Mobile munchies: Post-pandemic, food trucks flock to new metro locations
Jul. 6—Mary Smith was eating the most unlikely result of the COVID pandemic.
"It's like State Fair food in a truck," said Smith, of Inver Grove Heights, as she enjoyed a grilled cheese sandwich recently. She bought it in a parking lot from a food truck, one of dozens sweeping across the metro area as the COVID epidemic recedes.
"We've been stuck inside for one-and-a-half years," said Smith, between bites of the Big Meltie she bought from the Big Cheese truck. "Now we can get out."
Food trucks are invading places they've never been before — libraries, schools, hardware stores and even Arbor Glen Senior Living in Lake Elmo, where Smith ate her grilled cheese.
BRANCHING OUT
The fleet of munchie-mobiles is expanding quickly. About 25 new food trucks have joined the Minnesota Food Truck Association so far this year, for a total of 127 members.
Association director Jessica Jenkins-Fast said that before COVID-19 hit Minnesota, food trucks were generally an urban phenomenon.
They would park in packs, feeding downtown workers on their lunch breaks. Or they would cluster at art or music festivals.
Then the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020, and the doors of the state's restaurants slammed shut. But food trucks adapted. They were seen by some customers as safer, with outdoor and socially-distant dining.
And unlike the bricks-and-mortar competition, they were mobile. As the employees learned to work from their homes, the trucks no longer gathered downtown — but disbursed.
They rolled into parking lots of Fleet Farm, Cub Foods and Home Depot, said Jenkins-Fast. They even were invited to places that sold food, such as brew-pubs.
LOBSTER TRUCK WITH A BROWNIE TRUCK
They began to coordinate, instead of competing. Jenkins-Fast said, for example, that an entrée truck and a dessert truck would appear side by side.
"We had a lobster truck go out with a brownie truck, and they killed it," said Jenkins-Fast.
As the pandemic lifted this spring, the rolling entrepreneurs rushed into the business. The trucks now deliver a variety of cuisines and names, including Kabomlette, Yuniverse Foodie Waffles, It's 7 a.m. Somewhere, Original Hockey Mom Brownies and Hibachi Daruma.
Before COVID, the trucks were an add-on to festivals — almost an afterthought. Now they have become so popular they have their own festivals, including two 50-truck extravaganzas planned this summer by the Association.
The food truck operators find that even a single truck can create community gatherings in unheard-of locations. Arbor Glen began to experiment with the trucks this spring, and now hosts them every week.
"What better way to bring people together than over food?" said director Rachel Staven.
DRAWING IN WORKERS, PASSERSBY, HOME-BOUND FAMILIES
On Wednesday, the Big Cheese truck drew in workers, passing drivers, and home-bound families. Ashlee Schwartz jogged up, pushing two daughters in a twin-seat stroller.
"I don't have to cook, and the kids love it," said Schwartz. She could have gone to a restaurant for lunch, but preferred to walk about four blocks to the truck.
"It's easier, and I don't have to be at a restaurant" — she gazed at her daughters — "with two small kids."
Jackie Slomkowsky and 11-year-old son Tyler rolled up on bicycles.
"People come here like flies," she said. "What stay-at-home mom wants to make lunch every day?"
FOOD TRUCK FESTIVALS
The Minnesota Food Truck Association is sponsoring two 50-truck festivals with live music this summer:
In St. Paul, the festival will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. July 17 in the Union Depot, Parking Lot D, 392 East Kellogg Blvd.
In Anoka, a festival will be noon-10 p.m. Aug. 21, 2015 S. First Ave.
