Atlanta NASCAR Chef fuels racing officials

ATLANTA - Those NASCAR cars come into the pits and get fueled up fast, but who is fueling the folks hosting the race?

The simple answer can be found in an Atlanta restaurant.

“It’s hard,” said Nicholas White.

If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know this feeling.

“Sometimes, it's Saturday, and I’m thinking it's Wednesday. Like my days of the week are all thrown off,” said White.

White works at Grub, a burger restaurant in Druid Hills, and work, you know how it is, it can get fast paced. However, no food job has the speed of his other gig. For almost two years now, on many weekends, you'll find White in Talladega or Dover, preparing food for NASCAR officials. The occasional driver Richard Petty stopped by recently.

“On the grill, grilling some veggies, he walks by, and he's like ‘Smells good, boss.’ I was like, ‘Thank you, sir,’” said White.

He went to school for finance, but a little piece of him always wanted to kind of be in the food world. He got a job in catering and when a friend told him NASCAR was looking for a new chef, he jumped on it.

“It’s all about making people happy. If they enjoy the menus you have, it's a sense of fulfillment,” said White. “Whatever you do, you want other people to appreciate it and enjoy.”

“They're usually the first ones in. If we're opening the garage at 6 a.m., they're probably here 3:30 in the morning,” said Barry Kern, NASCAR inspector.

“Being a sports fan and watching ESPN, my brother is a huge NASCAR fan, just watching the races here and there, but actually being there, you get a totally different feel for it,” said White.

The menus they work on change based on the season, the track, and what's available in stores. And they need to be available pretty much all day with NASCAR staffers and drivers, they are busy and tied to the track all weekend.

Who knows how long this job will last or what's next, but White said he feels fulfillment making NASCAR feel full.

“To enjoy your job and enjoy the people you work with, can't get any better than that,” said White.

So next time the cars are buzzing around the tracks, take on the tough turns, remember the Atlanta chef who is giving new meaning to the words “fast food.”