The story of Le Rac Shack by Sam Hope
From raclette holidays in the Alps to a horse trailer in Haslemere. A founder's story...
Where it started
I set up the company in 2011, the winter after I left university. It began as Savoie Faire, a broad Alpine food business, but the dish that pulled the queue was raclette, so it became Le Rac Shack.
Some of my best holiday memories are of eating raclette with my French family in the Alps. The street food scene was busy and nobody seemed to be doing it. My business partner and I thought that was daft.
The festival years
From 2012 we took the trailer to food festivals, music festivals and markets, and the festivals turned out to be home. People had time to eat slowly, with a glass of wine in hand, and they were curious about food that wasn't another burger. Our first Glastonbury was in 2013, our last in 2022, with around forty festivals in between, including Isle of Wight, WOMAD, Wilderness and Camp Bestival.
My business partner left in 2016 and I carried on, with a small French and English crew. It was hard, joyful, exhausting work. Festival pitches are paid for months ahead, you prepare for thousands of portions, and you find out whether you made money weeks after you've packed down. By the late 2010s I was tired of the gamble.
The Raclette Bar, Clapham North
In December 2017 I took the brand indoors for a month. The Raclette Bar opened above a pub in Clapham North, billed as London's first restaurant dedicated to raclette. The deal was 90 minutes of endless cheese. It worked, it gave Masters of Melting some provenance, and the name later went on the trailer.
Counting the cost
By 2017 I was asking what a growing street food business was doing to the places it served, and I started measuring. Imported wheels of cheese, gas burning in fields every weekend and vans up and down the motorway did not make flattering numbers.
From 2019 to 2022 Le Rac Shack was carbon neutral, which I believe made it the first street food trailer in the UK to be. That certification has ended and I don't hold credits any more. The bigger decision was to stop chasing festivals. You can read where things stand today on the sustainability page.
Private events only
Glastonbury 2022 was my last festival, and I closed the festival side in 2023. Since then I've catered private events only, from The Raclette Bar, a converted 1980 Rice horse trailer: weddings, milestone birthdays, corporate parties and après-ski parties.
It's part-time now, around my sustainability advisory work, so I take 10 to 15 events a year, mostly Saturday evenings. The wheels are still 8kg and still from Annecy. The difference is that each one goes to a single event, with someone at the centre of it, rather than a field of strangers. As of 2026, I think Le Rac Shack is the only mobile raclette caterer of its kind left in the UK.
Planning an event?
Tell me your date and I'll tell you what I can do.
Glastonbury 2014