By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

Josh Enos opened up his food truck, Worth the Wait BBQ, for business four days a week in mid-January; and, many times he runs out of barbecued meat before the shift is over.

Menu items like dino ribs and beef briskets often go from the smoker into the to-go containers with some customers putting in orders in advance.

Winter might not seem like the best time to start a new business in a summertime tourist town. Still, Enos set up the concession trailer off Route 302 in Bridgton after getting laid off from his full-time job. The job loss hastened his long-term business goal of transitioning from catering gigs to making a living with his food truck. 

“The goal was to make it a full-time thing for me, not to have to work on top of it,” he said. “I wanted to be in Bridgton, off [Route] 302 and not on Main Street because there isn’t enough parking there.”

There is ample parking near the food trailer, which is located in the space in front of Long Lake Marina’s boat storage. On Sunday, customers arrived and walked away with their food at a brisk pace. 

“Everyone seems to be enjoying it. One of the biggest things I hear is, “It’s nice to have something different for food in town,’” Enos said.

A majority of his customers are contractors on lunch break. Snowmobilers are starting to make an appearance as well.

This weekend, the business will be closed as Enos pursues a cause and another dream.

On Friday, he will be at Mt. Abram Family Resort serving up BBQ dishes to veterans who on March 8 can ski free at the downhill ski area located in Greenwood.

Then, this weekend, he has planned a trip to Texas to bone up on his BBQ skills. The highlight of the trip to the Lonestar State will be eating at the famous Franklin Barbeque in Austin. 

“I have been wanting to go to Franklin for years now,” Enos said. “Texas is the Holy Grail of meat and BBQ.”

“We are making a quick trip to Texas to pick the brains of the masters in the BBQ world,” Enos posted on his business Facebook page.

Basically, Worth the Wait BBQ will re-open on Thursday, March 13, he said.

Two years ago, his business began as a catering company. He chose the name Worth the Wait because his parents own a farm by the same name in Denmark.

“We started off as strictly catering. We didn’t have the nice stuff that we have now. We did a lot of weddings, a couple pop-up events,” Enos said.

Two of those foodie events are the Bissel Brothers Tap Takeover in Portland and the Foothills Food Festival held in Norway in mid-August. The latter gathering was his “biggest day of the year.”

His food wagon was a presence during the 250th Anniversary in Bridgton, too.

Enos grew up in Denmark and now lives down the road in Waterford.

It wasn’t until he graduated from high school that he became interested in barbequing. Then it went from hobby to occupation. 

“It all started happening when I was in Coast Guard 2007. I did a lot of grilling depending on where we were,” he said.

“I got my first smoker seven years ago, and it just took off from there,” he said. 

“With the grilling, you are cooking the meat at a high heat. Smoking is done at a much lower heat, low and slow cooking — that makes it more tender. The point of barbequing is to take a not-so-good cut of meat and cook it slow so it is tender,” he explained.

It seems that cold weather and meat cravings go hand-in-hand.

“We opened during the coldest two weeks of the year, and I did better than I expected to,” he said, adding with the hood exhaust system on, the food trailer drops to 50 degrees.

From reading the outside of the food wagon, people have noticed that the business is U.S. Veteran owned and operated.

“I have had a lot of veteran customers and a lot of non-veteran customers that recognize it,” he said.

“I joined [the Coast Guard] right out of high school in 2007. I went from boot camp to Cutter Mellon in Seattle. While I was on the ship, we did a drug patrol down south off west coast of Mexico and a fisheries patrol in Alaska. If I could do that again, I would in a heartbeat,” Enos said. “Service was a big chapter in my life.”

“It is not something people see all the time, to see a younger veteran like myself start up something like this,” said Enos who is 29 years old.

Four days a week, contractors stop in for quick and hearty lunch and people grab a satisfying dinner to bring home to the family. On the weekends, people pull up with out-of-state plates and give the BBQ a try.

“It has been above and beyond what I expected at this time of year,” he said.