Pandemic shifts food truck industry into parking gear

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This article was published 20/04/2020 (1973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While brick-and-mortar restaurants are hitting the road to get orders to customers, the local food truck industry has been all but parked for the season.

April is usually when Dora Gwendo would be plotting her summer schedule and preparing her truck for its annual inspection. She and her husband started Simba Safari Grill, an African-inspired food truck, in 2014 and normally work six or seven fairs and festivals a season. This year, however, the list of opportunities is dwindling.

“It looks like it’s going to be a quiet summer,” Gwendo said.

Nearly every major summer event in Manitoba has been cancelled or postponed to limit the spread of coronavirus, and the impact has been devastating for food truck operators who rely on large crowds to turn a profit.

The Simba truck can usually be found serving up samosas and masala fries to Osborne Street partygoers on Canada Day and hungry campers at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Both of those annual events have pulled the plug in the last week and Gwendo is now holding out hope for the fall.

The organizers of ManyFest are also hopeful their September street festival will go ahead, but vendor registration has been put on hold until further notice.

“We are still hoping ManyFest will be able to proceed as planned, however we will of course defer to city and provincial health officials to ensure we keep Manitobans safe,” said event planner Jason Smith via email.

In 2019, the event’s food truck competition attracted a record high of 53 participants.

Gwendo’s food truck isn’t insulated so participation in a September event would be weather-dependent and she’s not entirely convinced the public will be comfortable gathering by then.

“People may still be a little scared of going out into crowds, especially big crowds,” she said. “A successful festival is a festival where you have numbers.”

“It’s going to be unbelievable how many are not going to survive through this because it was already a very tough business”
– Mark Langtry, owner of Habanero Sombrero

The food truck is a passion project for Gwendo, who has a career outside of the service industry. While she’s hopeful about the future and is using this downtime to work on a cooking blog and develop other parts of her business, she’s worried about food truck-preneurs who depend on the seasonal income.

Mark Langtry falls into the latter category. He and his wife Shannon started the Mexican food truck, Habanero Sombrero, in 2013. While Shannon works in health care, Langtry’s sole source of income is the summer food truck circuit.

“We’re gonna have like absolutely no income for the entire season,” he said. “It’s going to be unbelievable how many are not going to survive through this because it was already a very tough business.”

Between weather, Manitoba’s short summer and the cost of truck maintenance, Langtry has seen many food trucks come and go over the last seven years.

“Nobody realizes how much work is involved in running a food truck,” he said, adding that he believes Food Network reality shows gave the public unrealistic ideas about the industry.

Aside from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the federal relief funding for businesses doesn’t appear to apply to those, like Langtry, who don’t have employees and run a small seasonal operation.

In addition to attending large festivals, like Pride Winnipeg, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival and TD Winnipeg International Jazz Festival, Langtry parks the Habanero Sombrero truck on Broadway during weekdays to serve downtown office workers. However, he hasn’t applied for a permit from the city yet because of cost and because the lunchtime crowds had already been declining pre-pandemic.

“I can’t imagine how poor they would be this year when there isn’t people downtown,” he said.

The city didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment on whether the parking authority is currently distributing street or parking permits to mobile food vendors for this summer.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney