Back in January, Hayley Crawford had just finished up a busy day with her food truck, Hayley’s Food Truck. She had spent the day serving pastries and coffee in Platte City and had returned to her Weston home to clean and park the food truck in the shop next to her home. A single mom of three, she had a rare evening where all the kids went to bed easily and on time and she was looking forward to getting a full night’s sleep — something she didn’t often get.
Unfortunately, it would not be a restful night.
At 1:30 a.m., Hayley’s phone rang to a strange number. She ignored it and tried to return to sleep, but then heard pounding on her front door. Outside was an Evergy employee.
“He said our shop was on fire,” recalls Hayley. “I shot up and I'm like, “What?,” and then I run outside and come out my front door and then look down and I can see the red underneath [the walls of the shop.]”
The man had already called the fire department but Hayley was worried about a potential explosion, as her food truck was filled with gasoline and there was a large propane tank next to the shop. The Evergy employee helped her load her three sleeping children and animals into her van, which they drove to the end of her driveway. Three local fire departments responded to the scene, working until 5:30 a.m. fighting the big, hot fire in the metal building.
Hayley’s Food Truck — her livelihood, which she had launched just six months prior to provide for her children — was gone.
Back in 2020, Hayley was a stay-at-home mom of two children. Though she wasn’t using her degree from culinary school professionally while raising her family, she always found ways to bake.
“Once I started being a stay-at-home mom, I loved being a stay-at-home mom, and I felt like my calling was to be a mom, but I also desperately missed feeding people,” says Hayley. “That's when I started the side hustle of cakes and pastries and then just having friends over for a playdate with brunch. But this was definitely always in the back of my mind.”
But by 2021, Hayley had a newborn baby and was newly divorced. She was now faced with the task of providing for her three kids after years as a stay-at-home mom and started cobbling together odd jobs, like working at a window company and decorating cakes at Price Chopper.
“When you have a newborn, they physically need me to survive so I didn't have time to self-destruct,” says Hayley. “I let myself feel the feelings and have moments and stuff but really, it was just like, you have to keep going.”
Hayley’s goal was to find something sustainable to provide for her kids that could also allow her to spend as much time with them as possible. The obviously answer — the one Hayley had always felt called to — was feeding people. But how?
After researching a few different options, Hayley bought a food truck with the help of her mom, Susie and her stepfather, Alan. Hayley’s mother joked that the financial help she gave Hayley to start her business was an early inheritance.
The food truck launched July 2022 and the next few months were busy with festivals and pop-ups where Hayley served breakfast, often wearing her baby Jolene strapped to her back. She specialized in pop tarts, breakfast burritos and coffee. Six months later, the food truck and the income it brought were gone, lost in the fire, along with the shop where it was stored where Hayley kids had celebrated all their birthdays. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
Hayley had been living a rollercoaster for the last 18 months, and the life she had just rebuilt had just gone up in literal flames. But Hayley’s friends, family and her community weren’t going to let her hard work all end there.
“Really after that all of my intimate group of friends just rallied and showed up immediately,” says Hayley about the days after the fire. “And then one of my good friends, Sarah, decided to start the GoFundMe, and they were kind of all like, you know, you can't say no, we're just gonna do this.”
Hayley’s friends and family stepped in to help. Her GoFundMe page started to gain traction within the community and soon, they had raised over $28,000 to help Hayley and her kids. Hayley was flabbergasted by the outpouring of support.
While Hayley did have insurance on her business, the donated money is what kept Hayley’s family – which she was now the breadwinner of — afloat while she figured out her next steps.
“It was just a relief, too, that I had some time to not worry for a minute because I felt like for basically a year and a half that's all I'd been doing,” says Hayley.
The money had a profound impact on Hayley, who is not one to ask for help easily. It was also an amazing lesson to show her kids about people showing up.
“I tell my kids, you get to see firsthand what it is to be truly blessed by our neighbors and our family and our friends,” says Hayley. “So, you know, that was a life lesson — if a tragedy has to come, to be able to get to experience that firsthand and have my kids see that firsthand was pretty neat.”
With room to breathe without worrying so much about income, Hayley set to work figuring out the next chapter — again. An opportunity came up in Weston, her hometown, in a space next to Green Grass Cattle Company and Mercantile off of 45 Highway. The space had formerly been a pizza shop and a bakery and the owners, Mary and Gary Haer, were so welcoming and supportive of Hayley opening a bakery next door to their store. It felt like the perfect fit.
Hayley’s Eatery opened in August — the next phase in Hayley’s journey feeding people. She serves breakfast and lunch from 6:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and Saturday 7:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. in a sweet café-like space full of tables, decorated with her kids’ art on the walls. While her menu changes with the seasons, her breakfast burritos and biscuits and gravy are popular for breakfast, and she has sandwiches for lunch. She recently served an indulgent Elvis-style French toast complete with peanut butter, caramelized bananas and bacon, and they could only be described as decadent.
After all Hayley’s been through, everything came full circle in a recent moment inside her restaurant. She’d been open just under a month and she looked out to a full dining room on a Friday morning and felt her heart overwhelm with gratitude and love for her community.
“I got really teary on Friday here, “says Hayley. “It was really raining outside and the dining room was just full. Seeing that happen and having the dining room full and people laughing and having important conversations — I'm a very privately emotional person, but it makes me really emotional and just really happy. And then for my kids to be in it with me and see it and hopefully, them learning that we can still be joyful in hard times and that we can come out stronger as long as we work hard. Everyone has their things, but for us [it’s] keeping our focus on God and our community and each other.”
Hayley’s Eatery
facebook.com/hayleyseatery
17985 MO-45, Weston, MO 64098
“I tell my kids, you get to see firsthand what it is to be truly blessed by our neighbors and our family and our friends,” - Hayley.
“Having the dining room full and people laughing and having important conversations — I'm a very privately emotional person, but it makes me really emotional and just really happy.