Food truck wars have taken on a whole new meaning in L.A., where even the building security guards are getting into the act.
In New York, building security may call the cops to get food trucks to move, and might even say they are a terrorist threat, but in L.A., security guards are assaulting food truck fans and plugging parking meters with coins to keep food trucks from parking.
One of the main reasons municipalities give for not wanting food trucks on their streets is that it takes away business from brick-and-mortar restaurants who pay rent. But are food trucks really a threat to established food businesses? Restaurant and Institutions magazine asked seven chefs and food truck operators for their opinion on this subject. The general consensus was that restaurants and food trucks are two very different businesses, and serve customers looking for different types of experiences.
Roberto Santibañez, who owns The Taco Truck in Hoboken and Jersey City, NJ and also owns the restaurant Fonda in New York City says”You go to the food truck for one kind of experience and sit down at a restaurant for another kind of experience. We should all be aware of it and try to provide foods that are more accessible to people, but I think there are two different markets and times for each one.”
“Any competition, I always say, is good. Everybody gets a little bit sharper. When I came to my street we had five restaurants, and five years later we have 12 or 14 … Every time there’s a new restaurant coming, we get a little bit better.” said Bart Vandaele, chef-owner, Belga Café, Washington, D.C. [RI Mag]
However, some restaurants along the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles do not necessarily agree. Recently, Toshi’s Fresh Asian, an independent Asian takeout, and Organic-to-Go, a fast-casual chain based in Seattle, both closed on Wilshire Boulevard. The restaurants had been familiar lunch stops on the 5700 block of Wilshire, an area thick with office buildings and eateries that serve their occupants.
But the daily lunch scene in recent months has been visited by as many as eight food trucks that offer everything from barbecue to organic sandwiches to several kinds of Mexican and Korean food, often at low prices. To be sure, the new wave of food trucks has pressured brick-and-mortar restaurants all over the city. But the situation has escalated into a food fight along the Miracle Mile, where restaurants have enlisted a city councilman to get involved on their side.
“We’ve always had trucks out there, but their numbers have increased. We are absolutely hurting,” said Dennis Rohde, owner of the Baja Fresh franchise next to Toshi’s. He estimates that business is off 20 percent, forcing him to cut back employee hours. “When they’re directly across the street from your business, they catch people coming out of the offices. Many of them are interested in a quick lunch and the trucks can offer that for a cheaper price because they don’t pay rent, maintenance fees or the things we have to maintain.”
To offer an alternative to the food trucks, one landlord who was turned down by a hamburger restaurant said he expects to sign a lease with a national coffee house chain. So far, no specialty coffee trucks have shown up on the Miracle Mile. [LA Business Journal]
Richard Wilt, chef-partner of INC. Street Food in Roswell, GA sums it up perfectly – “I don’t think restaurants have anything to worry about unless they’re overpriced and not really seeing what people want.”
Our sentiments exactly.
THE SAGA CONTINUES…
Grillwalker in Berlin
War of the Wursts hits Berlin as Grillwalkers, with 4 pounds of propane on their back, portable grills, and wursts galore, traverse the city selling one of my favorite street foods.
As reported by the NY Times, the Grillwalker was invented by Bertram Rohloff in 1997 after being laid off from his job in hotel management. Mr. Rohloff now has 15 employees selling sausages around the city in teams of two; they take turns wearing the grill and reloading the sausages, rolls and condiments. Their mobility allows them to follow the crowds, showing up outside nightclubs, at major parades and even at union demonstrations, which Mr. Rohloff said were among the best places for business. Mr. Rohloff patented the design, but that has not discouraged imitators such as Grillrunners. At the beginning, there were some pretty serious arguments, but these days they keep their distance from each other. [NY Times]
On a related note, my favorite street wurst was in Vienna, where they used heated spikes to make a warm, tubular hole in the long roll, squirted ketchup or mustard on top, stuck in the wurst, then put a little more ketchup or mustard on top. It was the perfect mobile munchie.
Madison Square Park gets some new food stalls [NYT]
Biryani Cart gets grief from its neighbor, Cafe Europa [Midtown Lunch]
Non Sequitur gets into the food cart frenzy with a cart-toon
More reports of Mister Softee’s violent threats against rival ice cream trucks have surfaced. And this time the target is the infinitely superior ice cream purveyor Van Leeuwen, whose Twitter feed announces, “Truck had to leave midtown 
. There were 3 Mr. Softie Trucks threatening our drivers life. Scary stuff! Sorry guys, maybe another time.” Or maybe you just stay off Softee’s turf and your fancy trucks don’t accidentally burst into flames, capisce?
Reached for comment, Benjamin Van Leeuwen tells us that his driver, Travis, was being followed by three Mister Softee trucks as he tried to find a place to park near Lexington and 55th Street. When he pulled over, they surrounded him and “threatened to kill him” if he didn’t leave midtown. Van Leeuwen tells us, “They do that all the time,” but so far this is his company’s first brush with the Mister Softee mafia in midtown. He tells us that Travis considered calling police, but in the past they’ve been “really unhelpful” and reluctant to file a police report, and Travis wanted to get back to work.
Van Leeuwen adds, “It’s too bad that in this densely populated part of Manhattan, where so many people are stuck in boring jobs, they can’t get good ice cream and have to eat that stuff.” “Stuff” is certainly a polite way to describe Mister Softee’s frozen dessert product line. [Via Grub Street]
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