“Cupcakes! Come over and grab some cupcakes!” an employee of Cupkates yelled out, summoning a scurry of fellow food truck workers from under their colorful awnings.
By 9:00, the sun had set and the patrons – an eccentric mix of young hipster couples, families with trailing children and greyhounds, and foodie high school students – had mostly dispersed.
Now, the action really began. Exhausted from four hours of serving snow cones and tacos, the owners and employees mingled amongst themselves, chatting and sharing the excess food. The setting – Off the Grid – is a congregation of around ten food trucks on Shattuck and Rose in Berkeley.
Off the Grid was founded in June, 2010 by Matt Cohen. After returning from Asia inspired by the mobile food culture, he started a ramen truck in San Francisco. Soon, he began to help others establish their own food trucks. He developed connections with these other trucks and began organizing them, which eventually evolved into Off the Grid.
Off the Grid consists of about 40 trucks, about half of those in the Bay Area. They meet regularly in a variety of locations, including many in San Francisco, Marin, and, for the past three months, Berkeley. Not all 40 trucks attend each event; they rotate to provide customers with diverse culinary options.
“Off the Grid brings new wave food trucks together in one place. It’s convenient for customers to be able to visit one location and sample a bunch of local trucks, rather than chasing them down individually,” said Kate McEachern, owner of Cupkates.
To participate, trucks pay a small base fee to Off the Grid as well as city permits. Despite this, food trucks are much more economical than “brick and mortar locations” or restaurants.
In addition to being less expensive than restaurants, food trucks require a much smaller staff of around three to ten people. With so few people, the hours are long and relentless. McEachern’s staff, for example, works 12-18 hours a day, six days a week. According to McEachern, employees generally have “some professional culinary experience and an entrepreneurial work ethic.”
Justin Close and Jason Hoffman, owners of The Taco Guys, left over ten years of experience in the restaurant business to start their own food truck. Their reasoning: they were tired of “taking it from the man,” said Close.
They have found the mobile food business to be exhilarating, but exhausting. With the “complexity of a restaurant [and the] detail of a catering company,” there is “never an off time,” said Close.
In fact, Hoffman even claims to work in his sleep, when he “dreams up a lot of the tacos.” The Taco Guys prep for ten hours in their San Francisco kitchen Tuesday night and hit four or five locations and a variety of private events each week.
Olivia Pilz, who, along with her husband, started Hapa SF, explained that within a food truck “everyone does everything.” The couple established Hapa SF to make Filipino food more “friendly and accessible” in the Bay Area.
With five people crunched in one small space, it can be tight. While Pilz prefers it to a nine-to-five job, the work is undoubtedly overwhelming at times, especially as the mother of a three-year-old son. With both parents in the mobile food business, he too has carved out a role for himself: pretending to drive the truck.
As the food truck industry gains momentum, a strong culture is developing amongst the employees and owners. According to Close and Hoffman, Off the Grid is a tight community with a “small level of separation.”
Clientele – particularly high school students – enjoy the friendly atmosphere, accessibility, and unusual offerings. Although food trucks are hardly a new invention, Off the Grid has put a twist on them with its emphasis on gourmet, local, sustainable food. You can find Off the Grid Wednesday nights from 5:00 – 9:00 P.M. at Shattuck and Rose in Berkeley. For more information, visit their website: www.offthegridsf.com.
