Table of contents
Tony Dragon’s Grille is a food truck parked on the corner of East 62nd Street and Madison Avenue. It’s open for eight hours, six days a week. And if you visit during lunch rush, you might even get to meet Antonio Dragonas — the “Tony” in Tony Dragon’s. He started the business as a mobile food cart almost 40 years ago.
“My father’s the type of person who never, never missed a day of work,” says Konstantinos Dragonas, who joined his dad’s business just over a decade ago. “No matter what, he would go to work. Whether it was snowing, raining, it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit … he would haul that cart, bring it into the city, unload it, shovel the snow, and push it up the ramp to the sidewalk.”
Since his son signed on to help modernize the business, Tony has stepped back … a little. “We got him down to working five days a week now, and only for the lunch rush,” Konstantinos says.
But Konstantinos is serious about honoring his father’s work and legacy by keeping the best of Tony Dragon’s — its fresh ingredients, commitment to quality, and seriously dedicated customer base — while modernizing operations.
In 2005, Tony was named runner-up during the inaugural Vendy Awards in New York City. The competition was meant to raise money and awareness for an organization that advocated for the city’s many street vendors. The night of the awards, in early November, he was the only finalist to set up his cart outside the venue, serving judges from the sidewalk.
“I’m a street vendor,” he told The New York Times then. “I should be on the street.”
Trading the food cart for a truck and helping a legend evolve
Then came the food truck boom. A combination of financial challenges — the Great Recession in 2008 — and the subsequent popularity of always-on social media helped popularize the roving restaurants. A truck offered Tony more space to serve more diners and the chance to expand its menu, so the team started operating as a food truck.
Konstantinos joined the family business then, helping to transform the small street cart into something bigger. It’s still mobile, but Tony Dragon’s Grille has occupied the same corner of the city for its entire existence.
“I always had this vision of my father that he’s an incredible, consistent chef. The people love the way he cooks and prepares food. He cares so much about the way the food is prepared,” he says. “I wanted people to see him the way I saw him, right, which is legendary.”
To do that, the business had to modernize. After settling on a name — the cart didn’t have one! — Konstantinos helped build a website, created a logo, designed packaging, and added technology, like the Square Point of Sale system and Online Ordering Profiles.
Embracing online ordering to boost sales
The elder Dragonas has come around to his son’s business choices, like adding online ordering and turning off the phone.
“He thought that many of the decisions I made were going to have the opposite effect, and we would lose business,” Konstantinos says. “But every year, we’re growing.”
Today, Konstantinos says, they’re getting more orders than they ever have. Since Tony Dragon’s ditched phone orders, orders placed ahead for pickup have more than doubled. Half of the restaurant’s orders are placed ahead of time.
Two staffers manage online orders, arranging printed tickets and distributing food. Recently, Tony Dragon’s added a line buster — an employee who takes in-person orders with a mobile device to speed up service. Tickets are printed inside the truck immediately. Instead of speaking to customers through the truck’s order window, Konstantinos directs orders coming from the kitchen and distributes them to waiting guests.
Optimizing from inside the food truck
With more space, Tony Dragon’s added employees. As many as eight people work the busy lunch shift inside the truck. The close quarters are a benefit; everyone still talks to each other to get orders out fast.
“It’s such a small space. If the customer is at the window ordering a steak bowl, you can turn to the kitchen and tell them so they get that steak on the grill right away … before the customer has even paid,” Konstantinos says. And even paying’s gotten faster! “We went from paper to plastic to air — Apple Pay, it’s just a tap,” Konstantinos says.
Operating a beloved business from the confines of a truck is a continual challenge. The commute to and from its parking lot in Queens takes about an hour, and the team needs to make sure they have everything they need — and not too much of what they don’t — onboard. So have they ever considered not being mobile?
“Many times,” Konstantinos says. “How much more could we prep? How much more could we do? Could we wake up 30 minutes later?” He laughs, then continues: “If we had a storefront, we wouldn’t have these limitations … these stressors. It’s a lot of weight on your shoulders. But it’s fun.”
