The Bodega Food Truck Slinging Chopped Cheese in NYC

Jeremy Batista is the man behind Bodega Truck, the first bodega food truck in NYC to serve one of the city’s most famous sandwiches: the chopped cheese. With his girlfriend Angela and his former bodega owner mother Sonia, he brings the taste of The Bronx to all five boroughs, and hopefully, the world.

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-Three words to describe
my chopped cheese
is amazing, unique,
and just New York.
That’s just what it is.
♪♪
What’s going on, boys?
You’ve been waiting, right?
-Yeah.
-I appreciate that.
-Yeah.
Can I get the El Dominicano
and double fries?
-Yeah, I got you.
My name is Jeremy Batista.
I’m the owner of Bodega Truck.
Bodega Truck is the first
and only chopped cheese truck
in New York City
that specializes
in chopped cheese alone.
That’s it. That’s all we do.
We do one thing,
and we do it right.
I have chopped cheese for every
occasion, whatever you want.
You know,
you hungry in the morning,
I got the Good Morning.
It’s a bacon, egg,
and chopped cheese with
a seasoned hash brown in it.
If you want some lunch,
I got a Regular OG for you.
We do chopped cheese fries.
You could get any of the chopped
cheese on top of fries,
which has been a very big hit.
You know, chopped cheese
is good whenever.
OG fries and a Coke.
Thank you, man. Enjoy.
NYU kids, man, they love the OG.
I think it’s just quick, easy.
They got to get
right back to class.
That’s, like, the fastest thing
which we can bust out.
Start with your patty, let that
cook a little bit on both sides.
Now that the patty’s
almost done,
this is when the magic happens,
you know.
We doing chopped cheese,
so you start chopping it up,
and we going to hit it with
some of our special seasoning.
Seasoning and the sauce, that’s
what separates us from the rest,
you know?
Can’t give you that secret.
Now, here’s where
the fun happens.
This is what you got.
You got the shredded
American right here,
mixed with a little cheddar —
lot of people don’t know that.
And this stuff, you know,
cooks pretty fast.
You could get an OG out within,
you know, three,
four minutes, depending.
Right here, we grab the bread.
There’s that cheesy goodness
right there.
Well, it’s not
your regular hamburger.
The cheese is all
in the crevices.
This is — you could get all the
cheese in every bite, you know?
Here’s our secret sauce.
This is — sooner or later,
we’re going to end up
bottling it up and selling it,
just because it’s that good.
Nice, fresh-cut lettuce,
right there,
nice slice of tomato,
put that in, and that’s it.
Fold it together, flip it over,
wrap it up tight,
like a newborn baby,
gets cut in half,
and that’s all there is to it.
This is your OG right here.
Some people put grilled onions,
peppers, stuff like that,
but you don’t need
none of that stuff.
If you just do it right,
it’ll be a couple,
simple ingredients.
You’re going to love it.
Chopped cheese —
and it’s one of those
hidden gems of New York.
You know, if you know about it,
you know about it.
If you don’t,
then you have to know about it.
You got to figure it out.
It was originated in Harlem,
and then
it just spread out to the Bronx.
So when you get out to, like,
further Brooklyn, and Queens,
they’re just starting to know
about a chopped cheese.
Like, recently, it’s becoming,
you know, the wave,
and I’m trying
to push that forward.
A lot of people compare it
to a Philly cheesesteak.
Everybody knows what
a Philly cheesesteak —
no matter where you go,
you tell people
a Philly cheesesteak,
and they know
exactly what it is.
I’m trying to bring that
chopped cheese to that level,
that pedestal
that it deserves to be.
There you go, boss. Enjoy.
We are in the Bronx right now,
taking care of a lot of things.
I usually get up every day
around, like, 5:45, 6:00 a.m.,
and, you know,
just try to start the day.
I was born and raised
in New York City,
born in Brooklyn,
grew up in the Bronx.
When I was younger, my mother,
she owned a bodega,
and so, I grew up in a bodega,
you know, after school
would spend time in there,
doing my homework,
helping out, of course.
They are the cornerstone
of communities.
They’re open 24/7, and they have
everything you would need,
from, you know, toilet paper
to something to eat.
I come from a long line
of vendors.
I’m essentially
third-generation.
My grandfather owned
a food truck.
You know, my mom had a bodega.
She also had a, you know,
food truck for a little while.
-I started out with
a little hot dog cart.
Not many women were out in
the streets selling hot dogs,
and selling soda, and so on,
and it was basically
hard work for a woman.
But I had to earn the respect
of others, and I did.
And then, as time goes by,
look what it turned out to be.
-I’ve had this dream
for a long time,
so I always knew
I wanted to do it,
just didn’t know
how to execute it.
And, you know,
the food truck just made sense.
-He came up with this himself.
He was like, mom,
what do you think, mama?
I’m going to see
if I could do this,
and I was saying,
"Kid, you’re the only one that’s
going to keep the memory going."
This takes a whole family to
keep it going, like the bodegas.
Your aunt was there.
Your uncle was there.
We changed shifts all the time.
There wasn’t anything
that the bond of family
would not help with,
and keep it going.
I passed it on to my son.
Like, everybody hands
their bodegas
down to their children.
So did I.
-Work and talk, okay?
You see, this is what
my son always tells me.
-Work and talk.
We got things to do.
We got things to do.
-Yes, my boss.
-I need a small cheese
right now, okay?
-Yes, boss. Yes, boss.
But you know
what I always tell him?
Don’t forget I’m your mama.
-Plus you hold the knife.
-Yeah.
Yeah, that’s
the Puerto Rican in me.
-New York is, like,
slowly getting
modernized and gentrified,
so I wanted to continue
pushing the culture forward,
but never forgetting
where I came from.
So I wanted to, you know,
emulate that in my truck
on wheels.
I wanted to bring people back.
So when they come to the truck,
they’re like, wow, man,
I haven’t —
some of the candies
that I have on display
or for sale that I give
to people, they like,
wow, I haven’t seen this
since I was a little kid.
I want people to remember, like,
their childhood,
and, like, the older New York.
So today, we’re at NYU.
We’re getting everything ready.
We’re going to be opening
at the window soon, at 11:00.
They come between their classes,
and they line up for this,
you know.
They message us every week,
like, when you coming back?
When you coming back?
That’s the lucky part
about having a food truck.
You can visit
different neighborhoods,
visit different boroughs,
and, you know,
get to reach more people
than you would with
just a regular restaurant.
Traveling down to NYU,
where it’s a bunch of students
who, you know,
either came from other states,
and they’re just in town
to study,
and want to experience New York.
And I can actually bring that
to their front door,
and that just brings the word
of chopped cheese
out to other places.
I love seeing people’s
first reactions
when they take a bite
of my chopped cheese.
It’s like —
it’s amazing to see, like —
man, I just live for that stuff.
Like, the way they just react,
and, like, oh, my God,
this is so good.
I’ve never had
anything like this.
-I’m from L.A., so we don’t
have chopped cheese.
-Yeah, no, I mean, I was born
in New York originally,
but I live in Maine now,
so there isn’t really
any chopped cheeses there.
-So I moved to New York,
found out
what a chopped cheese was,
and then I found Bodega Truck.
And I was like, all right,
got to try that.
-It’s the best chopped cheese.
I mean, you wouldn’t think it,
like, on a truck,
but it really works.
-Before I started
the food truck,
I would do freelance,
and menu work,
and photography work,
and social media management
for a ton of restaurants
around New York City.
A lot of these restaurants,
they struggle with social media.
They struggle with photography.
They struggle with menu work,
and I feel like
I have that edge,
where I can promote my own self,
and be great at it.
-I’m always like a hawk
on Instagram
when they’re at NYU.
So disappointing
when they’re not here,
but yeah,
whenever they are —
like, we got to go
get a chopped cheese.
-It’s my third time,
fourth maybe.
-Do you follow them on Insta?
-Yeah, and they’re not here
all the time.
So when they are —
-I’ve had my own social
media profile for a long time,
and, you know, I have around,
like, 60,000 followers on there,
but I started a food truck,
you know, from zero.
And now, I’ve passed
my own personal page, you know.
I’m at, like, 70-something,
which is incredible.
Lot of people
tagging each other, like,
hey,
you need to find this truck,
or you need
to follow this truck.
They post the most
amazing food in New York,
and that just makes me know
I’m doing something right,
you know, when I see
those comments and likes.
Perfect chopped cheese bacon is,
you know — it got to be crispy.
That’s just what it is.
It just can’t be no other way.
Even though I’m a fan of,
you know,
the softer-textured bacon —
I love that, but, you know,
for a chopped cheese,
you got to have crispy bacon.
Everybody comes and says,
"Yo, make sure it’s crispy."
So you got
the Good Morning Hero,
three Down the Blocks,
and an OG.
I got 842, Down the Block
with onion rings, right here.
Going to need three OGs
and two Good Mornings, okay?
At times, I do feel like
I’ve bit off more
than I can chew, just because of
the — such growth
that we’ve had within less
than a year, you know.
A lot of people
coming into this,
before I started the food truck,
you know,
I’d shared my thoughts and —
like, hey,
what do you think about this?
And a lot of people were
very negative towards it.
Like, hey, no, I don’t think you
should do that, no, you know.
Thank God that I had
my girlfriend there behind me,
you know,
giving me that extra push.
Like, yeah, you know,
I believe in you.
You can do it.
Come here. Come here.
Just stand right here.
You got to hear these things.
I’m about
to talk very nice about you.
No, you’re not a distraction.
You’re fine. You’re good.
But, you know,
I want some brownie points,
so just stand right here.
-And he says I don’t help him.
How dare him.
-The first time
she’s helped in months.
-I’m more of the heavy lifting.
She’s more the brains
behind the operation.
Like, she does the accounting.
She’s more of
the business aspect,
and that’s why
I’m lucky to have her.
Because without her, you know,
I’m telling you, this truck
would have not happened.
When we’re in action,
and there’s 100 people
at the window,
and we’re, like, in the thick
of it, I take the order.
I pass it to the cook,
and then it goes to my mom
preparing the sandwiches.
So she’ll be, you know,
the one to put the lettuce,
tomatoes, the sauces on it,
making sure that —
and Angela’s the one
who’s making sure, like,
it goes to the right sandwich.
We’re putting them together.
We’re wrapping them out.
We’re getting these orders done.
This ticket is done.
Let’s go.
We run like
a well-oiled machine.
There you go, boss.
-Thank you.
-Enjoy, guys.
You have a good one.
♪♪
I want to leave something behind
that I can be remembered by,
you know.
Because a lot of people,
they just, you know, live life,
and then that’s it.
I’m bringing you an experience
that’s dying in New York,
you know,
I’m trying to keep it alive,
just kind of resuscitate
New York.
The ultimate dream that I have
is to be a New York staple.
I really want to get there.
I want to be one of those things
where it’s like, yo,
if you come to New York,
you’ve got to have a pizza.
You’ve got to visit
Times Square,
and you’ve got to have
a chopped cheese.
I want to focus
on chopped cheese,
and keep pushing it,
and keep pushing it,
until everybody in America
knows what a chopped cheese is.
Even outside of America,
I would love to have
a chopped cheese out in Tokyo,
or Dubai, or anywhere else.
I would like to
bring it out there.
Having a location
to support the truck is really,
really what I want to do.
It’ll make things 1000 times
easier for the truck,
to alleviate some of the stress
and pressure
that we face on the truck.
The Bodega’s definitely
coming to you.
I can guarantee that.
Yeah, man,
the cat is the manager.
If the Bodega does not have
a cat, then they have rats.
That’s why you might grab a bag
of chips in the bottom row,
and there’s no air in it.
You know why, you know?
The cat keeps the place safe.
The cat is the manager.
They look after the place.
They make sure, you know,
everybody’s in line,
and they keep them in straight.