It’s been an up and down cycle for food truck vendors who saw huge popularity growth in recent years, but then inflationary pressures on them and their customers have created difficulties this summer.
Reporters Aimee Arellano-Adame, Camille Flye, Derek Raridon and Tony Yun look at the local cycle of food trucks through the popular arc of Food Truck Fridays.
Fifteen years ago, there were only a half a dozen food trucks dishing up food on a daily basis in northern Nevada, and incentives were meager to do so.
In 2011, Steve Schroder, an events manager and business marketer at the time, was hired by a company who had recently purchased a food truck. When that company was handed their ordinance from the city on how they could utilize the truck, it found that the ordinance was very restrictive. The company wound up scraping the idea of bringing their food out to the public due to this.
Through all of this turmoil, though, a light was sparked in Schroder, who now had the idea to bring a food truck culture like those in Portland, San Antonio and the Bay Area to the city of Reno. In that journey, Schroder said he had three goals in mind: to give locals a place to hang out on a Friday night, to make a place for families to have fun with their friends and to grow the food truck industry in Reno as a whole.
Schroder, now the owner of Reno Street Eats, has grown the food truck population from six trucks to over 200 and organizes over 8,000 people coming down to Idlewild Park every Friday during the summer to eat together, sit down, relax, and enjoy music, while vendors make money and offer delicious specialties.
“I’m just grateful this is happening,” Schroder said. “I love doing this every Friday, and I love seeing friends and family smiling and eating food. Food can transcend language, culture and religion. You see somebody with food and you ask them ‘where did you get that?’ It can turn into sitting together and having a conversation that you would never have before,” he said.
It’s a summer institution now in Reno, but Schroeder’s preparation for the festivities actually begin in January when the application to participate as a vendor becomes available for 30 days. In mid- February, he then files through the applicants to find the fifty best food trucks that offer the greatest variety of options. This year, one hundred food trucks applied, forcing competitors to prove their worth.
By March, they send out agreements, while April and May are dedicated to collaboration with REMSA, Reno PD, Washoe County Health and ten other city organizations to get the necessary permissions to run the event. Finally, after six months, Steve and his team see the fruits of their labor in June, as they begin to run Food Truck Friday from then until the end of August.
Weekly maintenance is required as well. The fifty food trucks require guidance on where to go, and at what time. To do this, Steve has a miniature model of Idlewild park which he uses to organize the food trucks for the week. Every Friday, his team goes out at 1 p.m. to mark all the spots with chalk, and within a couple hours, the designated food trucks will be in their proper places getting ready to serve the attendees for the evening.
Unlike most large-scale events, which typically last two days, Food Truck Friday operates on a nine-hour time frame. Despite the crunch, each week, they create a consistently well-run experience for Reno locals to enjoy every Friday every summer.
Challenges now also include rampant inflation, both for the vendors and customers.
Since the pandemic began, eateries have felt pressure to adapt to an evolving dining culture while food prices continue to climb, including at Food Truck Friday.
Vendors have had to get creative and persevere, and consumers have had to pick and choose more carefully where they want to spend their money.
“We’re trying to accommodate to the public and everybody the best way we can,” Kim Daniels, the owner of the Bone Appetit Shrimp said. “It’s a balance, you know, it’s very difficult with the price of goods and all that, but we’re making it work.”
Daniels said that her shrimp skewers priced at $20 a pop still sell through the roof every Friday. Due to sell-out successes such as this, Daniels says that they’re able to mitigate the prices of other menu items by running different specials, such as their $5 meal deal which includes a pulled pork slider and a drink, or their $25 meat lovers’ combo.
When asked how she felt about the increase in menu prices possibly resulting in fewer customers supporting her business, Daniels didn’t seem too troubled.
“People eat no matter what, that’s what we’ve discovered,” she said. “So, you know, whenever people complain about the prices, I challenge you to go to the grocery store and cook a meal and you’ll see that we’re right in line with everybody else.”
Throughout its 13 years of operation, Food Truck Fridays have become synonymous with the Reno community, both in the event itself and the vendors that attend. A vendor one might recognize at Food Truck Friday is “Crazy D’s”, locally owned by Daniil Fedunov. There are currently three locations scattered across the city, with two more on the way soon.
Fedunov opened the local chicken restaurant right before the COVID pandemic. While the shutdown might have caused some rethinking of business strategies, it did not stop the growth of the business as a whole.
Fedunov has been a part of Food Truck Friday for the last two summers. He says being involved in this type of event allows the franchise to become more known by the community and also allows them to have more exposure to individuals that might not go out of their way to stop by one of their current locations.
A regular attendee of Food Truck Friday is Tonya Flores, a Reno resident for over 10 years. She said that the weekly event is one of her favorite summer activities to partake in, as she loves to head down to Idlewild on Fridays with her family and try food from new places.
Although prices have seen an increase as of late and the lines are still long, Flores doesn’t mind either of the inconveniences, she says “usually if it’s long it will attract me, it must be that good if there’s a huge line”. She usually will order smaller things from the vendors she finds interesting and share it with her family, enjoying the time with her kids while being able to try all of the places that pique her taste buds.
