Mr. Murphy’s has been serving up stuffed potatoes and more all over mid-Missouri since July 2019. The iconic food truck depicts a picturesque mural of the missouri highways and interestates highlighting some of the truck’s most frequented cities.

Owner Jheron Nunnelly grew up in Mexico, graduated from Mexico High School in 2007 and his father worked at the ADM Soybean Meal Plant here in town, so when it came time for Mr. Murphy’s to expand and lay down some roots, he brought his business home. 

“I never thought I was going to be in the food truck industry; it just kind of happened,” says Nunnelly. 

It all started with a date night activity Nunnelly’s wife came up with after being inspired by  something she found on Pinterest. Together, they created a restaurant menu with unique baked potato toppings as a joke, not knowing that they had just laid the foundation for their future. 

Nunnelly was already well seasoned in the culinary industry. When he lived in Mexico, he worked at a few fast food restaurants including Taco Bell, Hardees and McDonalds.

“When I moved to Columbia I started getting into scratch cooking,” says Nunnelly. 

There, he worked at Houlihan's, Jazz, Sophia’s and was the culinary specialist at Lucky’s in charge of the deli, cheese department and café. 

Eventually, Nunnelly decided to try his hand at owning a business starting with a catering company called Food Party, which he ran for a few years catering weddings, parties and other events in and around Columbia.

Finally, his two worlds collided when he was offered a job by the food bank working with No Kid Hungry. The food bank offered to help secure the funding to start up a food truck if Nunnelly ran the program all summer.  

“Once the program was over, I had my own food truck,” says Nunelly.

The original food truck was a small 6-by-9 trailer that he quickly outgrew and replaced with a bigger trailer which, if you look really closely, bears a tribute to the original truck in its mural. Mr. Murphey’s Stuffed Potatoes food truck is still on the road but Nunnelly also opened the doors to his new brick and mortar location at 112 S Washington St. on Nov. 1.

Nunnelly still loves scratch cooking and feels real, fresh ingredients are a given because at the end of the day, it’s all about delivering a perfect entreé.

“I like to cook so if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it myself,” says Nunnelly. “I just like to create art.”

The restaurant has one in-house smoker and one additional smoker Nunnelly occasionally brings out for reinforcements. In one week, he can go through 24 pork butts, six cases of chicken and about 80 pounds of ground beef.

“There’s a lot that goes into the potatoes,” says Nunnelly.

Right now, Nunelly’s favorite item on the menu is the “hot chick” - fried chicken on a baked potato with ranch, jalapeños and bacon.

“Everything tastes good on a potato,” says Nunnely. And really, who can argue with that?