As most people into food trucks know, this Saturday, August 20th, there will be at least 30 mobile food vendors at the South Street Seaport for Parked!. In addition to a great assemblage of food vendors, there will be a beer garden, live bands and DJs, activities for kids and live cooking demos.
This is the 4th year for Parked!, which has grown from 5 vendors to over 30. It was originally in BKLYN Yard, then last year Parked! was on Governor’s Island (which we attended), and the lines were crazy long.
This year Parked! has some strategies that will hopefully keep the lines to a manageable level for people attending the event.
Click through for a list of this year’s vendors, as well as how Parked! hopes to keep down the lines.
Please excuse us if we missed one or two, but the list of participants at Parked! include Big D’s Grub, CoolHaus, The Cinnamon Snail, Cupcake Crew, Feed Your Hole, Frites ‘n’ Meats, Gorilla Cheese, Go Burger, JoyRide, Kelvin Natural Slush Co, Kimchi Taco, La Belle Torte, La Cense Burger, Mexicue Food Truck, Red Hook Lobster Pound, Taim Falafel, The Treats Truck, Valduccis Pizza, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, Wafels & Dinges, Green Pirate Juice, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck, Schnitzel and Things, Desi Food Truck, Two Pitas In A Pod, Wooly’s Ice, and Snap!
After reading our initial post about Parked! last week, Athos of Two Pitas In A Pod, who will be at Parked!, told us some of the ways they hope to keep lines down.
Parked! asked Two Pitas to only bring 2 items, which in their case will be a $5 and an $8 falafel. If each truck only has 2 main items to sell, this should keep things moving along faster at each truck. Although there will be fewer choices at each truck, there will be a panoply of choices among the 30-odd trucks.
Thanks for the info Athos. Hopefully this will help Parked! reduce the ridiculous lines that plagues many of these food truck events.
One other idea they had was the Parked! Pass. For $50, the Parked! Pass will get you a dedicated VIP express line at each truck, 10 small bites from 10 trucks, and a free drink.
A couple of provisos for the Parked! Pass: They are only selling 500 of them, and the Parked! Pass is only good from 5-7pm. Parked! Passes are already on at Ticketfly. We just went to Ticketfly, and VIP tickets are still available as of this writing.
We’re not sure how much 500 VIP passes will cut down the lines, but increasing the number of food trucks to at least 30 is an ambitious move that may spread the crowd out enough to make this event decent.
By more than doubling the number of vendors from last year and reducing each truck’s menu, there is a chance this could be an enjoyable event. You at least have to give Mean Red props for trying some new strategies after last year’s fiasco.
The best thing you can do to avoid long lines is to GET THERE EARLY! The festival runs from 10am to 8pm, so you have your marching orders. And you don’t have to deal with the Governor’s Island Ferry either.
