YV Media — Bug & Bear's Cannoli, Matt Wilson & Joe Serpico

Bug & Bear’s Cannoli team from The Great Food Truck Race. Image credit: Food Network.

YV Media: Bug & Bear's started as a pop-up at Los Angeles farmers markets before growing into a food truck, and now you're preparing to open your first permanent cafè in West Hollywood. That's a huge evolution, both personally and professionally. How have each of you played a different role in turning this shared dream into the next chapter of your lives and careers?

Matt: Joe and I have always joked that he's the brain and I'm the mouth. Joe runs the operations, the finances, the systems that actually keep a business alive. He's the one making sure the numbers work, the vendors get paid, the trailer passes inspection. I'm more the storyteller. I handle the brand, the performance side, the relationships with press and partners, the parts of the business that are about how people feel when they encounter Bug & Bear.

What's been amazing is watching those roles deepen rather than change as we've grown. At the farmers market, that division of labor was small-scale. Joe counting the till, me talking to every single customer like they were family. Now it's the same split, just at a much bigger scale: Joe is deep in construction budgets and permitting, and I'm building out the world of the café with our designer Josh, thinking about how it feels to walk through that door for the first time. Neither of us could do this alone. The café is really the two of us finally getting to build a physical space for what's always lived in our relationship.

YVM: Your cannoli recipe has been passed down through seven generations from Joe's Sicilian great-grandmother. In an era where so many food businesses reinvent classics for social media, how do you decide which traditions are non-negotiable and where you're willing to innovate?

Matt: The filling is sacred. The technique Joe's great-grandmother used, the way the shells are fried, the ratio that makes the filling taste like hers and not like anyone else's — that never moves. We didn't inherit a recipe, we inherited a responsibility, and we take that seriously.

Where we give ourselves permission to play is everything around the filling — flavors, presentation, the seasonal specials, the way we tell the story of it. That's where "Traditionally Untraditional" comes from. We're not trying to modernize the recipe for a social media trend. We're trying to make sure that when people discover it for the first time, in 2026, in Los Angeles, it still feels like it did in Joe's great-grandmother's kitchen, just wrapped in something that's unmistakably us.

YVM: Dina joined not only as managing owner and lead investor but also competed alongside you on The Great Food Truck Race. What unique perspective did she bring that changed the way Bug & Bear's operates, and how has your partnership evolved since she came on board?

Matt: Dina brought decades of real restaurant experience with her — she's been running Pia's Ristorante in Michigan, her family's business since the 1950s, so she's lived through things Joe and I hadn't yet: generational transitions, tight margins, what it actually takes to keep a family food business alive for decades, not just years. She gave us a perspective we didn't have: the long view.

Competing with her on the show only deepened that. You learn who someone really is when you're exhausted, under pressure, racing across the country together. Dina brought steadiness in moments when Joe and I were running on instinct and adrenaline. Since coming on board, she's helped us build systems and think about longevity in a way that's made Bug & Bear's much stronger than it would've been as just the two of us.

 Image credit: Food Network.

YVM: The food truck industry has become incredibly competitive over the last

decade, with success depending as much on branding and customer engagement

as the food itself. After competing on The Great Food Truck Race, what is one

misconception people have about operating a successful food truck business?

Matt & Joe: That it's a lower-stakes version of a restaurant — like it's the "easy" way in. It's actually the opposite. You have less room for error, less space, less backup, and you're doing all of it in public, in real time, in front of customers. There's no back office to retreat to when something breaks.

People also assume the food is the whole business. It's maybe half of it. The other half is logistics, permitting, weather, mechanical issues, and figuring out how to build genuine community from a moving vehicle. The trucks that succeed long-term aren't just making great food, they're making people feel something every single time, which is honestly harder to do consistently than in a restaurant with four walls and a host stand.

YVM: Reality competition shows often compress weeks of experiences into just a few episodes. Was there a moment during filming that audiences might not fully appreciate because it happened behind the scenes, but that had a lasting impact on your journey?

Matt & Joe: The show compresses eight days into forty-five minutes, so nobody sees this part — but every single night after filming wrapped, the three of us would pile into Dina's hotel room and debrief. We'd talk through what worked, what didn't, strategize for the next day's challenge. But it became so much more than strategy sessions. We ate together, we laughed, we cried, we worked through disagreements and miscommunications that come up naturally when you're exhausted and under that kind of pressure.

Those nights are honestly what people don't get to see — not the challenges, not the driving, but three people choosing to keep showing up for each other after the cameras stopped rolling. We came out of that experience so much stronger as a team because of that time in Dina's hotel room, not despite the hard moments but because we didn't run from them.

YVM: West Hollywood has a vibrant food scene with no shortage of cafés and dessert shops. What made it feel like the right place for Bug & Bear's first permanent home, and how do you hope to become part of that neighborhood?

Joe: West Hollywood has always felt like home to us — Matt actually worked at the SHAG store here years before Bug & Bear existed, so this neighborhood has history with us long before the trailer did. It's creative, walkable, and it's a community that has celebrated LGBTQ people for generations. As a married gay couple opening our first permanent space, that mattered enormously to us.

We didn't want to just open a shop that people drive past. We wanted to be part of the daily rhythm of the street — the place neighbors duck into for a coffee before work, or bring their kids after school. West Hollywood is a place where people actually walk around and know their local spots, and we wanted Bug & Bear to become one of those spots, not just a destination people visit once.

YVM: As you prepare to open your first permanent café, it feels like Bug & Bear's is entering a whole new chapter. Years from now, what do you hope people say Bug & Bear's represents, not just as a food business, but as a reflection of your values, your relationship, and the community you've created? What kind of experience did you want people to have that simply wasn't possible through a food truck?

Matt: We hope people say Bug & Bear's is proof that you can build something that scales without losing its soul — that you don't have to choose between growing a business and staying warm, human, and rooted in family. The name itself comes from what we call each other, so at its core, this has never really been a cannoli company. It's an extension of our marriage, put out into the world for other people to be part of.

With the café, we finally get to build a physical version of that world. Somewhere Josh's art and our story live in every corner, somewhere people don't just grab a dessert and leave, but actually sit, linger, feel like they've stepped into somewhere that was made with real love. A truck can give people a great five minutes. A home gives people a place to come back to. That's what we wanted the café to be — not the next step for the brand, but the place where the feeling we've always tried to create finally has four walls around it.

And this is really just the beginning for us. Our goal has always been bigger than one truck or one café — we want people all over the country, and eventually all over the world, to get to experience that same warmth and family. We want Bug & Bear's to be something you can find far from West Hollywood, but that still feels exactly like home the moment you walk in. We're not just trying to make it accessible, we're trying to seal it into people's memory — to become part of someone's nostalgia the way Joe's great-grandmother's recipe became part of ours.

 Image credit: Food Network.