BB-INT018 — Sofia Tremblay

[pause] Word of mouth, first. Which is... the only way anything reaches me, honestly. A friend — she does lighting for a lot of the nights I play — she'd been to the truck after a show and she wouldn't shut up about the brisket. And in my world, that's the real signal, tsé. Not an ad. Somebody in the scene saying "non, but actually, go." [pause] Then I found them on Instagram and, yeah. That was that.

Completely. Nobody's Googling at 2 a.m. You're leaving a venue, you're with six people, everyone's a little... elevated, and the question is just — where do we go. And whoever knows, knows. It travels by mouth. The Instagram is more like... confirmation. You already heard it's good, then you look and the feed makes it feel real. Or it doesn't.

[laughs softly] Okay. So — Montreal, late. You finish, you're hungry in this very specific way that only happens after you've been on your feet for hours. It's a ritual, that. The after. You don't want a sit-down thing, you want something in your hand that's good, that you eat standing on a corner in Mile End while everyone debriefs the night. [pause] BorderBlend fits that perfectly. When you can find it.

That's the whole problem, isn't it. [pause] It's a truck. It moves. So the question is never "is it good," it's "is it there, right now, and where." And that — the brand makes surprisingly hard. I go to the Montreal Instagram to check and half the time the last post is, like, eleven days old. So I genuinely cannot tell if they're open. If you're open tonight, tell me you're open tonight. C'est-à-dire — the silence reads as closed, even when you're not.

Yes. And this is the frustrating part — because I want to come. The intent is there. I'm standing there with people ready to spend money and I can't confirm you exist tonight, so we go to the place we know is open. Not because it's better. Because it's certain. [pause] You lose to certainty, not to quality.

I tried it once. It didn't tell me anything the sad Instagram wasn't already not telling me. [dry laugh] The menu on the app wasn't what was on the truck board, and it couldn't say where the truck actually was that night. So — same problem, different screen. I went back to just texting my friend "you at the truck? is it there?" A person is more reliable than the app, which... is a sentence a brand should not want to hear.

[long pause] Yeah. This one I feel more than I can... let me say it right. The national account is all English. The captions, the launches, the — everything. And I notice it every single time. Not because I can't read English, obviously I can. It's that it tells me something. It says this wasn't made for here. For us. It's Toronto talking, and Montreal is just... a market on a map to them.

It's a small exclusion but it's a real one. You know when something's translated late, or badly, or not at all — you feel like an afterthought. And in Quebec that's not a neutral feeling, that has history. [pause] I saw a comment on one of their posts, somebody in French basically saying "hello, we exist too," and — yeah. That's the feeling exactly. It's not anger. It's just... ah. Okay. I see where I am in the list.

That they see Montreal as a place with its own culture and not a franchise you paste the English onto. [pause] And it has to be Québécois French. Not the French from France — we can smell that instantly, it's almost worse than English, because it means you outsourced it to someone who's never been here. Do it in fr-CA, in the actual voice of the city, or... honestly don't bother, because half-doing it is its own kind of insult.

[pause] So I'm suspicious of fusion by default. Most of it's a gimmick — two cuisines in a headline to sell you a novelty, and it tastes like neither. But BorderBlend — the brisket, the Korean chicken one — it's done right. The flavours actually make sense together, they're not just... colliding for attention. That I respect. That's the difference between fusion as a marketing word and fusion as somebody who actually cooks. [pause] I'd put that on my story. The gimmick version I'd never touch.

Of course. But quietly, in my way — a story, the wrapper, the salsa verde, the corner we ended up on. My scene watches those. That's more valuable to a brand than any billboard, and it costs them nothing. [pause] But — I'll only tag them if the tag feels alive. If I look at their page and it's a graveyard, tagging feels like shouting into an empty room. The dormancy kills the sharing too. It all connects.

Exactly. I'm doing the marketing for them, essentially, for free, out of genuine affection. The least they can do is be there on the other end. Post. Answer. Exist in French. Show me the truck's out tonight. [pause] Meet me halfway, tsé.

[pause] Okay. Real answer. Location drops. If there were a thing that told me, late — "the Mile End truck is parked on Saint-Viateur till 3" — I would subscribe to that in a heartbeat. That solves my actual problem. That's not marketing, that's service.

Late-night specifically. Nobody serves the 1 a.m. crowd information. And then — insider things. Seasonal previews, the new menu before it drops, a "you're on the list" feeling for people in the scene. I'd value access over discounts, honestly. Make me feel like I know something before the room does. That's currency for someone like me. [pause] And bilingual. All of it in French too, real French. If the loyalty thing came to me English-only I'd — that's the whole point, non? You'd be inviting me in and speaking past me in the same breath.

[immediately] English-only. Instant. That's the make-or-break, that one. And spam — if it's three "ORDER NOW" pushes a day with the little fire emojis, I'm gone, I don't care how good the brisket is. [pause] The tone matters as much as the language. I want it to feel like a friend in the scene texting me a tip, not a brand shouting a promo. Get the register wrong and it doesn't matter what language it's in.

[long pause] ...You already have the food, and you have people like me doing your word of mouth for free. Don't lose us over two things you could fix tomorrow — tell us where the truck is, and speak to us in our own language, properly. [pause] That's not a complaint. That's me telling you how to keep me.

[laughs] Merci. Come find the truck after. If you can figure out where it is.

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