On most summer days, Kara and Nevin Fenske can be found inside their food truck, Drift, putting together sandwiches for a long line of people downtown, at the 124 Street Grand Street Market and at a multitude of festivals. Over the past few years, food trucks have been as synonymous with the summer season as festivals in the city. But that’s been a big shift since the couple first opened Drift in 2011.
“Even for the first few years, people were unsure about the idea of eating food from a truck. There was a stigma about it, and we had to work hard to be like: ‘No, we know what we’re doing; it’s clean in here. It’s all good,'” says Kara. “They just weren’t used to trucks as a vessel to serve. But now, they actually get excited about it.”
Since then, food trucks have become popular across North America and food shows are even devoted just to this one subset of the food scene. In fact, Drift was actually featured on Eat St. – a Food Network show about street food – in 2012.