Alum creates rustic French food truck in Boulder

‘Life’s too short for crappy food,’ she contends

By Lara Herrington Watson

After 30 years working in the travel industry and university recruiting, University of Colorado Boulder alumna Hilary Boslet left the corporate world to follow her passion: organic, local food.

“Life’s too short for crappy food,” Boslet says.



She took a year off to garden and plan her next venture. After talking with friends in the food and agriculture industry, she came up with the idea for her food truck: Bon Appetit Mobile Bistro. Procuring and painting an old Xcel energy truck with her signature mustache logo, she wrote a business plan and started the wheels rolling in early 2013.

Boslet studied business and English at CU, graduating in 1980. She says she relied on her education to launch the food truck.

“You have to be able to express yourself in the business world. There’s no question my English and business degrees have helped me,” she says.

Bon Appetit’s rustic French menu was intuitive, Boslet says. She hand makes the desserts using bread and pie crust base from Shamane’s Bake Shoppe, in Boulder.

“There’s no truck in this area that does what we do,” Boslet says.

You have to be able to express yourself in the business world. There’s no question my English and business degrees have helped me."It wasn’t all smooth food trucking at the beginning, though. She initially thought breweries would be great places to set up, but she found that bigger events, especially neighborhood events, bring in more business.

Dealing with what she calls “Boulder’s uniquely and incredibly strict rules” about where a food truck can set up shop led her to neighboring cities in Boulder County, where business is better.

She also learned to pay attention to her truck placement.

“If there are too many trucks at a festival, if you’re not visible, the customers won’t come,” she says.

Boslet and most other food truck vendors try for cohesiveness, sharing information and referring each other for gigs when they can’t make them.

“It’s not about competition. It’s a really hard job; it gets so hot and cold in a small metal box,” Boslet says. “When we help each other, we’re all successful.”

Using her English degree and marketing experience, Boslet has strategically branded and successfully marketed Bon Appetit Mobile Bistro. Her plan is to sell her food-truck business to another adventurous foodie, after which she says it will be a turnkey operation, ready to keep running and turning a profit.

She plans “to remain involved in Boulder’s agricultural community, advocating for better food-truck and greenhouse-friendly laws in Boulder educating people about agricultural issues.”

Lara Herrington Watson is a CU alumna (’07) and freelance writer who splits her time between Denver and Phoenix.

Feb. 27, 2015