A few months ago my workplace agreed to have a food truck a day come to our location. Because of my close relationship with the Sacramento food trucks, I was asked to schedule them. My association also means that I'm able to get the newest trucks as soon as they hit the streets. But like any new restaurant, food trucks need a month or so to learn the ropes and make adjustments.

Any decent restaurant critic will not go out and give a thorough review of a new restaurant until it has been open a few months. Restaurants need to time to tweak the menus, train their servers, and figure out bugs in their system. 

The same is true with food trucks. I would argue that they sometimes have a more difficult first couple of months than restaurants do. After all, not only do they have to deal with the food/menu issues, but they have to learn the ropes of where they can park legally, securing bookings, estimating inventory correctly so they don't run out of an item while on the road, getting quick on order-to-service times, and loading and unloading their trucks each night.

On Friday when I wrote about the success of the food truck talks I said that I had always had a dream that Sacramento could be an example for other cities. But I guess my statement might have been misleading. My happiness of the day was for the fact that we came to a compromise that makes things better than the silly 30 minute rule we have now. The new ordinances are far from being glorious examples for everywhere. I understand the need for a government to have ordinances, but still...

First off, there's still the distance rule from restaurants. I am a firm believer that - if your restaurant can't compete against a food truck, you shouldn't be in business. Seriously, if a restaurant's food and service isn't enough to keep the customers coming in, they need to reassess themselves and stop blaming a nearby food truck. 

I still argue that there are the customers who are in the mood for sitting down being served, drinking alcohol, and lounging with friends. They are different than the customer who hasn't got a lot of time or money to spend and wants to grab something from a truck. Sure a person can be both, but on any given day they are one or the other.

I think a private property owner should be able to have a truck park on their property and see no reason for there to be a "no return rule for 72 hours" except that it was a compromise with the restaurant/business owners.

What I am super excited about is the pilot of up to five food pods. There's already a property picked with so many possibilities. The plans call for something that, done properly, could create a pod that can be an example for other cities. More on that at a later date.

Cities throughout California and the country struggle with food truck ordinances. Every day there are news articles on this city or that talking about them. Restaurant owners complain in every city or town.  In California, there have been lawsuits because State law actually trumps local law so that, in reality, cities have no right to make ordinances for anything except for health and safety. Cities have already lost battles in court because there are no health and safety reasons for distance from a restaurant.

But Cities don't like lawsuits and trucks (and the public) want change sooner rather than later. That means compromise.  Compromise means that not everyone is happy and got what they wanted, but they can live with a deal. Friday's ordinance deal will be reviewed at certain marks in the future. Things can always change. 

So to be clear, the new Sacramento ordinances aren't perfect and aren't shining examples for the State or country, but they are better than what we have now.

When I started writing about the food truck industry/trend two years ago I had a silly dream. That, starting with a blank slate and using bits and pieces of ordinances from other cities, Sacramento could piece together the best set of ordinances in the State. As the Capitol, that we could be an example for other cities to look at in this nationwide struggle of food trucks, restaurants, and Cities across the nation.

Six months ago I would have told you it was never going to happen. That all sides were at a stalemate and nothing was getting accomplished. Every meeting that we had, the same arguments were being hashed out again and again. I think a big turning point was when discussions started to take place with Councilmen Shenirer and Fong getting involved. And, although some may not agree, I personally think part of it did have to do with the break off of the NorCal (now CalMFA) trucks from SactoMoFo.

God willing and fingers crossed, we will have some great, new ordinances in place this fall. Today we left a City meeting in record time - just over an hour. All sides were happy. I even hugged Randy Paragary and told him that I was happy that I could stop my personal boycott of his restaurants. I say fingers crossed because it's not legit yet. We still have to formally go to the City's Law & Legislation Committee and then on to the full City Council. The timelime looks to be Law & Leg on September 18th and then Council a few weeks after that.

I will provide a quick summation of what was agreed upon. This does not include lots of detail items that will be built into the language.

Currently the situation is that trucks can only be at a street location for 30 minutes at a time. They have not been allowed on private property at all - even if the owner gave the O.K.

The City has been split into zones. There is a long swath through the Grid of J, K, and L streets.  In that zone they can stay 1.5 hours and must be 400 feet from another restaurant. The rest of the Grid and City is 2.5 hours on the street, with distance differences per zone.

Regarding private property, they can now go (with owners permission) for 5 hours total and no truck can return to that location for 72 hours. If there is a special event, there can be waivers.

Here's the one I have been championing since the beginning - food pods! There will be a pilot of up to 5 food pods throughout the City. For those unfamiliar, it's like a food court for trucks. A private property is built up with amenities such as seating, ATM, bathrooms, wifi, etc. Trucks can safely park there for a shift or all day. They become happening, hip places to hang out. Such pods are popular in Portland and Austin where they have been shown to decrease crime and increase property values. (To see pictures of the SF SOMA Streatfood Pod, click the link.)
My piece, "Mobile Food Pods Revitalize Neighborhoods" here.

The Sacramento food pods must be run by an Association. That's an important reason why the CalMFA was formed. Association(s) will be in charge of scheduling and maintaining the pods.

All of these items and ordinances will be reviewed at a six month and one year mark.

Perhaps my dream is coming true! Especially when you see the first food pod being developed. Maybe my dream of being a model for the State can be extended to be a model for the nation. Wouldn't that be nice?

Please read part 2: More Thoughts on Food Truck Ordinances

One can't help but be impressed by La Cocina and its participants. Many were gathered last Thursday for a preview press event for the SF Street Food Festival coming up on August 18th. Along with tasty nibbles, there were participants with stories and ambitions for a successful future in food.

I first learned of La Cocina, an incubator kitchen, in 2010. (Please read my 2010 post on La Cocina and its operations.) A fast recap, La Cocina is an organization and commercial kitchen that assists immigrant and low income women to start food based businesses. They provide training in marketing, packaging, licenses and permits, and much more. The program has two tracts: prepared foods (catering, restaurants, mobile food vending) and packaged foods for retail sale. 

There are phases that each participant goes through. First is a thorough application process after which the successful candidate enters the pre-incubation period. During pre-incubation they learn about marketing, fine tuning their concept, financing, and more. The next phase is incubation where they actually start the business after getting assistance with permitting and investors. Finally they graduate after their business has achieved a secure, sustainable point and the business can now survive on its own. 

That's right. When the out-of-town food trucks come for the big SactoMoFo events, I stock up. SactoMoFo4 in April? I ate truck food for three days. After all, these trucks only come to town once in a while and I get to them in the City even less. Here are the items that I get and save to eat over the following couple of days.

First you need to be prepared. I am lucky in that I live two blocks from the event site and so I go home a few times during the day. Better my own bathroom than those porta-potties! But if you are not close by, bring an ice chest with those freezer ice blocks to keep it cool. After all, it gets hot in the summer. You also need a variety of baggies or plastic containers to put everything.

Here are the things I always get that last well.

I love the steamed buns from the Chairman Truck. These actually do keep well for the next day. Place them into a plastic container for careful storage. When you are ready to reheat them, put them in a microwave steamer with just a little bit of water to steam, and then nuke them for a minute. They revive just great. If you don't own a microwave steamer, I would plate them and drape a wet paper towel over them and then nuke them.

El Porteno's empanadas are an easy one to keep. Sure the pastry suffers a little, but overall they keep and reheat really well.

A Curry Up Now or Red Truck Tahoe Indian burrito keeps really well also. They are wrapped up tightly in foil. I bet you could even freeze a couple without much problem.

Hapa SF's sisig and lumpia will survive a day or two, if you can keep yourself from eating them.

These are just a few of my favorites that you can count on me getting tomorrow.

On Wednesday KCRA Channel 3 aired a story regarding food truck safety with the emphasis on how many fail health inspections. In typical TV news fashion, all of the teasers were making it sound scandalous, dangerous, and scary.  And more typical still, it only showed the issues they wanted to emphasize without giving all sides of a three dimensional picture.  So below are some points I would like to make.

1. This story does not distinguish between old style "roach coach" catering trucks and the new gourmet trucks. All of the shots focused on gourmet trucks and there were none of catering trucks. What I want to know is what was the ratio of failures between old school catering trucks versus gourmet? I suspect that, should you break them down into further distinctions, the catering trucks are where the higher percentage of violations occurred. (While I agree with Stitches n Dishes that ALL trucks should be passing inspections, I'm still curious to see if there is a difference in violation occurrences between the two types. And I still take issue with the KCRA's only showing gourmet trucks.)

2. The story fails to mention that whenever there are special events, such as SactoMoFo or Concert in the Park, that the trucks get inspected again. So even though they might officially get inspected only twice a year, in reality they could be inspected six or more times a year depending on how many special events they participate in. 

2b. They get inspected for every county they operate in. In the case of Krushburger, Drewski's, and others, they have permits from not only Sacramento County, but also Placer, and Yolo counties. So they are getting inspected by those health officials as well. In that regard, they're getting inspected way more than restaurants are.

3. The story fails to distinguish the levels of failure in health inspections, whether they be trucks or restaurants. Here in Sacramento a restaurant can get their placard in Green/Pass (everything is good to go), Yellow/Conditional Pass (minor violations that must be fixed within 24-72 hours and then reinspected), and Red/Closure (fail!). When you read a health inspection, which everyone can do via the county website, you can see the level of violations.  

It is important to note that a business can get a Yellow/Conditional Pass notice and continue to sell. They are not forced to close down completely while they fix things. To my knowledge, trucks have always gotten yellow notices. Now I went in to do some random inquiries on the database myself. I won't name restaurants, but the first one I pulled up (in Old Sac) got a Yellow, a Green, a Yellow, and a Green in the span of one week in February. 

What are Yellow violations? Things like the refrigerator not staying at the proper temperature. Fix the thermostat so it chills properly. Or not having the proper separation of hand washing versus dish washing. One thing that restaurants will have that I doubt very much you will ever see in a truck report: pests. Because trucks are cleaned out and stored every night in a licensed commissary, they are not going to be breeding grounds for roaches and rats. I'll pay $20 to anyone who supplies me an inspection notice for any Sacramento gourmet level truck that has signs of pests.


I know that we gourmet truck fans know the truth and won't let KCRA's or any other news story scare us away. Most people have the brains to know that TV stations just want ratings and they will tease and slant a news story to get you to tune in. Where it does a disservice is to those who aren't familiar with gourmet trucks. 


Restaurants and trucks fail inspections, usually only at a Yellow level. If gourmet trucks have higher citation rates it is more likely because they are actually being inspected more frequently, not less, than restaurants.


Don't forget my other site: sacfoodtrucks.net

Added note: I didn't put it up above because I don't think it should be seen as a reason or excuse, but most of the trucks in Sacramento are used (exception is Krushburger's new truck and the upcoming new Drewski's truck). Old trucks mean a lot of breakdowns, both truck and kitchen. Drew alone has had to replace the transmission and engine of the truck and has ongoing issues with his fryer. But restaurants can have old equipment and breakdowns too and so another reason why I didn't include this point above.

I should have gotten more local trucks, but the crowds and lighting under the freeway sometimes made things difficult. This is my first complex video using titles, captions, music, and mixed media. Hope you like it.

One thing I noticed the last two SactoMoFos is that the lines are crazy from 11 to 3, but then from 3 to 6 there's really not an issue - short or no lines at all. The trade-off, the best stuff is sold out. So it's up to each person to decide - brave lines for the best food or wait til later for the shorter lines but slimmer pickings.

They say the wheels of government turn slowly. Or, to use another analogy, sometimes your issue gets put on the back burner while the City Council deals with the boil-over pot on the front burner with the mess of the Kings and the arena deal.

Next Saturday is SactoMoFo 4, which is almost exactly a year after the first one. When my ex-partners and I created SactoMoFo, it was to bring awareness to the restrictive food truck ordinances in Sacramento. To do that, we held the first Sacramento Mobile Food (SactoMoFo) Festival at Fremont Park. 

We knew that the best way to get the City's attention was to bring the new gourmet trucks together in one location. Next bring the citizens and the City Council and let them see the quality of the trucks and the food they provide as well as the popularity and the demand.

This week the California food trucks and food truck lovers were outraged to learn that Assemblyman Bill Monning from Carmel had introduced Assembly Bill 1678. This bill would essentially ban food trucks within 1,500 feet of any elementary and secondary school from the hours of 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. And we aren't talking just 1,500 feet from the school building, but from the school property line. We all know how big some school campuses can be.

Why is AB 1678 ridiculous?

First, I find it rather interesting that Monning is from Carmel where I doubt they have more than one or two food trucks at all. What experience does he have with the modern food truck movement? How does his smaller constituency and district have any comparison to the major cities were the food truck movement is really taking place and where the urban landscape is completely different than his own?  My guess - the major city representatives knew better than to sponsor this bill and so it got handed off for Monning to put his name on it. 

Nutrition

The idea is that we are supposed to be ensuring that school children are getting fed nutritional food. Yet they still consider pizza a vegetable because of the tomato sauce on it?  How about the McDonald's and the doughnut shop that's just a block away from the school? Are they serving nutritional food? With Monning's logic he should be writing legislation forcing the fast food places to serve only nutritional food from 6-6 if they are walking distance from a school. 

In reality the gourmet food trucks are selling foods made from whole, not processed, ingredients. They are buying fresh ingredients daily from many local farms and vendors. Monning is generalizing all trucks back to the 'roach coach' versions that still roam the streets. For him to blame all the trucks for poor quality food is unfair. The gourmet level trucks, in many cases, can be argued to be selling better quality food than some school cafeterias.

How is a fresh gyro made with lots of fresh produce and meat on a flatbread worse than a cafeteria's chicken nuggets?  How are burgers made by hand from quality ground beef bought from the best purveyors worse than a preformed burger patty made from scraped remnants from lower quality beef? 

Distance

The biggest problem with this bill is the 1,500 food distance. 1,500 feet is almost one third of a mile or equal to about 4 city blocks in Sacramento. That, in some ways, is not that great a distance, but when you use a map and draw circles around all the schools, you actually cover a lot of area.  The distance is 360 degrees around the school's property lines and you have to include elementary, middle, junior high, and high schools. You also have to include ALL schools - public and private. That's a lot of schools. Here is a map that shows how it effects Sacramento. It's really bad for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco where it pretty much wipes out anywhere for the trucks to roam.

Meanwhile there are plenty of brick and mortar places such as pot dispensaries, liquor stores, mini-markets, and, of course, fast food places all within the same distance. How is it different for a child to walk to the corner 7-11 to buy a Mountain Dew, Doritos, and Skittles than to a food truck for well-made sandwich?

Monning says it is unsafe for children to be walking off from campus. Well many schools are already closed campuses where the children are not supposed to leave anyway. Why punish office workers and laborers in the area from enjoying truck food?

AB 1678 is a classic poorly written, un-researched, politically motivated, industry subsidized bill. It needs to be killed.


Social media has worked against the banks, Verizon, Komen, and more. Let's make it work for the food trucks, who love and use social media for their livelihood. Let social media save their businesses. 

What do you consider to be an All American Sandwich? Burgers don't count. Those from Philadelphia would argue for a Philly cheesesteak sandwich. Their neighbors farther north might say it's the classic New York pastrami. Down in Louisiana, they'll fight for their po-boys. All of these can be found on the Coast to Coast truck now serving Sacramento. Their logo even depicts their nationwide theme - the Golden Gate Bridge connection to the Brooklyn Bridge.

All of the above mentioned sandwiches can be found on the regular menu and all cost $7. The truck also offers two sides: bacon mac n cheese and sweet potato fries. A combo meal with a sandwich, side, and drink is $10.


I finally got a chance to try their sandwiches over the course of a couple of weeks. First up, the shrimp po-boy. Coast to Coast offers the po-boy with either the shrimp or catfish. Wonder when they'll offer alligator. Anyway, there was a generous amount of medium sized shrimp that had a cornmeal coating and were nicely deep fried. They were drained properly so that the coating was crisp and the shrimp perfectly cooked - no greasiness. They sat on top of a freshly toasted roll with lettuce, tomato, and some spicy mayo. I wanted to have some extra kick, so I grabbed a small container of the spicy ketchup to add to it. The spicy mayo really isn't spicy - it's mild. Overall, a good sandwich.

The next week I wanted to try their Reuben. I love a good Reuben and find that it requires the proper balance of meat to cheese to sauerkraut. It's also got to come on nicely grilled bread and the contents need to be hot. I hate getting a grilled sandwich with cold insides! Not to worry at Coast to Coast. Their Reuben had nicely grilled pastrami that was added to the sandwich. It was not too much, and not too little. The balance of meat, cheese, and kraut was just right in my book. I often ask for extra Thousand Island on the side, but didn't need it here. My only comment was I would have liked the bread grilled more than the light toasting it was. But the marble rye certainly is an attractive bread choice.

I also ordered the bacon mac n cheese which had been unavailable the week before. A standard mac n cheese with bits of chopped bacon on top. I found the mac n cheese a bit bland and suggested that a hit of cayenne pepper would brighten it up a bit.

I asked about their American theme because I would really love to see them add a Vietnamese banh mi. I was told that they would probably add World sandwiches as specials and so the banh mi would definitely make an appearance. Honestly, banh mis should be on regular menus because I can rarely turn down the opportunity to eat one when it is offered on a sandwiches-only menu.

If you are a sandwich lover, seek them out. You can track all the trucks on the Sac Food Truck Tracker. 

Over the last couple of months we got some new food trucks on the streets of Sacramento. One of them is Fuzion Eatz, which started out in the county last July and hit the City of Sacramento streets around Christmas.

Business partners Jeremy Lopez and Nathan Sawyer see the truck as the road to one or more brick and mortar restaurants. Like many truck owners nationwide, they use the trucks to build brand recognition and customer loyalty before getting into an actual physical location. Sawyer and Lopez decided that they wanted to go with a fusion idea where they could mix flavors and foods together. 

It was at SactoMoFo3 that I first tried their food. The truck serves a selection of gyros and a couple of burgers on their standard menu.

Back in April SactoMoFo was a bit chaotic, being the giant success it was. It was our first mobile food festival and so many people didn't know what to expect. I've been to many mobile food events now and here are my best tips for you.

Go as a team! The biggest tip of all. Not a huge team, but one of about 4-5 people. You should all get into different lines and order enough to share with your group. The reason you only want about four people is that some trucks will limit the amount of food you can order at one time. If you had a team of 10 but were only allowed to order enough food for four, that would be hard to share.

Go early. It's all about lines and so I'd much rather be at the front of the line then at the back of a 2 hour line.

Bring utensils and containers. It makes it easier to share, but I also happen to like to order enough so that I can eat things later or the next day. I can only eat so much and if there are 22 vendors, there is no way I could eat it all while there.

Bring chairs. This is not always allowed, but for events that are on concrete with no place to sit, this is a big one.

Bring small bills. Help the trucks out so that there's not a problem with them having to run to a bank for change to break $20s, etc. It also makes the lines go faster.

The last thing isn't really a tip because it happens naturally at these events - Make friends with those around you. In fact, this is one of the things I love best about food trucks. People socialize while in line and waiting for their food. There's a camaraderie that is so awesome. When was the last time you chatted up all the tables around you at a restaurant? Nope, it's food trucks that create this social atmosphere and that we want more of here in Sacramento.

Have a great time!

Updated info at bottom re: current fees

You can forget the cupcake wedding cakes, today's hot thing is to have food truck catering at your wedding.

I get contacted frequently to act as a go-between when people are inquiring about food truck catering for a wedding or charity event. I just give advice on which food trucks are out there, what they specialize in, and help with the exchange of contact information. Often times, though, I hear a bit of disappointment later when it turns out a party couldn't book a food truck.

The problem is that food trucks, like all businesses, have to think in terms of money. They have a lot to consider when planning their schedules. In terms of food truck catering for an event, here are two things they consider that you, the client, might not have.

Days Off - Hey, food trucks need days off too. Most tend to take Sundays and Mondays off. It has to be really worth their while to get them to schedule a booking on one of their days off. Currently the Sacramento trucks have single crews each. That means they are all working long hours, often 12+ hour days, and sometimes even seven days straight. Not fun. I know that Krushburger is trying to get their second truck out on the road, so they will have more flexibility in the future.

Profitability - How many guests at the wedding or charity event versus how much they would make roaming their usual spots that day. If a food truck has a spot or route that they know they are going to be able to make $1500, then they might not be interested in a 100 guest wedding where they will only be making $800.

Then there are the shared events where a food truck is competing for sales with other vendors/trucks. It's the same mentality I had when I sold Pampered Chef and someone would host a Holiday sales party with Avon, Partylite, Cookie Lee, etc all at the same party. Instead of getting 20 sales from a party I would have done solo, I would only get 5 sales because people were splitting their purchases amongst all the vendors. It wasn't worth my time and I eventually stopped doing them. 

Same goes for the food trucks. In a perfect world they want you to buy a complete meal from them, not split your money with one item from them and another from someone else. (Note that roundups are different thing altogether.) Therefore, if you plan on having a few vendors at your event, you can be sure the question posed to you will be, "How many people do you expect to attend?" The food trucks usually want about 200 people per vendor. 

This is not to say that you won't be able to get a food truck for your 50 person birthday party. It just depends on a number of factors, the above which are only a couple of them. I will say that you should not limit yourself to thinking of only the gourmet, non-taco food trucks. There are lots of quality, authentic taco trucks that should be considered for bookings as well.

• The minimum a truck will usually consider is $1000.
• You should think of a per person cost of about $20 each.
• That said, a 50 person party would be the $1000 minimum.

This is not a solid rule. If things are slow a truck might consider going lower.

Puffettes, chimney cakes, and wonton poppers were some of the new street food I got to try at Eat the Street last week in Honolulu. As expected, I found a lot of new items that I had not seen at any of the mainland street vendors I've visited over the last couple of years. And just like Off the Grid and SactoMoFo, people came out in droves to experience a great variety of food in this temporary mobile food pod/event.


Put on by Poni Askew of Streetgrindz, Eat the Street (ETS) happens on the last Friday of the month. It includes the participation of food trucks as well as other street food vendors and has everything from shaved ice to herb encrusted lamb lollipops. With over 30 vendors, there was plenty to choose from.


There were a lot of great things about this event. It was held on a parking lot about the size of a city block, so there was plenty of room for all of the people and for the lines. There was also a lot of tables, both with seating and some standup.

Ask any two lunch wagons on Oahu what the truck ordinances are and you get different answers.

As I discussed in my last post on Hawaiian Lunch Wagons, the food truck culture has grown up over decades from a way to get meals to fields and construction sites to a modern mixture of old style lunch wagons and new style gourmet trucks. Along with this sense of tradition is the "hang loose" mentality of Hawaiians. This has created an "anything goes" approach to the truck scene which has both good and bad points to it.

What you don't really see in Hawaii are trucks roaming the streets. Almost every truck I saw was parked on private property. In this regard, Oahu is more like Portland than Sacramento or San Francisco. In some cases you will even see them set up with awnings, tables, and chairs for patrons to eat their meals at. So far this is by choice of the trucks themselves versus a perk thrown in by the property owners like is often seen in Portland.

 

"I get confused when you say food truck because here we call them lunch wagons." This was from my tablemate at dinner the other night (sorry, forgot your name, my bad). This woman grew up here in Honolulu and gave me some interesting perspective on the food truck history here. I had already arrived at the conclusion that it's a cultural thing, she just reinforced it.

Lunch wagons have been around on the islands for decades. My tablemate explained to me that when she was growing up, there were still many trucks used as mobile stores. There were few stores on the island and so trucks would come to your neighborhood with anything from produce to fabric to household items. Vending trucks were a familiar sight and as they came down the street, some would generate the same kind of excitement that we associate with ice cream trucks attracting kids today.

To be quite honest, there is so much to say about the Hawaiian food truck scene that I'm having a hard time figuring out how I want to put it into an article. In the meantime, here are a couple of collages of the Honolulu trucks I've encountered so far, and these are just the ones I took time to snap pics of. 

The first collage is of the two trucks at the University of Hawaii. The second are trucks found on lots throughout downtown.  I'm heading off to Aloha Stadium to see some more tomorrow and then, of course, is Eat the Street on Friday, Hawaii's equivalent of Off the Grid with about 30 trucks in one spot.

I'm also still trying to hook up with local truck advocates so that I can learn more about the ordinances and what does and doesn't work here. Suffice it to say, each truck I talk to seems to have a different understanding of the rules. I guess it's that laid back Hawaiian culture where no one seems to really care all that much about the rules. 

A couple of things to note from the pictures - first is that they convert whatever they can get their hands on, be it a bus, a delivery van, or a limo bus. Second is that most of these vehicles are not the spiffy, sharp looking trucks like our Drewski's or Wicked 'Wich.

Plenty more to come, including the famous Giovanni's shrimp truck I ate at today on the north shore. Stay tuned.