Food trucks set up shop in neighborhoods for a break from cooking, safe pickup

NEWTON, Mass. — One of the big culinary trends over the past 10 years has been the popularity of food trucks.

Like so many businesses, they've been stuck in neutral during the shutdown. But now, some trucks aren't waiting for people to come to them, they're shifting gears and heading directly to the people.

Firing up the grill. It's what Mark Bryson of Binge BBQ likes to do with his food truck. But the pandemic pulled the rug out from under him just as he was approaching his busy season.

"We had all our big festivals and events cancelled, weddings, graduations, you know all types of events have pretty much been cancelled for the summer," he said.

Overall, Bryson was losing about 40 percent of his revenue, so he was pretty happy to hear about the StrEATs program.

"What can we do, how can we pivot?" Food Truck Festivals of America's Janet Presnky explained. "So, as opposed to bringing thousands of people to the food truck, we said maybe we can could bring one food truck to thousands of people."

For the last decade, Food Truck Festivals of America has organized huge gatherings of trucks and hungry people all over the country.

As a full calendar of events for 2020 got cancelled, the Watertown company was looking for a way to keep the trucks they work with busy.

"We came up with this concept of the neighborhood program, an intimate program that was COVID friendly, pre-order-online only, no cash passes hands, gloves, masked, sanitized," she explained.

Customers have to pick an exact time slot to get their orders.

"We go out of our ways to not to have a crowd, yet still have enough people to make it feel like a happening," Prensky said.

That has real appeal for some Newton residents.

"We needed something to bring our neighborhood together because we do spent a lot of time together and people were so sad being stuck inside," Shari Malyn said.

She heard about the program and signed her neighborhood up, even volunteering her driveway.

"It has just been super easy, all reward, made so many people happy, made it really easy for those parents who were juggling work and kids to take a break one night a week," Malyn said.

Bryson is happy Neighborhood StrEATs is keeping him and his workers busy, and he likes serving customers in a new way.

"Anything to bring communities and neighborhoods together is a great thing, and barbecue is always good for that," he said.

The food trucks don’t do the same volume that they did before the pandemic, but they can still fill 150 to 200 orders over a couple of hours.

If you’re interested in having a food truck come to your neighborhood, you can sign up on their website.

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