Southern-Style Biscuits Are the Secret to the Success of Mama Jo's

"You look back on that first day and you're just like, we didn't know what the hell we were doing," admits Ben Polson, who launched the food truck Mama Jo's Biscuits & BBQ in 2021 with his wife, Jodi Polson, who runs the pastry programs for chef Paul C. Reilly's eateries Coperta and Apple Blossom.

Ben's original career path didn't include the culinary arts at all, but instead focused on education. "I started as a high school teacher and it didn't pan out," he says. "So I went to culinary school," a decision that sparked a passion for him.

Jodi was also a teacher, working in elementary schools, before she decided to attend culinary school, too. "We're second-career people that kind of hit it big doing culinary," Ben notes.

After graduating, Ben landed a corporate dining gig with Compass Group, where he worked for over a decade, gaining experience preparing and serving food to large crowds. It was during that time that the concept for Mama Jo's formed, using Jodi's buttermilk smoked Gouda biscuit recipe as inspiration.

"For years, I was running kitchens at office buildings like Boeing," Ben says. "I convinced upper management to pull me out of the building, and they gave me a van, and I just drove around doing Mama Jo's, the pop-up. ... It turned out to be kind of a brand for them that I was going around and doing in different cafeterias."
At the time, "chicken biscuits were our big thing," Ben says. "They were always well received at the different office buildings I went to, and I was just like, I bet I can make it work as a concept for a food truck. And barbecue has always been a passion of mine, too. Combining those two things, like having Carolina-style barbecue and fried chicken biscuits, seemed like a good gig."

When the pandemic hit, Ben, like so many others in the hospitality industry, was laid off, though he was confident in his ability to find a new gig quickly. "I always joked with my bosses that, you know, if you fired me, I'd have a job the next day. I got fired on a Tuesday, and then I got hired on as the food truck director at Steuben's the next day," he recalls. "If you're going to open a food truck, you need to learn how to run one."

When he took the gig, he was up front with Steuben's about his intentions to open his own food truck in the future, and he and Jodi began perfecting their recipes by doing a series of pop-ups out of Tessa Delicatessen on East Colfax.

Mama Jo's launched three years ago, and the Polsons have learned a lot since then. At first, "we had all of our sauces in really small squeeze bottles; we were using tiny sauté pans to make mac and cheese," Ben recalls. "Now we've got quart-size squeeze bottles and the biggest sauté pans I can find. And we had to redesign the menu. When we first opened, I had brisket, fried green tomatoes and banana pies. You can't reheat brisket, and the price went up for beef, so we got rid of brisket and put spare ribs on. People loved fried green tomatoes, but they weeded the truck so bad, and at the end of one service we decided fuck it, and they went off the menu and we put on tater tots. ... You just figure things out, what works and what doesn't."
Today, Ben runs the day-to-day operations of the truck while Jodi is focused on the business side, handling payroll and scheduling. "When I've needed someone, she's jumped on and helped," Ben says. "We have two little kids, and she runs a whole pastry program."

Ben is quick to admit that his favorite part of running a food truck is being his own boss. "For years, I had to work for people I didn't enjoy, and now I'm doing what I love and I'm making money doing it," he says. "If I need to take a day off, we can schedule a day off. I've got it so dialed in right now that I work Monday through Friday."

On the current menu, Ben's favorite item is the "really banging Nashville chicken sandwich that a lot of people don't know about," he says. "It's our smoked Gouda biscuit with our lemon-brined chicken thigh that's buttermilk-fried and then dunked in our Nashville hot oil. And then it gets our Alabama white sauce, our house bread-and-butter pickles, and our creamy coleslaw."

Mama Jo's offering a variety of regional barbecue sauces, such as a sweet tomato-based Kansas City sauce and a vinegary Carolina style. Along with barbecue meats and a jackfruit biscuit sandwich to satisfy its vegetarian customers, the truck serves sides like traditional-style collard greens and mac and cheese, plus sweets like apple fritters. But it's Jodi's rich, smoky, flaky biscuit recipe that remains the true showstopper — it certainly impressed this Southerner.

And Mama Jo's makes a whole lot of biscuits. "We're cranking 600 a week. It's insanity," Ben says.

While the talented culinary duo says they may eventually open a mom-and-pop barbecue restaurant, for now they're happy in their respective roles.

To find the full schedule for Mama Jo's Biscuits & BBQ, visit its website, mamajosbiscuits.com.