By Krista Carlson

At 24, Donnie Pepper has already toured in a two-man band, traveled nearly 2,000 miles along the West Coast by bike, and brewed several hundred gallons of beer and mead. But what he is most known for is his grilled cheese bike. A custom-built grill on wheels, WheelieGoodFood specializes in a comfort-food classic: grilled cheese, just like your mother used to make—and cooking them on the back of a bicycle.

VITAL STATS:

Occupation: Operator of the WheelieGoodFood grilled cheese bike
Location: Los Angeles, California
Age: 24
First Job: Shop cleaner at a welding shop, at the age of 16.
Best Job: This one
Greatest Professional Challenge: It sounds vain, but I don’t like the lack of appreciation when some people think they deserve things for free, because I'm working my butt off to bring the trailer, which (I'm guessing) weighs an average of 60 pounds.
Salary During Your 20s: I don’t know … enough to get by.

Donnie, How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
My partner Josh Haglund and I have been partners in projects over the years, and his idea was to provide something different for people to eat than “L.A. dogs” (bacon-wrapped hotdogs), and to put it on a bike to make it more accessible.

How did you build the trailer?
Woody Cycle built the trailer. He traded it for a screen printing job for his bucket pannier business, so it was a no-cash deal. That was two years ago.

The trailer was made from an aluminum ladder, cut down from ten rungs to three. The design is customizable—you can cut the ladder down at any point, or even build a trailer using the full ten-rung ladder. Josh and I have been towing Woody’s trailers around for the past two years to carry everything.

There's a hitch arm that attaches to two of the front rungs, made from chromoly tubing. The hitch comes out from the trailer and hooks into a custom-made steel eye that can be fitted onto the rear dropouts of any bike. But it has come undone. My plan for the next level of WheelieGoodFood is cutting out the trailer altogether, because being on a bike ride is fun, but the trailer adds about 50 pounds.

My next setup will be mounted to the rear of an xtracycle. All the sandwiches will go on the sides in bucket panniers, and everything will be contained on one bike, which will be good for riding up and bombing hills.


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