[Concentrate] From cart to cafe: The evolution of two local food trucks

HELEN HARDING AND BLAKE REETZ AT EAT - DOUG COOMBE

It has been more than three years since Mark's Carts first debuted in Ann Arbor in March 2011, and since we first started to discuss mobile food vending in the city. Food trucks – as in, actual street-mobile roving kitchens on wheels – have yet to find their place in Ann Arbor, but thanks to Mark's Carts, there is at least a little corner of Tree Town that allows cart-based food vendors to operate.

When we first began discussing the benefits of mobile vending, and why Ann Arbor should embrace this new-ish business model rather than relentlessly block it, we explored how mobile vending is an ideal way to vet a new concept and build up a business before making the significant investment into a permanent brick-and-mortar location. Now we'll check in with two businesses that got their start as carts and have since transitioned to full-time brick-and-mortar café.

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[Metromode] Back to the Future of Food Trucks

When we first looked at mobile vending, Mark's Carts in Ann Arbor had only just opened and El Guapo, the popular taco and burrito truck based in Madison Heights, was at the end of a year-long challenge with the city of Detroit to get mobile vending laws changed to allow more to operate on the streets. (Their 60 trips to city hall is now the stuff of local legend.) As mobile vending momentum gained, Ferndale took a "come one, come all" approach, but not without some backlash from brick and mortar businesses that felt mobile vendors were at an unfair advantage.

Now here we are, almost two years later, and mobile vendors seem to have found a comfortable place in the marketplace. While no laws have changed allowing these businesses to operate freely on the streets, there is now a more comfortable set of rules governing their operation – where the health department didn't seem to know what to do with them initially, the difficulties that the early adopters once faced seem to have diminished and there's a general (if not yet entirely consistent) consensus as to what they need to do in order to legally operate.

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[NEWS BITES] The Lunch Room in Ann Arbor opening restaurant in Kerrytown

About a year and a half ago, food cart culture was a hot topic around these parts -- How do we circumvent the laws preventing them from operating and become more like other cities where the mobile model has proven successful? How is the mobile model preferable for some start-ups in terms of lower barrier to entry and potential to evolve into brick-and-mortar (and is the latter even a feasible end-goal)? And let's not forget all the brick-and-mortars who got a bad case of the It's-Not-Fairs.

Since then the furor has died down and while we still have nothing in greater metro Detroit the mimics the food cart culture of Portland or the roaming herds of food trucks in Austin, but we're at least used to the idea now, and some of these concepts have successfully been able to spin their mobile start-ups into bonafide brick-and-mortars.

Mark's Carts in Ann Arbor, more than anywhere else in metro Detroit, has acted as something of a mobile-to-permanent food business incubator. After a successful first season when Mark's Carts opened in 2011 (as well as, admittedly, a catering business that took off stronger and faster than the owners expected), eat catering and chef services was able to open their own small retail space where they serve hearty home-cooked foods for lunch and dinner carry-out, and also have the large kitchen space in back for their catering.

Now Mark's Carts has a brand new graduate to the brick-and-mortar program. The Lunch Room, a vegetarian and vegan restaurant, has announced they will now be opening their own restaurant in Kerrytown. And before Mark's Carts they originally started as a pop-up, so there's a feather in the cap for that food business trend too. The full press release is copied below; they hope to open in June.

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This spring The Lunch Room will become the second business from Mark’s Carts to move to a permanent, year-round location (the first was eat, in the fall of 2011, to 1906 Packard). The award-winning vegan eatery will take over the space last occupied by Yamato restaurant at 403 N. Fifth Ave. on the west side of Kerrytown Market & Shops, nestled between Everyday Wines and Zingerman’s Events (formerly Eve’s). Projected to open in June, The Lunch Room will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Saturday and Sunday brunches. Proprietors Phillis Engelbert and Joel Panozzo are seeking to create an establishment that will be noteworthy for its hearty and delicious plant-based food; compelling, attractive interior and exterior design; and spirited ambience that includes live music. The Lunch Room is grateful to Trillium Real Estate for their assistance in securing such a prime downtown location.

“Kerrytown Market & Shops is thrilled to welcome The Lunch Room to our community,” stated Karen Farmer, Manager of Kerrytown Market & Shops. “We’ve patiently waited for the right fit, and feel we’ve got that with Joel and Phillis. Their wonderful food and positive energy will make them a great addition to our unique collection of local businesses.”

The restaurant will provide Ann Arbor with exciting new vegan fare and will greatly increase the city’s vegetarian cuisine offerings. The restaurant menu will feature new entrees such as veggie burgers, tacos, roasted root veggie pasties, tempeh reubens, and udon noodle seitan stirfry -- as well as many of the items that made the food cart famous. There will be rotating dinner specials including pizza; paella; mac & cheese; veggie sushi platter; panang curry; Cuban black beans & rice, and breaded seitan cutlets with rice, broccoli & gravy. Among the new breakfast and brunch offerings will be breakfast burritos, French toast, cauliflower-spinach frittata, potato pancakes with applesauce & sour cream, oatmeal-fruit-granola platter and more. A bakery display case will show off The Lunch Room’s cookies, pies and pastries. The restaurant will also sell fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices, smoothies, coffee, root beer floats and Boston coolers, and coconut-milk ice-cream sundaes with hot fudge and other homemade toppings.

The Lunch Room promises to become a destination not only for its food, but also for its decor. Adam Smith and Lisa Suavé of Synecdoche (Si-NEK-duh-kee) “simultaneous understanding” are designing the space as a showcase for their dynamic modern architectural style that accentuates materials, space, and light. Holders of Master’s degrees in Architecture from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, the pair were the 2011 winners of the Young Architects Forum of Atlanta for a temporary outdoor installation called Edge Condition. They will work in conjunction with Lunch Room co-owner and graphic designer Joel Panozzo and plant artist Andy Sell (aka Foraging Florist) to create a bright and beautiful space, incorporating  and blending elements of indoors and outdoors, to enhance the dining experience.

The Lunch Room got its start as a “pop-up” restaurant in the fall of 2010, when next-door neighbors and vegan foodies Engelbert and Panozzo began serving 5-course meals on their signature cafeteria trays to private parties of 40-60 people in retail locations throughout Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. In April 2011 The Lunch Room joined the inaugural group of food carts at Mark’s Carts, selling sandwiches, salads, entrees, soups and baked goods from a cute, wood-paneled food cart. During its two seasons as a food cart it gained a reputation for making nutritious, delicious food that happened to be vegan yet appealed to people of all eating persuasions. The Lunch Room became most famous for its BBQ tofu sliders, banh mi chay (Vietnamese baguette) sandwiches, loaded nachos, Saturday brunch plate, cookies and ice cream sandwiches, as well as for being a place where smiling proprietors greeted customers by name and created a community spirit.

The Lunch Room serves plant-based foods made from scratch from fresh, high-quality ingredients. It makes every effort to use products from local vendors and to use locally grown, seasonal vegetables and fruits. Many of its menu items are gluten-free and the proprietors make every effort to accommodate guests with any food allergy.

The Lunch Room food cart was recognized in annarbor.com in July 2011 for achieving profitability after just five weeks in business. That October The Lunch Room won an Awesome Award from Ypsilanti’s iSPY Magazine. In June 2012 The Lunch Room received another honor: Best Food Cart in Washtenaw County in Current Magazine’s Readers’ Choice competition. It was recently favorably reviewed in Current Magazine’s Vegetarian Odyssey.

[EID Feature] I Dream of GC with the Sharp Gruyere: Cheese Dream Gets Ready to Open

All photos courtesy of Cheese Dream.

Are food trucks "over"? Not by a long shot. In fact, in greater metro Detroit they've only just begun. Detroit's El Guapo made headlines for its much-touted 60 trips to City Hall just to get the proper permits; recent food truck meet-ups in Eastern Market and the Royal Oak Farmers Market packed crowds to capacity with two-plus-hour wait times for tacos; and Mark's Carts in Ann Arbor was lauded for introducing a whole new kind of business model to Southeastern Michigan. (For my own little exposé series on metro Detroit's food truck scene, see here and here.)

As food truck fever hit the streets of America in the last several years, metro Detroit is finally getting up to speed. 2011 saw several high-profile ventures launch (including those listed above), and 2012 will see even more. One of which will be Cheese Dream.

Cheese Dream is a partnership between Jordan Ceresnie and Afrim Ramaxhiku. The two met while working together at Zingerman's Roadhouse, but both have equally fascinating (if drastically different) life stories. Ramaxhiku grew up in war-torn Kosovo; Ceresnie is the progeny of iconic metro Detroit furriers Ceresnie and Offen Furs. "It's funny - he's a Muslim [from Kosovo] and I'm a Jew from suburban Detroit. That we're collaborating on this is pretty cool." Both have worked in Michelin-rated restaurants - Ceresnie all over the country and Ramaxhiku all over the world.

Ceresnie always knew he wanted to be a chef. He started in his first "real" kitchen at age 17, then at 19 he moved to California and attended the Napa Valley Cooking School. He started working for Thomas Keller in Bouchon Bakery, then later moved to L.A. for an internship and worked at the now-shuttered Sona. Ceresnie was part of both teams when they received their first Michelin stars. "It's cool to cook at the top and be able to compete with the best chefs," he says.

While he was living in California he started his own garden. "You can grow anything in California," he states. "I started to become interested in where the food I cook in the kitchen comes from." When he moved back to Michigan, he enrolled in Michigan State University's organic farming program. "I really dove into organic food production and what it's all about." When he graduated, Zingerman's Roadhouse seemed like a perfect fit for him. "They have an organic farm and a restaurant where they use those products."

Despite his culinary pedigree, Ceresnie's passion has always been in comfort foods. "I grew up with the typical American comfort food, mac and cheese, nothing gourmet ... those are the kinds of foods that make me feel good." When he and Ramaxhiku were discussing their business concept they originally thought of having a wood-fired pizza cart (Ramaxhiku had opened a wood-fired pizzeria in Kosovo previously). Finally they decided, "Let's just do grilled cheese." "I guess whatever we're doing we want it to have something to do with bread and cheese," Ceresnie explains. "It's a staple of life. If you have bread and cheese, it's a meal."

"Who doesn't like it?" Ceresnie continues. "We take it from American cheese and Wonderbread and go beyond that. It was a blank canvas for us. Almost any meal or dish you can think of can be turned into a grilled cheese sandwich." They want to use artisan cheeses and local produce and products as much as possible, and also work with local food vendors and processors. The partners recognize how critical buying local is to the health of the economy and the community.

Cheese Dream is not fully functioning yet, but the cart itself (more of a trailer that can be hitched to a truck) is done and they are already signed up to be a part of Mark's Carts food cart corral when it reopens for the season in April. In the meantime, they've been doing test markets in Chicago and even visited the long-running Grilled Cheese Invitational in L.A., which they hope to compete in next year. They chose to stay in Ann Arbor because of their relationship with the community there already. "There's a tight community in Ann Arbor that's very supportive," Ceresnie says. "It has always been a progressive city ... Ann Arbor is really nurturing to new business ideas, and the idea of Mark's Carts is really cool too."

Right now, they're working on their recipes, and you bet you can expect some truly gourmet spins on this childhood classic. "Right now we have a play on French onion soup. It has rich, beefy caramelized onions with gruyere cheese; it's all the flavor components of French onion soup on a grilled cheese sandwich." (FOS!!!) They are also going to have the classic American cheese variety on challah bread from Dakota Bread Company in West Bloomfield, their bread of choice for all their GC sammies. "I chose it because being from a Jewish background I ate a lot of challah," Ceresnie says. "It's amazing by itself; on grilled cheese it can only be better."

At the Grilled Cheese Invitational 2011.

Some other grilled cheese variations include the Beastie, which is basically a BLT "with a lot of cheddar." And without even realizing it at first, they found themselves trying to approach different flavor profiles from around the world. "You can take a tour of the world through [grilled cheese] sandwiches!" An Italian-inspired sandwich features hand-pulled mozzarella which they make themselves with roasted tomato and olive tapenade. A Mexican-inspired creation features green chiles with cilantro, lime and Monterrey Jack cheese. They also want to have one based on an ingredient from where Ramaxhiku grew up called ajvar (a red pepper and eggplant spread) with feta cheese.

While a future traditional brick and mortar restaurant is not out of the question, for right now starting with the cart just makes economical sense. "There are lower overhead costs and greater ease of starting up versus a brick and mortar location," Ceresnie explains. "We also have the flexibility to not HAVE to be at one spot all the time." While Cheese Dream will primarily be at Mark's Carts this season, they have a greater vision of traveling to farmers markets and events "going to where the people already are rather than waiting for them to come to us."

Ceresnie sees a sort of renaissance happening in food trucks right now. "We're going from junky mass-produced food to artisan food," he says. "Just through watching TV and traveling, I'm seeing this trend of the classically-trained chef going back to the basics and back to comfort food, doing one thing and doing it really well."

Like grilled cheese.

Through this experience, Ceresnie has reconnected with old friends he hasn't seen in years, people like him who have a passion and the guts to go off and start their own business. One of them owns a screenprinting business in Detroit and is making all their T-shirts; another does vinyl graphics and is making the decals for the cart. "You know you're on the right path when everything falls into place [like that]," he says. "I'm really excited about doing grilled cheese but more than that I'm really excited [to be surrounded by] like-minded entrepreneurs. We're kind of a rare breed but where there's one there's usually more."

[Concentrate] What Food Carts Say About Ann Arbor

"Mobile vending (food trucks and the like) in metro Detroit has  become a popular topic of conversation in the local media as of late. While the city of Detroit has come under heavy scrutiny about its barriers to entry, in Ann Arbor, Mark's Carts, the new food truck courtyard located on a private parcel of land on East Washington Street, has attracted the attention of mobile vending advocates, foodies, journalists and bloggers -- even Congressman John Dingell (whose visit in June was well-publicized).

'What differentiates Mark's Carts from other attempts at food truck operations is the fact that the trucks themselves are stationary and are located on private property owned by Mark Hodesh, who also owns the adjacent Downtown Home and Garden garden supply and kitchenware store.

''We had a small lot where we were just parking cars and an empty building that [for various reasons] we couldn't rent out,' explains Hodesh, who first became interested in food trucks after visiting his daughter in Brooklyn and witnessing the diverse offerings possible with mobile vending. The idea came to him to turn this lot and building into a food truck courtyard and kitchen.

''First, I have to say hats off to the Ann Arbor City Planning Division,' Hodesh says. 'My basic approach was, "Here's what I want to do; what do I need to do?" and they told me.' Because it is privately-owned property, Hodesh says there were no specific zoning ordinances he had to contend with.  The city doesn't really have a say in food sales on private property (just the Health Department). He also had a full commercial kitchen installed in the on-site building where the vendors prepare their food (as opposed to preparing the food inside the trucks themselves). Because of this highly unique (not to mention serendipitous) situation, Mark's Carts was rather easily made into a reality.

'The real question is: how do we create more places like Mark's Carts? ..."

Read the rest of the article here.