🔒Looking to control costs for operators, food truck parks take hold in Hartford area

There’s strength in numbers — or at least that’s what proponents of dedicated spaces for food trucks, also known as food truck parks, have come to believe.

GastroPark, which features a rotating lineup of food trucks as well as an in-house kitchen, bakery and coffee shop, does a thriving business on New Park Avenue in West Hartford, and two Hartford residents are working to bring a similar concept to their own neighborhood on the city’s west side, with plans to rehabilitate a vacant lot and make it a gathering place for high-quality food and live entertainment.

While food truck parks have been all the rage out West for years, the model, much like food trucks themselves, has just recently been making inroads into Connecticut, mainly due to economic considerations.

The food truck sector grew 13.2% from 2017 to 2022 and has evolved into a $1.2 billion industry nationwide, according to market research firm IBISWorld.

As of January 2022, there were 35,000 food trucks active in the U.S., IBISWorld data shows.

“Bringing together many different people helps offset the cost of running a brick-and-mortar operation,” said GastroPark co-founder Tate Norden. “The cost of doing business is always getting higher, and this is a way to empower small businesses.”

Norden, who started his own food truck back in 2015, approached West Hartford officials with the idea of opening what ultimately became GastroPark but ran into hurdles with zoning regulations, as well as concerns that food trucks would hurt brick-and-mortar establishments.

Years of conversations followed, as Norden worked to convince stakeholders that mobile food trucks would complement, not draw the spotlight from, traditional restaurants.

“Some people were saying this was going to harm the other restaurants, but it doesn’t have the volume to compete with those places on that scale,” he said.

Norden’s team eventually got permission to set up operations at a former auto shop on New Park Avenue, spending over $1 million to renovate the facility and grounds. A pool of much sought after food trucks was assembled, and Norden brought on in-house partners such as Perkatory Roasters, which set up a coffee shop in the complex, and Small State Provisions, which specializes in organic, old-fashioned breads and baked goods.

After a gradual opening over the course of a pandemic-marred 2020, GastroPark finally looks like what Norden had long envisioned — a casual place for friends to meet after work, or for families to gather for dinner.

“It’s just a great experience — it brings people together,” Norden said. “The food trucks are usually locally operated, and there’s a lot of pride that goes into their product, and the customers can tell that.”

In Norden’s view, it’s the long-standing economic issues facing the food truck industry — high costs, thin margins and limited volume — and not the COVID-19 pandemic that’s fueling a new interest in food truck park setups.

“The pandemic stimulated a need to be more creative in outdoor dining in Connecticut,” Norden said. “Towns were forced to become more flexible [about when and where they would allow food trucks.] So the idea was not born out of the pandemic, the pandemic just accelerated things that were already there and already in place.”

And with costs now rising across the board on almost everything touching the restaurant sector, an increasing number of entrepreneurs are turning to food trucks to realize their dreams.

“The food truck owners don’t have to mortgage their future on an expensive brick-and-mortar location of their own that may or may not work out,” he said. “This gives them more freedom.”

New opportunities

Quan and Rebeca Quach are working to bring the good food and conviviality on display at GastroPark to their own neighborhood, zeroing in on 510 Farmington Ave., a blank space on an otherwise commercialized stretch running through Hartford’s West End.

“The parking lot has been empty for years,” Quan Quach said. “And this is a great neighborhood. We live here and can walk [to the site], and there are always people out walking around. It just seemed like the ideal space.”

Quan Quach said he has been working at restaurants from the time he was 15, eventually moving up the ranks to bartender, manager and then owner. In 2012, he started a construction business that became his main focus, but found he couldn’t entirely shake the restaurant “bug” after visiting a food truck park in Texas.

“We saw how it brought the community together,” he said. “That got the ball rolling.”

In 2018, Quan opened a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern-themed food truck, and while it didn’t last, his plan for a dedicated food truck park continued to evolve, influenced significantly by the GastroPark.

The Quachs drew up a proposal for their food truck park and last month got approval from the city to move forward, with hopes of opening the park by the end of May.

They plan to have four food trucks at the park at a time, plus seating, chairs, a small stage for live music and a pergola in the middle of the property, which visitors could use to get out of the sun or rain, Rebeca Quach said. In keeping with the friendly neighborhood vibe the developers are aiming for, bike racks will be set up to encourage people to bike over, and dogs will be allowed inside.

If a liquor license is approved, Quan plans to bring in a decommissioned double-decker bus and set up a bar on its first level and rooftop seating on its second. That addition is expected by late summer.

To better define the space, the Quachs will put up fencing and a recycled “window wall,” made of repurposed windows, which will run along Farmington Avenue.

Like Norden, Quan said municipal officials have at times been suspicious of giving food trucks freer rein.

In Hartford, that stems from the large and sometimes chaotic gatherings that grew up around food trucks once based on Wethersfield Avenue, which served customers late into the night. City officials said the corridor was often mobbed with pedestrians, cars, motorbikes and ATVs.

The scene around Wethersfield Avenue prompted the Hartford City Council to pass a measure restricting food trucks from operating on most of the city’s public streets, and setting down closing times in areas where the trucks still are allowed to sell food.

But Quan Quach doesn’t see those problems hampering enthusiasm for his new effort, which will be more tightly controlled and fully in compliance with city codes.

“On the West Coast food truck parks are pretty popular, and food truck culture has just exploded over the last 10 years, so there’s demand for that here,” he said.