The Middletown native was heading to Dayton Children’s that day, with a full food truck for nurse’s week. He was heading up Germantown Road when a car pulled in front of him, Cantor said.
“There was not a chance in hell that I was going to be able to stop,” he said.
In an effort not to hit the car head-on, Cantor pulled to the side, ending up between a tree and a house.
“One foot to the left, I would have been in this lady’s living room, could have killed her,” he said. “One foot to the right, there was a two-foot thick tree that I was going to be in.”
The front of the other driver’s car was hit, but they walked away with no injuries.
Cantor will be in a neck brace for at least eight weeks.
“I don’t know what happens after that,” he said.
The BBQ food truck is the only source of income for Cantor and his wife, Kristen. They left their full-time jobs — Larry worked in IT and Kristen was a nurse — in July 2023 after running the food truck for about a year.
Originally, they started the food truck for fun. Cantor began smoking meats around 10 years ago. He always enjoyed cooking, though, and was accepted to two of the top culinary schools in the country.
The karaoke side of the food truck came from Cantor running karaoke in bars for some extra money. He thought it would set the food truck apart. They also make everything from scratch — sauces, rubs, cheese sauce for mac and cheese, everything.
The first year, they did one day a week, and the response was positive.
After that season, they were invited out to some big events, and they knew the small food bus they were working out of couldn’t handle that volume.
Cantor and his wife, Kristen, took out a small business loan for a bigger truck and trailer.
“I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but her,” Larry Cantor said.
Kristen Cantor grew up working in a restaurant, and Larry Cantor said half the menu comes from her ideas, like smoked peach cobbler and hillbilly eggrolls.
When Kristen Cantor first got the call, her first reaction was panic. In many ways, she said, the accident could have been worse.
Kristen Cantor and their youngest daughter would typically have been with Larry Cantor as he drove to Dayton Children’s that day to deliver food.
“It was a fluke they weren’t with me,” Larry Cantor said.
Their oldest daughter had a play that day, which kept Kristen Cantor and their young daughter at home.
“Had that not been decided, I feel like she could have died,” Kristen Cantor said of her youngest daughter.
The couple is thankful for this in many ways.
“There’s a thousand scenarios where it could have been even worse than it is now,” Kristen Cantor said.
Within a few days of Larry Cantor‘s accident, community support started rolling in.
Many local food trucks have donated 10% of sales to the Cantor family, and Gravel Road Brewing and Steel City Pizza recently held a benefit. Another friend, who runs the Twisted Greek Food Truck, started a GoFundMe for the family, which has raised more than $5,000.
“It’s just been overwhelming the support that we’ve seen from, not only the food truck community, but just our community and everyone around in general,” Cantor said. “We never really thought that we made that kind of impression on people, we just want to do what we like to do and just be good people.”
Larry Cantor said he did not expect the amount of support in “any way shape or form.”
“I can’t say how much I appreciate it,” he said. “We thought that when this happened, ‘It’s over.’”
He wants to return to BBQ in some way, but it comes down to how he recovers from his injuries.
“What we want to do is rebuild, come back even stronger than we did before because we’ve learned so much,” Larry Cantor said. “But I don’t know what the future is going to bring yet.”
The support from the community has kept the family going.
“This is something that we have been absolutely astounded by, the support, and we cannot wait to get back out in some form to feed people,” he said.
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