ERIN – The owner of Erin’s newest food truck is looking to inject some culture into an increasingly diverse community.
Fusionz food truck is now open six days a week playing music on Main Street in Erin at the empty lot next to the Ultramar gas station serving jerk chicken, butter chicken, chili and poutine in an evolving menu.
Anthony Patterson, one of Fusionz’s owners, is a professional DJ who said he was doing 200 events a year until COVID effectively halted this business.
Living in the Erin and Hillsburgh area, he said most food businesses are traditional chains without a lot of diversity in offerings which wasn’t reflecting who he would see when dropping his four sons off at school when in-person learning returned.
“I saw so many cultures that I had not seen here before, throughout those two years there was Filipino, Spanish and African,” said Patterson.
Combining his own multicultural upbringing with a love for food and people led to the idea of opening Fusionz.
“The slogan that I have is bringing cultures together one dish at a time,” Patterson said. “I thought it was a cool way to not force culture on people but do it in a fun and appealing way even if you’ve never tried an Indian dish or a Spanish dish or a Jamaican dish.”
Patterson said the benefit of opening a food truck is the ability to move it around to cater events that could coincide with his work as a DJ and with DJs but the Ultramar lot is home base.
“I’ve been driving past this lot for two years realizing, ‘there’s only potholes there, it needs to be filled with love and some food and some people,’” Patterson said.
Current main dishes include jerk chicken, stemming from Patterson’s own Jamaican roots, and butter chicken from his familiarity with Indian culture growing up in Brampton and noting this culture is gaining a foothold in the region.
“It’s good food made easy, like it’s not stopping to get a burger or fries or processed food, there’s love like I got up at 6:30 this morning to personally season 150 pieces of chicken,” Patterson said.
The menu is always evolving and things are being added through customer suggestions, for example Patterson noted the truck added chili bowls after a recommendation from a local motocross club.
“I think it’s really important to keep the community involved,” Patterson said. “I think it was super important to not come in like some hotshot wanting to, you know, gain notoriety.”
Fusionz had a soft launch during the Erin Fall Fair weekend and had a grand opening on Friday. The food truck sold out of its menu by 6:30 that evening, and again the next day.
“We were supposed to be open until 10 p.m. so it’s been just phenomenal and the community is incredible,” Patterson said.
Patterson also wants to give back to the community through a yet to be named program where people who are struggling can come get a free meal for themselves or their family.
Patterson believed there is franchise potential with this food truck in communities, like Erin, that are growing in cultural diversity.
“I know what it can feel like, especially me being of a different ethnicity than was the predominant thing here in Erin or Hillsburgh, was ‘where do I go to feel like home?” Patterson said.
“Or in the opposite if someone was, let’s say, born in Canada and didn’t have much diversity, ‘where can I go to get a little culture? A little zest of something that I don’t normally get? I think I’m getting both realms right now.”
More information on Fusionz can be found here.
