Columbia food trucks burglarized over weekend

COLUMBIA — The owners of The Melt Masters, a Columbia food truck, announced Monday that over the weekend their food truck had been broken into, vandalized and burglarized while parked on Business Loop 70. 

The food truck is stored in a rental spot in the CoMo Cooks lot when it is not in use. This weekend, a second food truck, J’s Smoked BBQ, was also burglarized, and a third truck had signs of an unsuccessful break-in attempt, the CoMo Cooks manager said. All three trucks were parked in the lot when they were broken into.

“Around 8 p.m. last night, we received a message that we needed to come check on our trailer, and we found it had been vandalized and it had a number of things stolen from it,” Melt Masters co-founder Kobe Messick said.

According to the owners, the truck was broken into sometime between Friday evening and Sunday evening. They reported to police several hundred dollars in cash stolen, as well as other merchandise and damages found.

“Some of the immediate losses we suffered are any technology, our cash on hand — we lost of all our cash box and our credit card readers, our speakers, our other hardware,” Messick said. “We also had a lot of equipment damaged — we had damage to our refrigerator and our fry warmer. The place was just trashed outside of that.”

Melt Masters was founded by four University of Missouri students as a way to serve the student population during the lunch rush on campus. On most weekdays, the food truck is parked in front of Speakers Circle or near the MU Student Center to feed staff and students. The owners celebrated their opening in August.

“It’s perfect for startup businesses,” founder Keegan Hartnett said. “You definitely have the traction around campus for students, and you also have the whole community that are willing to try new things. The response really helped uplift us.”

Messick said they hope to reopen after they assess and repair any damages and losses.

“I’m not exactly sure when we’ll be back on our feet, hopefully sooner rather than later,” Messick said. “We’ve been here all day, and we’re going to be here the rest of the day getting our ducks in a row. But I do anticipate us making a comeback, and hopefully relatively quickly.”

The Melt Masters started a GoFundMe to raise money for the cost of everything stolen and damaged.