Stations and Loaded Truck you choose four entrees off the menu and your guests choose between those four. For the Loaded Bar you choose three proteins, two toppings and three sauces.

Either way it is your four or your eight, so the menu suits your event rather than being a fixed package. Extra entrees beyond four are available and priced per head.

Trying it before you book it

The truck works public stops most weeks, and eating one is a better guide than any description on this page. Current dates are on the schedule, and most stops take pre-orders.

Booking one

Call 931-271-7455 or email nicholas@itsloaded.com. What each format involves is on the catering page, guest numbers are in how many guests we can serve, and what a quote contains is in what catering costs.