SALT LAKE CITY — Money saved while serving in Iraq enabled a local veteran to start a business with his wife while still in a war zone.

Dustin Romero and his wife have found success with the Curryer, a food cart that offers Indian cuisine in Salt Lake City. They were able to plan the business and get the cart running before he returned home.

"I got off the plane from Iraq and the next day I was working on the cart,” Romero said.

When Romero got his deployment notice in 2009, he and his then fiancee decided they wanted to invest the money he would receive from the military. He said the idea of running a food cart had been brewing for a while, so they decided to open a an Indian cart.

"It was a challenge we liked and so it was just kind of a natural fit," he said. "We liked the challenge, we liked Indian food and so that’s what we went with.”

They currently rotate through 10 different curry recipes and post which flavors they will offer each day they will be open on their Facebook page. The Tikka Masala is their most popular dish, so they sell it every day. The cart is open most days from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 300 S. Main St.

While Romero was still on deployment in Western Iraq, he found a cart on KSL.com and had his friend pick it up. He had someone modify the cart to add a tandoor oven as well as purchase a rice cooker and other supplies.

He said he tried to help with the project as much as he could from Iraq, planning with his wife and calling the health department and other government entities for the appropriate permits.

“I had Skype set up and had a really unreliable Internet connection, but I had one there in my room so I was able to call and communicate that way," he said. "I wouldn’t recommend anyone start a business from a war zone. It was a pain."

In the meantime, his now wife got to work researching recipes from the Internet, YouTube and cookbooks. By the time he came home from Iraq in 2011, his wife had already been operating the cart for a couple of months.

Romero said a mobile food business has its ups and downs and can be challenging, but that they have been able to use the cart as their sole source of income for a little over three years. He said their favorite part is seeing satisfied customers.

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Some variables like the weather can be hard to predict, but even on days with bad weather, customers will tell him they don't know how he does it, but that they're glad he and his wife opened the cart.

“I have to put on a lot of coats and clothes — it gets cold sometimes," he said. "But if we go out, people come.”

Romero said he is grateful for the opportunity to work with his wife every day.

“Some people have talked about how they couldn’t or wouldn’t (work with their spouse), but for us its like the best thing," Romero said. "It works really well. There are some times where we get in arguments or fight a little bit about it, but for the most part we’re really happy and we enjoy working together. We couldn’t see any other way to do it, honestly.”

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