By Rebecca Lefever | Of Pots and Pens
If a festival of food trucks appeared in your neighborhood, you too might go crazy at the thought of stuffing your belly with the samples of delicious fare. So when I heard that several people were organizing such an event in my own town, I was filled with joy. FoodStruck is coming to York 5 to 9 p.m. Oct. 11 at Pershing Avenue between Market and Philadelphia streets.
One of the organizers and local photographer Philip Given took a few moments earlier this week to answer some questions on what this event means for our bellies and the community.
Q: What is FoodStruck?
A: foodstruck is a Food Truck Block Party taking over Pershing Ave. in downtown York on October 11th. We’re closing the street and popping up with food trucks, YorShoppes craft/vintage market and live music.
Q: How did this event come to be and who is the driving force behind it?
A: The food truck “party” isn’t a new idea. Most major cities and some small cities have a monthly or weekly event where all of the trucks gather and serve food all at the same time. We’re just modeling ourselves after that. Our team is a group of folks dedicated to making York City even cooler than it already is. JJ Sheffer, Matt & Jess Ensminger, Sean Kenny, Meagan Feeser, my wife Allison and myself.
Q: What can people expect at the event?
A: They can expect to eat! We’d love for people to feel that they can try things from two or three or four trucks throughout the night while enjoying music and shopping between bites. There will be a wide variety of trucks and I know I personally am going to do my best to try something from each one. We’ll have everything from spring rolls to pizza to pork buns to sandwiches. They’ll be able to interact with the food truck owners who have traveled from Lancaster, Harrisburg, and beyond, as well as a few from here in York.
A: Aside from selfishly wanting to eat a bunch of delicious street food in the heart of our hometown, we also want to open up the conversation of food truck regulation in York City. As of now, the legislation is extremely limited. We hope that by showing city council what a demand there is for more street food, they will consider loosening some of their constraints to allow more business like this in, while still being respectful to local restaurants.
And of course, we want people to have a ton of fun. We are going to put our hearts and souls into marketing and delivering a great event. We know people say they want food trucks in York City; now is their chance to prove that the market is here.
Q: How does this benefit the community as well as the businesses involved?
A: Almost all of the event organizers own their own small businesses in York. Therefore, we recognize the importance of supporting the other “little guys” out there. In addition to patronizing the trucks themselves, we hope that this event (and the possibility of more street food in the future) will foster the creative culinary community downtown for both our established restaurants and those yet to come. It’s that old idea of many ships raising the level of the water so everyone benefits. We all boost each other.
Q: News of the FoodStruck is already making people hungry. If all goes well, do you expect similar events in the future?
A: We’d love to turn this into a recurring event and hope that the first one is successful enough to produce more in the future. We are blown away by the community support after the first week and are excited for the future.
A: We are sitting at six trucks right now and hope to have between eight and ten at the event. We want to make sure that the event is profitable for our trucks as well as being convenient and fun for the people who want to eat. Your readers should stay tuned for additional truck announcements and more festivities planned for the night.
http://ofpotsandpens.com/2013/08/09/foodstruck-a-food-truck-party-comes-to-york/
