When George Zarate pulls into the parking lot of an industrial complex, everyone knows it. It’s the familiar honk of his El George Grill truck horn. Employees in nearby buildings quickly come milling out of their offices, and George opens for business. He flips up the side of the truck and a line quickly forms at the window where his wife Lupe starts preparing food and his daughter, also Lupe, starts taking orders.
Work is fast in the kitchen of a lunch truck. They’ve only got a certain amount of time allotted to be in a particular parking lot, and their customers have a certain amount of time to grab their food and get back to work. So the Lupes dance in the kitchen, smoothly passing each other as they shift between taking orders and preparing food. Pretty soon, something of a rhythm falls into place. The preparation is quick, but not rushed. The choreography is well rehearsed and expertly timed: a flip of a warm tortilla, a turn of a spoon, and the meat is in place. A sprinkle of cilantro, and a dollop of sauce, and then it’s to the window.
Food trucks—particularly gourmet trucks—are the latest trend in big cities, though there are few specialty food trucks in Northern Santa Barbara County. In Santa Maria, the majority of mobile lunch trucks serve Mexican fare. Whatever the reason the mobile gourmet phenomenon hasn’t caught on in this area, connoisseurs of food on the go still get their fill. Food trucks here are often well established—and, judging by the lines, are pretty popular, according to city officials.
While media often portray food trucks as being fun, creative work the owners longed to do, reality reveals that the work isn’t always that easy.
The Zarates have their first stop at 8:15 a.m., and they visit about 15 locations, hitting their last stop at 1:15 p.m. The morning starts early with prepping and shopping.
“Every morning we go to the store to buy veggies and other things we need,” the younger Lupe said. “Every day we forget something. And if you forget it, that’s it, you don’t have it.”
If it’s something they really need, they may ask another relative to bring it to them, but those people work too, so it’s not easy to get someone to run such an errand.
The inside of the Zarates’ truck is small but neat. Ingredients are tucked away in cupboards below and above the employees. On the wall next to the order windows is a picture of the younger Lupe’s daughters, and she proudly points it out: “Baby Sebastian is not in there, because he wasn’t born yet,” she said, referring to her son.
The special on this particular day is chile rellenos—an oft-requested favorite. Other days it may be fish tacos or enchiladas, which are one of the truck’s biggest sellers. All of the meals come from the elder Lupe’s recipe files.
Most of the cooking is done when the truck is parked, because of the dangers of mixing cooking and sudden stops.
“Right now C&D Zodiac is our biggest customer: 70 people, and they all want their food at the same time,” daughter Lupe said with a laugh that suggested more pride than complaint.
Location, location, location
Unlike the Zarates, who travel to several locations in a day, Guadalupe Zepeda operates his Mercado y Carneceria Su Mesa truck in mostly one location.
The farm fields off of Betteravia Road are often breezy, dusty, and quiet except for the occasional passing car. On a recent afternoon, Zepeda’s truck sat parked in an empty lot. Outside the truck, a few regulars sat around a small, white table, enjoying their lunch in the sun.
Zepeda said he’s operated the truck since 2004, and he has a loyal following. Not having a steady location to set up poses difficulty for him, however.
“It’s a little hard,” he said. “It’s OK if the people know where I’m parked. The problem is, I pay my permits, but the police [code compliance] still don’t let me park. So why do I pay the permits?”
Esequiel Moreno works in the city of Santa Maria’s Code Compliance department and can answer exactly why food trucks must be nomadic. While there are many regulations, the main restriction is the amount of time a food truck can remain at a location. Moreno said trucks can stay parked in a spot—given they have permission from the tenant—for 70 minutes. While it may make life difficult for food truck owners, the time limit makes for fair commerce.
The guidelines came about after complaints from brick-and-
mortar restaurants. Owners claimed the trucks had an unfair advantage because of low overhead and an ability to go where the customers are. Moreno said those reasons don’t justify prohibiting food trucks.
“It’s called commerce; they have the right to compete,” he said. “The plain fact is they are a business and they have the right to operate like any business—as long as they are abiding by the guidelines.”
He said most of the local food truck operators in Santa Maria do abide by those guidelines. And he added that they’re also well established and have a regular following.
“I can tell you every time I go to one to inspect, there is always a line,” Moreno said.
It is what it is
While operating a food truck may be a trendy business idea for some, or a hot solution to a lack of readily available gourmet food in the area, for others it’s a means to an end. It’s a way of life, and there’s no other option—it’s just what you do to make money.
Ask everyday workers in just about any industry what they like about their jobs, and they’ll likely tell you about the perks or how they’d always been passionate about going into that field. But pondering the question of what he likes about his job—owning and operating a lunch truck—Zepeda didn’t seem to understand the question.
“Parking here, this is a good place,” he said.
When a reporter asked the question again—this time through an interpreter—he reiterated: “I like this place. I park here.”
George Zarate responded to the question about operating his food truck by looking at his daughter, who’s more fluent in English.
“What?” he said.
She asked the question in Spanish: “What is your favorite thing about working here?” “Chile rellenos,” he answered. And it became clear that for some people, what they do isn’t about fulfilling a dream to become a business owner, nor making a career out of a passion for cooking. Sometimes it’s not even a choice over something else—because there isn’t a something else. For some entrepreneurs, it’s just a way to make ends meet.
After several attempts and various incarnations of the question, George finally understood what was being asked.
“Oh, I get to know more people,” he said, “and the day goes by really fast.”
“And he gets money every day,” daughter Lupe added. They both laughed.
It is a way of life for George and his family. He’s operated his current truck for 15 years with his wife and daughter. Before that, he had a smaller lunch truck that he also operated for about 15 years.
Feeding the masses
Not everyone needs to or has to operate a lunch truck for money. Some people want to. Hether Briggs is an entrepreneur who sees an opportunity to fill a need in the community. She’s been planning her gourmet bistro for about a year now; it will cater to wineries. The idea is two-fold: It gives winery visitors access to gourmet food and allows them to stay near the wineries while getting it, benefiting those businesses.
“It gives them longer time with the brand, which means they will develop a fond memory and stronger bond with the brand, which they then take with them home to Los Angeles or Orange County,” she said.
Briggs’s business is called Eat This, and she’ll focus on high-end cuisine. The plans for her truck include a design that looks like a cottage pulled behind a vehicle so the cab space isn’t taking up valuable kitchen space. That design also makes it easier for her to leave the mobile eatery at wineries if they want to simply rent it as a kitchen and provide their own chef. The cottage has a front porch that patrons can step up onto to place their order. She plans to run an eco-conscious mobile bistro with a focus on sourcing local food, while the spices would be imported from their respective regions for authenticity.
Briggs hoped to have her mobile bistro off the ground by this summer, but between the architect working on her truck and the permitting process, she wasn’t able to get on the docket in time and didn’t want to start her business in the slow winter season. She’s now hoping for a summer 2012 launch. Another setback involved restrictions to having commercial kitchens on an agriculture preserve, which applies to some vineyard properties.
She still gets inquiries on a weekly basis; people ask her where her food truck will be.
“I have to tell them it will be soon, but it’s not like I’m going to be parked on Ocean Avenue waiting for people to come buy foie gras or braised rabbit from me,” she said. “It won’t be viable to work that way.”
Briggs also thinks a mobile truck, in order to be viable, has to be run by the owner, because of the costs involved. That reality may prohibit chefs who have a brick-and-mortar restaurant from taking their cuisine on the road in the fashion of trendy food trucks in the bigger cities and paying staff to run it.
“I honestly think it doesn’t work out for you to be the owner and hire employees and have it run itself,” she explained. “It has to be something where you are willing to do the work. The payoff is hard; it needs to pencil out.”
Briggs is more than willing to do the work in much the same way Zepeda and the Zarates do. Along with her business background, she also has some culinary skills and a love of hospitality. Ultimately, she hopes to interweave her passion for food, culinary hospitality, and her love of coordinating events to make her mobile bistro a success.
In the meantime, she’s building her business by doing private catering and other culinary work—making it all a part of Eat This. She remains in constant contact with her investors and continues to work on her bistro concept.
The feedback she’s received so far tells her she’s doing the right thing and makes her confident that there’s a market for gourmet mobile food in this area—though she admits the idea is easier to get off the ground in bigger cities.
“There’s something in metropolitan cities, a vibe, that makes someone say ‘I’m going to jump off this bridge and do this and hope that somebody gets this hip, cool idea.’ Because it really is a leap of faith,” Briggs said.
Whether a leap of faith or all in a day’s work, feeding the masses takes a lot of effort.
“I guess it’s easy now. Everything is easy. I guess we’re used to it,” said the younger Lupe Zarate. “We see different people every day. It’s fun.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone hears breakfast coming. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 15-22, 2011.