In this new series, TCU Magazine visits with alumni in the food and beverage industry. Send recommendations to tcumagazine@tcu.edu.

When Adrian Gonzalez ’96 relocated to East Tennessee in search of a slower pace of life and an alternative to the corporate world, he started a series of food truck businesses, leaning on his background in marketing. After trial and error, Gonzalez landed on a food truck concept he said nobody else was doing — cobbler. Crazy for Cobbler has gained a following as Gonzalez travels from small town to small town with his food truck, sharing his take on the classic southern dessert.  

What makes the peach bourbon pecan cobbler your best seller?

Part of the food truck magic, in my opinion, is to do something just a little bit either elevated or off-beat. You see a lot of bourbon pecan things in the marketplace these days. We knew those two flavors paired well together, and we figured it would work with peach. 

Bourbon caramel has kind of a brown sugar flavor so it adds a whole other dimension, whereas the peach cobbler is just straight-up sugar. 

Which component makes or breaks a cobbler? 

My make-or-break component — and I’m pretty passionate about this — is the cobbler crust.  

The crust is a batter mix that goes in the bottom of the pan. You put the fruit on top, and then during the baking process, the crust makes its way through the fruit mix, dragging with it all those fruit flavors, and it floats to the top and creates the crust. 

The texture is somewhere between a dumpling and a sugar cookie, because the top gets just a little caramelized and crunchy, but then the middle of the cobbler — that part of the crust is more like a sugar cookie. 

We think the crust is the secret to our success. We’ve had 85-year-old women come back and say, “I’ve been eating cobbler my whole life, and this is the best I’ve ever had.” 

What’s one cobbler flavor you would love to experiment with? 

I’m thinking about putting cocoa powder in the crust and pairing that with the cherry cobbler, which would be like a chocolate-covered cherry cobbler situation.  

I’ve also thought about doing mini chocolate chips in the crust and doing almost like a cookie-dough crust, which I’m thinking probably would pair well with the apple. 

Then I want to revisit blueberry, but use some cornmeal on the crust to do kind of a blueberry cornbread cobbler, which I think people would also really enjoy because it’s different but not super scary.

How has the East Tennessee community responded to your business?  

One thing I wasn’t aware of til moving here is how incredibly tight knit these communities are, and they go back generations. East Tennessee people are very friendly, and they are avid supporters of small business in a way I’ve never seen.  

We have found a sweet spot in going to these smaller towns. Some of them have a population of 3,000 to 4,000 people, and other food trucks ignore them.  

Once we connect with people in these smaller cities, they do become avid fans, and they will message us ahead of time and comment on everything we post. 

One of our sweetest, most loyal customers in Jefferson City brought us a Christmas card during the holidays. She also brought her daughter and family to visit the truck.