Banner year for Portland’s street food purveyors
Portland has seen an explosion in food carts and food trucks this year, with the city handing out 10 food cart licenses, more than double the number three years ago.
“We get a lot of younger people applying, people in their early 20s,” Janice Gardner of the city’s business licensing department told the Portland Press Herald.
But people of all ages are applying. Joel Glatz, 56, head chef at Maine College of Art, filled the summer months by parking his Yellow Cart on Commercial Street near DiMillo’s and Long Wharf, near pedestrian crossings and boat tour launches, the newspaper said.
The number of new food trucks is holding steady at six, down four licenses from last year, but about the same as 2013, the Press Herald said.
All that translates into 16 new mobile food vendors on Portland’s streets this summer selling anything from popsicles to Japanese food.
There’s now a total of 20 active food truck and 23 active food cart licenses in Portland, according to Gardner.
Madison Gouzie and Eric Holstein, both 29, took their Marshmallow Cart to “Shark Tank” to try to get funding for a large fleet of food carts that could be used for private catering and street sales, according to the Press Herald. Their Portland cart sells toasted marshmallows and s’mores, and is a summertime spin-off of a business they had in Brooklyn, N.Y., selling s’mores and hot chocolate in the winter.
Gouzie told the newspaper it’s easier to do business in Maine because the market isn’t as saturated as New York. “It’s a neat time to be building a food cart in Maine,” he told the newspaper.
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