The Story · Brisbane · Since 2014
Twelve years.
Relentless hustle.
Uncompromising wings.
Dylan and Katrina Pires came back from a string of family holidays in the
USA and Canada in love with American wing culture — and noticed nobody in
Brisbane was doing it properly. So they did.
Australia’s first chicken-wing food truck · est. 2014
Source: Must Do Brisbane · 21 Mar 2014
2013
The Beginning
One family holiday. A lot of wings.
Three trips through the US and Canada with four kids in tow. Every diner,
every dive bar, every pre-game tailgate — wings. The Pires family came home
from each holiday with the same conversation: why does nobody in
Brisbane do this properly?
By the third holiday Dylan and Katrina had stopped asking the question and
started writing recipes. Honey-sesame. Portuguese spice. A red sauce they
called the Chillogy. Twelve years later, you can still order all three.
The Launch
Australia’s first wing truck.
In 2014, with four kids and a borrowed deep-fryer, they put a chicken-wing
menu on a food truck and rolled it onto the streets of Brisbane. The first
Australian food truck dedicated entirely to wings. Nobody had done it before
— and the queues told them they should have done it sooner.
Five wing flavours from day one: Buffalo, Bee Sting,
Portuguese Crumb, Southern Spice and the Chillogy. The menu has barely
changed since.
2014
The original livery · 2014
Dylan + Katrina · Gold Coast Bulletin · 2018
'15–'18
The Growth
Five wins. Best Brisbane Food Truck.
From 2014 to 2018 the truck won Best Brisbane Food Truck five years
consecutively. Dylan founded the Brisbane Food Truck Collective —
twenty-two operators under one umbrella — and started running the city’s
biggest food-truck events.
Press caught up. Broadsheet, The Courier Mail, Must Do
Brisbane, The Music. Headlines that used phrases like
“world class” and “step aside, Colonel.” Quiet
about the trophies. Loud about the recipes.
We don’t cut corners on wings. Some of the wings we serve cost more to
make than we charge for them. That’s the point.
— Dylan Pires, founder
The Buffalo Podium
Second in Buffalo, NY.
In September 2016 the Pires family loaded the truck into a shipping
container, flew to upstate New York, and competed at the National
Buffalo Wing Festival — the largest wing competition on the
planet, 80+ entrants from across North America.
They placed second in Creative Sweet, with the Bee Sting.
Five US television networks ran the story. Dylan still has the trophy on
the kitchen shelf at Grange Thistle.
2016
Source: Gold Coast Bulletin · 2018
Source: Courier Mail · food trucks of Brisbane
'18–'24
The Detour
Bricks. Mortar. Lessons.
For a stretch in the late 2010s and early 2020s the brand had restaurants.
First Stafford, then Grange, then the Valley. Big kitchens. Big rent.
Bigger menus. A sister venue called The Royal Tea. A pandemic.
The wings stayed great. The format wasn’t right. In 2024 they made
a quiet decision: close the rooms, keep the recipes, and put the
truck back on the road. The way it should have stayed all along.
Now
Back on the road.
Today the truck operates out of a kitchen at Grange Thistle
Football Club, rolls into Eat Street Northshore
every weekend, and pops up on rotating Brisbane streets the rest of the
week. The fryer is the same one from 2014. So are the recipes.
Dylan still cooks. Katrina still runs the books. The kids are getting old
enough to help on the truck on a Friday night. Brisbane Wing Royalty
Since ’14 — and the second chapter is just getting going.
Find this week’s stops
2026
The current truck · Source: Wikimedia Commons
Press photography © respective publishers (Gold Coast Bulletin, Courier Mail, Broadsheet, Must Do Brisbane).
Used here as placeholders — see /assets/images/IMAGE-CREDITS.md.
Truck photo via Wikimedia Commons.