BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 A new business is set to touch down in Bethlehem this weekend.<\/p>\n
It’s not quite a plane and not quite a food truck, it’s more of a fusion of the two.<\/p>\n
George Awad’s grand experiment is about to take flight.<\/p>\n
“So we’re inside of an airplane fuselage,” Awad said.<\/p>\n
Awad’s mobile kitchen was built from a 1996 McDonnell Douglas MD-90 passenger plane, which he purchased for $16,000. It has been rechristened “Sook Airways.”<\/p>\n
“I wanted to inspire people to step outside their comfort zone, and I wanted to do that for myself as well, and that’s like a big mission of mine,” Awad said.<\/p>\n
Awad is of Syrian descent, and his father was a master electrician in the United Arab Emirates. His inspiration for the business came during a trip to Thailand.<\/p>\n
“It’s like the whole street food culture (in Thailand) is just bustling and there is so much happening, it just invigorates you,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Sook” is a fitting name– meaning “happy” in Thai and “street market” in Arabic. Their mission statement? Live sweeter.<\/p>\n
The family will serve its first batch of mango sticky rice to the public on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I mean, crazy enough, I came from a physics background at Lehigh,” Awad said. “This is not something that I majored in or even had experience in. I mean, I had zero food industry experience.”<\/p>\n
The head-turning design already has people taking notice.<\/p>\n
“My first impression is wow. Original. Never seen anything like it,” said Ricky Racz, manager of the Wooden Match and the Matchplatz.<\/p>\n
“What if my employees are inspired now\u2014the people who see the plane, the people who buy from us mango sticky rice? Hey, you can do anything. You can come from any background and do something,” Awad said.<\/p>\n
Sook Airways has landed at the Matchplatz at the Wooden Match, adjacent to Musikfest, and will remain open through Aug. 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 A new business is set to touch down in Bethlehem this weekend. It’s not quite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391,22777],"class_list":["post-255092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area","tag-musikfest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}