Food trucks hoping for big business at Bridgeport’s Seaside Park
BRIDGEPORT — After getting laid off during the coronavirus pandemic from his job with an area printing company, Lloyd Hopeton Reid decided to get more serious about using his culinary skills to earn a living.
“I’ve been cooking since I’m small,” said the Jamaican-born-and-raised Reid, whose family moved to Bridgeport in the 1980s and who as an adult has done some catering in his spare time. “I said, ‘That’s the only thing I could do.’”
So he invested in a food truck, dubbed “Father Murray’s Kitchen,” his nickname playing cricket.
Reid’s Jamaican fare will be available this weekend to visitors to Seaside Park as part of the city’s just-launched pilot effort to open the attraction to food trucks.
As reported late last month, permits for a dozen parking spots — 10 at the west beach overflow parking area and two at the grove picnicking section on the other end of the 2.5-mile long Seaside — were set aside. On Friday three openings remained.
All nine of the permitted vendors — Lloyd’s truck plus The Colombian Hot Dog, Z Licious Caribbean Kitchen, Heart of the City,The Cinnabomb Mini Donut Factory, Isabela Cafe, El Encanto Del Mar, Betzy’s Latin Flavors and SweetNess Bites — have season passes and can open up at Seaside any day of the week, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., through Oct. 15.
Locally New Haven’s Long Wharf between the harbor and Interstate 95 has become well known as a destination for food trucks and their fans.
Vanessa Santiago, of New Haven, helped found SweetNess Bites, a purveyor of mini-pancakes covered with ice cream and other toppings and of waffle sticks, which earlier this year also opened a storefront in Orange. She said her “dream” was to set up her truck at Long Wharf but there are no spaces available anytime soon.
Then she learned of Bridgeport’s effort at Seaside. Santiago, who used to work in the dental field, is familiar with the city, having lived here for a couple years and graduated from Bullard-Havens Technical High School.
“I said, ‘It’s something similar, like what they have (in New Haven).’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so awesome, let me just see how it goes,’” Santiago recalled. “I’m excited to bring something I built from scratch.”
Ana Vargas learned of the new Seaside food truck permits from her granddaughter. She has served Puerto Rican and American fare part-time from her Isabela Cafe truck, named after the Peurto Rican municipality where she once lived, for a couple of years while also working in home care.
She was attracted to Seaside because another area of town where she parked has become too competitive.
“I love it,” Vargas said of cooking. “I wish I got money I could get a little restaurant.”
Juan Forero, a high school teacher at Fairchild Wheeler magnet school, has been operating The Colombian Hot Dog truck for six years. He already does good business behind Roosevelt School on Saturdays and is aiming to spend Thursdays at Seaside.
“I believe it is a big opportunity,” Forero said. “The city’s learning how to manage this, we’re learning how to run it so we’re not overwhelming ourselves and picking the best times of sales.”
Born and raised in Colombia, Forero said many of his customers are fellow natives looking for a little taste of home — hot dogs with toppings like coleslaw, pineapple sauce and “pink sauce.”
“(It) brings people back to what they ate when they were in Colombia,” he said, adding he plans to return there later this month to participate in a special festival, serving his specialty hot dogs as well as American-style dogs.
Foodies who frequent Long Wharf and are curious about Seaside’s trucks will, however, encounter accessibility issues, at least during peak season — Memorial Day through Labor Day — when day or season passes are required to enter the park.
“The pilot program was intended to offer a wider range of food options for visitors and residents going to Seaside Park for the day or for an afternoon,” said Steve Hladun, the special projects coordinator overseeing the effort, in an emailed statement. “The comparison with Long Wharf is that parking area for food trucks is situated along I-95 and a public road at New Haven Harbor and not set inside the confines of a park like Seaside. It is a completely different set up.”
Hladun said, “As we gather more feedback from the trucks and the community at the end of the pilot program in the fall, the city can look at ways to improve and grow the program to support the community as well as the local food truck vendors.”