HE'S FROM PHILLY CHEESESTEAKS OPENS
After living in Woodland for nearly two decades, Philadelphia native Tracey Trotman decided it was time the city had a taste of authentic Philly cheesesteaks.
He and his son, Steven Blair, began working on making this a reality after Blair lost his job and Trotman had a bad experience at his favorite local restaurant that sells cheesesteaks.
“I just got tired of eating one of the cheesesteak places here in town,” Trotman said. “I said, `That's it, I'm gonna put up my own cheesesteak place.'”
After months of back-andforth discussion, the family decided to go through with the project and have now opened He's From Philly Cheesesteak at 729 Main St., where the old Bella Bean Coffee used to be.
Although the project was spontaneous and seemed to some of his family like a bad idea, Trotman said he approached the situation “like a horse with blinders.”
“I had to do that the whole journey because there was just a lot of things and doubt surrounding trying to get it up,” he emphasized. “When you have a vision, it's your vision. If someone shares in on that vision, then it becomes their vision and they become part of that support system.”
The restaurant opened on Aug. 31 and has been popular with wait times as long as two hours on opening day, according to Blair.
“We're new and a lot of people have never had a Philly cheesesteak… so right off the bat, we've been pretty much
slammed every day,” he stressed.
Blair noted that most of the issues stemmed from having an unrefined process of dealing with large quantities of orders leading them to shut down the first day they were open because they received 70 orders in two hours.
“I had to make the call with my dad to shut down early so that we can better serve the customers later on,” he recalled. “We didn't anticipate as much business as we've gotten… but it's been fun.”
Blair also explained that his family is completely new to the food industry and has been learning a lot throughout the process.
“We all just knew how to cook, we knew what a good Philly tastes like… so we hired a crew that knew what they were doing and they taught us and we taught them,” he highlighted. “Our strength is that we're not familiar with it so we're more motivated to learn and get better.”
Trotman was born and raised in Philadelphia and moved to California in 2004. He met his wife — Blair's mother — and has lived in Woodland for 17 years, working at different medical facilities.
“I oversaw different medical facilities in Northern California,” Trotman said. “I've been doing that for the last 13 years so I have a good understanding of dealing with workers and people.”
He said that the process to open the restaurant was a journey because they didn't know a lot about the industry.
“So we went to school and we learned as we were going around the curves,” Trotman remarked.
The business has already received some feedback from the community, but Trotman views it as “information that you can process to straighten things out.”
“If we get to like 40-minute waits, I offer a refund and still feed them because I don't want someone waiting 40 minutes,” Trotman emphasized. “If I can do that, even if they don't come back, at least that's who I am. If I lose a couple hundred dollars in a day because I did that but earned somebody's trust, I'm gonna double that in the long run.”
However, Trotman is sure that if he continues providing high-quality food while minimizing wait times, his business will prosper and might even be able to expand to several locations in the future.
“An older woman told me one time right before I opened… `You either make some good sandwiches or you go back to Philly,'” Trotman recounted. “So I'm still here.”
Matthew Smith, a customer who came during the restaurant's opening day and several times after, said he's happy the restaurant opened because it's “something different.”
“They're good people and they're just kind of a breath of fresh air for Woodland,” he remarked. “I've lived in Woodland most of my life and we've got a million Mexican food places, a million pizza places and your options are so limited.”
“I keep hearing they have to shut down because they have too many customers and too much going on,” he continued. “It's a problem, but it's a good problem. I think they brought something to Woodland that people are excited about, that people are supporting and we needed something different.”