Conversations and quotes in this article have been transcribed from the Foodbeast Katchup podcast: "#111: Hip Hop's French Fry Dealer w/Mr. Fries Man," out now on Spotify, the Apple Podcasts App, and all major platforms where podcasts are heard.

While French fries can often be an afterthought, or just a complementary side, this man has made them the main course, with the help of the hip-hop community.

Craig Batiste, founder of Mr. Fries Man in Gardena, California has a unique come-up story, going from low key selling his fully-loaded fries in random parking lots, to getting a brick-and-mortar open.

How exactly do you sell surf and turf garlic fries in a parking lot? Well, Batiste steadily posted on his Instagram account, not knowing if anyone would actually see his photos. To his surprise, people were intrigued enough to try his fries, called into the Google number he had listed, and put in orders.

Turns out, when Batiste gave his customers an address, a lot thought they were being directed to a restaurant.

Nope.

Instead, Batiste would pull up to a donut shop parking lot with homemade fries, ready for the exchange. As you can imagine, this looked sketchy as hell, and the donut shop asked him to put an end to his fry dealing.

That forced Batiste to look for other parking lots to continue serving his fans, and making his deliveries.

As word of mouth spread and his clientele grew, Batiste's life changed once the west coast hip-hop community started hearing of his underground fry sales.

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A post shared by foodbeast (@foodbeast) on Feb 20, 2020 at 3:57pm PST

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