Old Town Alexandria's Answer to Food Trucks

• April 6th 2011

by Jennifer Thornhill

Leave it to Old Town Alexandria to take the burgeoning food vending trend and make it quaint. Starting this month, up to eight city-approved food carts hosted by local restaurants will operate daily at Market Square on King Street.

“This program is about Alexandria putting its toe into the water of vending operations,” explained the City of Alexandria’s Department of Planning and Zoning Deputy Director Barbara Ross. “We want to find out how [the vending industry] works, so that if we go to a larger program, we do it right and we do it once.”

Rather than follow in the path of many other cities’ mobile food truck brigades or stationary vendor clusters, Alexandria opted to begin on a smaller scale with simple hot dog-style carts operated by local restaurants. To address residents’ concerns, the city has attempted to make the set-up aesthetically pleasing by monitoring the types of carts used, providing a uniform umbrella to each vendor, and providing café tables and chairs for seating for up to 28 patrons.

A grand opening is expected for later this month (no date has been announced yet), and the pilot program is expected to last from April to October, with carts operating from 1pm to 5pm on Saturdays and 11am to 5pm on all other days. Bread & Chocolate, Columbia Firehouse, Fontaine Caffe & Creperie, and Union Street Public House are the inaugural participants, with the possibility of four additional restaurants joining the roster later in the summer.

The plan is for the carts to be open rain or shine, but an on-site program manager will make the decision daily based on weather conditions. An official website, to be launched concurrent with the grand opening, will provide information on the offerings and which vendors are open. The carts are intended to attract neighborhood office workers, tourists and residents to Market Square that – but for the Saturday Alexandria Farmers’ Market – is underutilized most days.

“We get requests from local businesses to spruce up King Street and make it a more exciting place. This answers that,” Deputy Director Ross explained.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/old_town_alexandrias_answer_to_food_trucks/3280.