Austin Daily Press started in late 2009 as a late-night food trailer in the Club DeVille parking lot at 900 Red River, next door to the Mohawk. Amy Hildenbrand and Cory Nunez grilled hot-pressed sandwiches and delivered them to people coming out of the bars and music venues, back when nobody else was solving that problem.
Sixteen years later we are a torta shop on East MLK with a patio full of dogs. The route from there to here is worth telling, because most of it explains the food.
The trailer years
The original idea was practical. Late night, live music, a lot of hungry people, and almost nothing to eat that traveled well. Pressed sandwiches could be wrapped, carried, and eaten standing up without wearing them.
In 2010 the trailer team competed on Season 1 of The Great Food Truck Race and made it through Week Four. That put ADP in front of an audience far bigger than Red River. The menu then was still pressed sandwiches. The tortas came later.
Club DeVille is gone now. That corner is Cheer Up Charlies.
How ADP became a torta shop
Dustin Knef and Chase Rushing took over the business in 2011. That is why you will occasionally see 2011 listed as our founding year. It was a change of hands, not a beginning.
The real turn came in the summer of 2012, when ADP partnered with Chef Reed Faitak. That is the moment the menu stopped being sandwiches and started being tortas. Reed used the classic Mexican sandwich as a vehicle for global flavors, and he took vegetables seriously at a time when most kitchens treated the vegetarian option as an apology.
Both of those things are still true here, and both of them are his.
The MLK store came together that same year. We announced it in July, the signage went up in September, and the first brick-and-mortar opened later in 2012 with a proper grand opening in February 2013. A small shop, but a real kitchen for the first time.
A second, larger location opened at 4620 East Cesar Chavez in Govalle in May 2018, with indoor seating, a bar, and a big patio. It closed in October 2021. If you find an old listing for it online, that is why. MLK is the only Austin Daily Press.
The part where a guy quits insurance
Hal Williams took over Austin Daily Press on September 16, 2023.
He got there sideways. Four years working restaurants through college in Waco, every job from server to manager, and then fifteen years in commercial insurance instead. The restaurant thing never quite went away.
He left at 35. As he puts it: "What did I have to lose? The worst thing that could happen was that it did not work out and I went back to the tried-and-true corporate insurance world."
He also knew exactly what he was missing. He had front-of-house and event experience. He had no idea how food actually gets made at volume. "How does the food get from the farm or the truck to the plate in a way that is consistent, cost-effective, and profitable? I decided to learn it."
So he enrolled at Austin Community College's culinary program in 2021, the first semester in the new Highland campus, and went from foundational classes through advanced pastry and baking. Then he took an internship at the Hilton Austin downtown and started on the line at $16 an hour, at 35, having never worked a restaurant kitchen outside of school.
He worked multiple outlets, then moved into the banquet kitchen, which is where large-scale production either works or falls apart in public. He came out of it a chef de partie running pastry and desserts for banquets.
That is the part of the résumé that shows up in your office lunch. The habit of planning backward from the moment guests eat, rather than forward from when the food is done, is a banquet habit. It is why our catering runs on prep sheets and pack-out checklists instead of hope.
Stewardship, not a reinvention
Hal is direct about what this is:
"I do not want to overstate what I created or turn this into a pedigree exercise. The current story is stewardship. I built the operational and production knowledge I was missing, then stepped into a brand with an existing culinary history and a community that cared about it."
A few months in, that last part became the whole point. "I was not merely buying a restaurant. People were genuinely attached to ADP. Part of my job was keeping something alive that already mattered to people."
What we are actually trying to be
A customer on DoorDash described us as "healthy-ish, indulgent-ish." That phrase already existed in our own brand guidelines, word for word, and he had never seen them. He just ate the food and arrived at it on his own.
That is the target. Not a health brand, not fast food. Bold, scratch-made flavors at a price a normal person pays on a Tuesday, with a plant-based option built around flavor instead of deprivation.
The way we get there is a system more than a recipe. Sauces, braises, and pickles made in house, arranged so the same core build works as a torta, as tacos, or as a bowl. Which means the person at your table avoiding bread eats the same food you do.
Or, as our regulars put it: it's that place with the jalapeño hushpuppies.
Common questions
When did Austin Daily Press open?
Late 2009, as a late-night food trailer at 900 Red River. The MLK brick-and-mortar came together in 2012, with a formal grand opening in February 2013.
Who owns Austin Daily Press?
Hal Williams, since September 16, 2023. Founded by Amy Hildenbrand and Cory Nunez in 2009, with Dustin Knef and Chase Rushing taking over in 2011.
Do you still have the East Cesar Chavez location?
No. The Govalle location at 4620 East Cesar Chavez closed in October 2021. 1900 E MLK is our only location. Old listings for Cesar Chavez are out of date.
Were you on The Great Food Truck Race?
Yes. The original trailer team competed on Season 1 in 2010 and made it through Week Four.
Where does the torta menu come from?
Chef Reed Faitak, starting in summer 2012. He shaped the torta-first identity and the serious treatment of vegetables and plant-based food. Both are still central to how we cook.
Where are you and when are you open?
1900 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Austin, TX 78702, at Chicon. Monday through Saturday, 11am to 10pm. Closed Sunday.
Come find us on MLK. Order online for pickup, or sit on the patio and take your time.