Elisa Figueroa
2012 L.A. Street Food Fest at the Rose Bowl

Six days post-Tacolandia is, maybe, more than enough rest to prep for the return of the largest gathering of street food purveyors in the Southland on Saturday, June 29. Returning to the Rose Bowl, this year’s fest has been pushed a month up, meant to avoid the sweltering heat of July as experienced in events past. (Although there’s no telling with the weather these days.)

Over 75 vendors — from food trucks to pop-ups to restaurants — are expected to show up. There will be appearances from the familiar, such as Grilled Cheese Truck, Wicked Kitchen, Bigmista’s BBQ, Starry Kitchen, Ceviche Project and Plant Food for People. There will also be quite a few new faces to the event as well, including Badmaash and D’elish at Tiara Cafe.The Ice Cream Social is making a return, with sweets from The Donut Snob, Peddler’s Creamery, Churros Calientes, The Cream’wich and Z Confections.

For those interested in beer and spirits, there will be a Singha Beer Garden — complete with kegs, four cocktail bar stations and wine tasting at the Cupcake Winery’s mobile lounge. Those in search of non-alcoholic refreshments can head to stands like Pressed Juicery, Honest Tea, Jarritos and ONE Coconut Water. Handsome Roasters and The Coffee Bean will provide caffeinated pick-me-ups.

Live bands will be performing while attendees partake in all the food and drink that comes with a ticket purchase. The band will be announced as the event draws closer.

There are a limited number of all-inclusive presale tickets available, capping at 5,000. General admission is $50 and VIP early admission costs $75. Tickets can be purchased at the event’s website and Eventbrite. Among the swag and perks included with a ticket, free parking and Uber ride discounts might be the best one of all.

More details will be released in the next few days — we’ll keep you posted.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2013/05/street_food_fest.php

(View video here )

Cousins Maine Lobster was the little food truck that could when it appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” but with the Barbara Corcoran seal of approval, the business has taken off faster than its founders ever imagined. Here, the founders break down their strategies for business growth.

When Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis went on ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank,” they really had nothing to lose. Perhaps that’s why investor extraordinaire Barbara Corcoran decided to take a chance on them.

“We were really comfortable with our current jobs, and didn’t need investors,” Lomac, 32, said. “We needed mentorship, contacts and growth.”

In other words, they were just the opposite of most of the entrepreneurs who appear on the show, begging for cash to get their business off the ground.

The duo grew up together in Maine, but parted ways as Lomac moved out to California for a career in real estate and Tselikis traveled to Boston for a job with a medical devices company.  In 2012, they decided to open Cousins Maine Lobster, a food truck that transplanted the fresh Maine lobster they grew up on out to the West Coast.

They certainly got their mentorship and growth—Corcoran invested $55,000 for a 15% stake in the company, which has since expanded to a second food truck an online marketplace that ships anywhere in the U.S., and a brick and mortar restaurant in Pasadena. But, they still haven’t touched the cash Corcoran gave them, because they “haven’t had to yet.”

Their growth over the past year has been extremely fast-paced, Tselikis, 27, said, but the cousins are up for the challenge.

“It doesn’t scare us at all,” he said. “It’s exciting. We are trying to really perfect it, and dial it in. Barbara has provided us with advice and insight, and we are workaholics. When someone presents us with something, we go 90 miles-an-hour one way towards it.”

Their truck drove into business in L.A. at just the right time in 2012, as the food truck industry was exploding in California. Some days, their truck has a line of 50-to-70 customers waiting for their famous lobster, and the cousins said they still try to work on their mobile restaurant every day, alongside the company’s 50 employees.

After making their rounds on T.V., the little lobster business that could did $250,000 in sales in just one day, they said.

“We went 100% into this, and were working 18-to-20-hour days,” Tselikis said. “We didn’t expect this [growth]—we thought we would just be an average business.”

But seeing the opportunities in front of them, the cousins are looking to capitalize strategically.

“Our mentality in opening this truck wasn’t to make millions, or to retire,” Lomac said. “We just thought it was a cool idea.  But now, we want Cousins to be what you think of when you think of lobster, just like Omaha is what you think of when you think of steaks.”

A potential cookbook is in the works, and the founders say franchising may be in their future.

“The growth is a challenge, and it’s exciting,” Tselikis said. “But we’re not saying yes to everything.”

And with Corcoran watching over them, it’s unlikely these “Shark Tank” survivors will be eaten alive anytime soon.

Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/04/15/shark-tank-cousins-maine-lobster/#ixzz2QfundX8c

http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/04/15/shark-tank-cousins-maine-lobster/

Pasadena’s own Gus’s BBQ has a new Smoker Trailer for rent. Want it for the Super Bowl?

We’ve officially entered Fun, Sports-Themed Foods Week — let’s throw an ironic ™ onto the end of that for laughs — which just happens to be the one week of the year that we see at least a dozen foodstuffs shaped into edible footballs and helmets and goalposts.

The fact is, if you’re throwing a Super Bowl party, you likely want snacks that your guests will remember, so going beyond opening a bag of corn chips is recommended. You can shape a meatloaf into a helmet, or you can rent an entire super smoker, plus someone to do the smoking, from a local SoCal favorite.

That might have been a big leap, from helmet-shaped meatloaf to your own mega BBQ party on wheels, but creative culinary thinking is paramount when it is only days to Super Bowl Sunday. Gus’s Barbecue has a rather impressive answer in its brand-new Smoker Trailer.

The Pasadena landmark — it has been around since 1946 — just introduced its twist on the food truck this month. Some notable factoids? The 10-foot trailer, which can attach to the back of a Gus’s van, is a wood-burning smoker. Amount of meat it can cook at one time? Five hundred pounds. There’s also a 50-inch plasma TV, stereo system and satellite dish.

Yeah, Super Bowl dreamtime.

A Gus’s cook comes along for set-up and clean-up and the smoking part, too. So all you need to do is kick back with that plasma television, hundreds of pounds of ribs and chops, a sports game and your many guests.

Costs will depend on the package, says a Gus’s spokesperson.

We like all of this for two reasons. One? It’s good timing, what with the Super Bowl and all. And two? We wondered what the next phase of the food truck concept might be. Hot tub on the roof? Bake-your-own muffins? We’re happy to see that it is a full-on wood smoker with a giant plasma television.

Though we could not have predicted that food-truck-y turn of events, we’re happy that Gus’s Barbecue was thinking big.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/entertainment/the-scene/Like-a-Food-Truck-Drenched-in-BBQ-Sauce-Guss-BBQ-188707081.html

Robin Salzer, of Robin's B-B-Q and Wood Fire Grill, second from left, has a disagreement with a gourmet food truck owner, who didn't give his name, at a meeting at Cameron's Seafood Restaurant Tuesday regarding brick-and-mortar restaurants, versus mobile food preparation vehicles. (Walt Mancini Staff Photographer)

PASADENA – Restaurant owners in Pasadena fired the opening shot Tuesday in a battle with trendy gourmet food trucks, which brick-and-mortar businesses claim are luring away customers.

To the chagrin of many Pasadena restaurant owners, the city of Pasadena doesn’t subject food trucks the pricey conditional-use permits restaurants must obtain to open for business.

“You can’t have a double standard and that’s the problem,” said Robin Salzer, owner of Robin’s B-B-Q and Woodfire Grill. “The city created a double standard because food trucks were the flavor of the month.”

Restaurant owners don’t simply want to force food truck operators to apply for conditional-use permits. Many want food trucks barred from parking on city streets, restricted to operating on private property (500 feet from the nearest restaurant) and operating only after 10 p.m.

Some even suggested enacting a ban similar to San Marino’s ordinance, which doesn’t allow food trucks at all.

“The black and white of this is that catering trucks shouldn’t be allowed in Pasadena,” said Bessie Politis, Western Pacific regional quality assurance manager for Starbucks.

But restaurants should tread lightly when regulating food trucks, said Matt Geller, chief executive officer of the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association.

Geller’s association sued the city of Monrovia this year for attempting to draft laws to ban food trucks at the behest of restaurant

owners.

“Where was the city of Pasadena when Blockbuster was going out of business?” Geller said. “This is not the deal of unfair competition, it is consumer choice.”

He added that any Pasadena ordinance restricting food trucks must have a “public safety component … or, it won’t hold up.”

The easier solution is to sit down with the vendors and work out a deal amenable to all sides, Geller said.

“We are not bullies, we have done a lot of work with cities,” Geller said.

Restaurants power much of Pasadena’s economic engine, according to city officials.

Pasadena has the highest per capita concentration of restaurants in the nation, city officials claim.

With the recent redevelopment of Old Pasadena, high density residential building and mass transit, food trucks are just the next trend in the city’s urbanization, according to William Kimura, Pasadena Department of Public Health, environmental health division manager.

The trucks’ popularity has “exploded” in the last year, Kimura said, with trucks parking in Old Pasadena.

The city tried to intervene, but failed in an attempt to drive the trucks from business districts popular with young urban professionals.

“A year ago, I tried to get the food trucks out of Old Pasadena because there were so many complaints,” Kimura said. “But city staff and the city attorney said it wasn’t doable.”

Such a change would require amending the original ordinance, which Kimura said was more likely with the support of restaurants.

And restaurant owners all but ignored food trucks until the coaches started converging on a small lot on North San Gabriel Avenue, where many of the city’s young professionals pack the Friday Night Food Fair and Artisanal Marketplace.

Cameron’s Seafood Restaurant owner Peter Gallanis laments the sight of 300 to 400 customers in lines that wrap around corners on Friday nights at the Food Fair.

“It might not be taking a lot of my business, but I worry about my friends,” Gallanis said.

In the ultra-competitive Pasadena restaurant scene, the food trucks represent a threat to the viability of many established businesses, Salzer said.

“The pie wedges are getting smaller and smaller,” he said.

But as Geller said, fighting food trucks is like fighting progress. With restaurant start-up costs set at more than $500,000, many of those who venture into the food business don’t dare to take the same risks as those operating food trucks.

“People in restaurants don’t come up with crazy options on food trucks because they don’t have the overhead,” Geller said.

And an ordinance like the one suggested by Pasadena restaurant owners won’t dissuade some of the popular trucks from cruising to Pasadena.

“If these laws were passed, it would not deter us from going to Pasadena. We would just work with surrounding businesses because we don’t go to places we are not invited to,” said Libby Dearing, sales and marketing associate for the Border Grill Food Truck.

Read more: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_19041291?source=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#ixzz1ZuQ3Qnnw