Overview
Two years ago, the City of Sydney announced a program that would bring food trucks off the bitter Saturday morning soccer fields and into the nightlife of the inner city. The nine food trucks that patrol Sydney’s streets every weekend have become a very welcome fixture around town, with thousands of people every month rocking up to treat themselves to a vast array of dishes and cuisines from the varied vehicles parked around the place, and the locator app being downloaded 51,000 times.
Now, since the two-year trial period has come to an end, the City of Sydney has decided to give a massive thumbs up to the scheme and have pledged to expand the number of mobile street food vendors around town.
As the restaurant-on-the-run owners apply to ply their wares, what’s going to get Sydney into the street-food big leagues with cities like New York, Los Angeles and Paris? And, as the program progresses and expands, what does the future hold for our town and its mobile eateries?
50 NEW FOOD TRUCKS TO HIT THE STREETS
The City of Sydney Council have been working with the feedback from the street-food obsessed public to find out what it is that will make the program better, and the response has been pretty straightforward, according to Lana Zegura, the brains behind the management of the project. “The only improvement they want is for more trucks,” she says.
So more trucks are what we’ll get. The council plans to approve up to 50 more mobile canteens, with applications to open next month. However, a lot of people are jumping the gun, eager to claim their permit. “It’s looking very healthy,” says Zegura of the response to the news, “we’ve had over 600 enquiries so far.” Which is a lot.
The owners and operators of the trucks couldn’t agree more, in terms of the public response to the initial trial period. Simon Lawson, chef and operator of the Agape Organic Food Truck, has loved every second of his time behind the wheel. “I’m a chef, so I enjoy talking to people,” he says. “The public love it so much … there’s only been positive feedback from where we’ve been.”
PUTTING SYDNEY ON THAT GLOBAL MAP
Street food thrives all over the world, with hundreds of food trucks cooking up a storm all over the biggest cities, like New York, London and Paris. The hope is that our own expanding program to get more trucks on the street and more options in the hands of the public will get Sydney on that list of worldwide hot spots. “Sydney doesn’t have that street food culture," says Lawson, "but in time, it’ll become more popular.” That's something that the council bears in mind, too. Zegura hopes that the trucks, by providing more variety to more people than ever before, will “make us a global city, like New York or San Francisco”.
Given that the-late night options in Sydney don’t extend much past CBD bars and pubs, a continually expanding program of late-night alternatives to drinking can only help to cement Sydney as a truly global destination. According to Zegura, the program is "part of our over-arching OPEN Sydney strategy to make Sydney safer, more vibrant, and to provide more late-night food alternatives.” It’s this kind of policy that’s commonplace all over the world, and is becoming a bigger focus here at home.
THE LUNCH LET-DOWN
With more the number of trucks increasing more than five times, Sydney street food is set to become a whole lot more visible. But at the moment, the plan remains night-centric. It's the fight for city parking that's limiting the possibilities of trade. "It’d be nice to have more permanent lunch time spots,” says Lawson, but he recognises the issues behind this. More trucks need more parking spaces, and the large vehicles could cause heavy traffic issues in the more congestion-prone areas of the CBD. However, more open lunch time spot, such as parks, are being explored as options by the council. “The people managing the program are doing a great job,” he adds.
BEYOND THE CITY LIMITS
The City of Sydney only controls the food trucks in its own jurisdiction, but the good news is that councils all around the Greater Sydney region are looking into implementing their own, similar projects. Interest is growing all over. “We get people following our truck,” says Lawson, “even coming from way out west to eat.” Councils in Randwick, Liverpool and Parramatta are all exploring the possibility of hosting food trucks, which bodes well for the entire region, not just the CBD. The word is spreading, and we couldn’t be more pumped.