Magic Carpet, Penn’s beloved vegetarian food truck, is closing at the end of June

Longtime University City food truck staple Magic Carpet Foods is closing up shop on June 30 after nearly 34 years in business, as its co-owners head into retirement.

Known across the University of Pennsylvania’s campus for its vegetarian lunches and oversize cookies, Magic Carpet — which has parked its trucks at 34th and Walnut Streets and 36th and Spruce Streets for more than three decades — has become an institution. Deb and Dean Varvoutis, the couple behind the treasured trucks, are equally beloved.

Now that the popular spots are winding down operations, alumni and out-of-session undergraduates are flocking back to the green-trimmed trucks to pay their respects to the couple (or stockpile banana oatmeal chocolate cookies in plastic wrap).

“I’m devastated,” said Arielle Stanger, a Penn senior who plans on making the trek from New York City to get spanakopita and a veggie burger. “Whenever I get lunch on campus, I know it’s going to be Magic Carpet.”

The university’s Instagram account formally announced the trucks’ closure earlier this week, but Deb and Dean Varvoutis said they came to their decision in mid-May.

Since then, it’s been one goodbye after another, said Deb Varvoutis. On Monday morning, one former customer and ex-Penn employee made the 50-minute drive from Pottstown to get lunch. Another, she said, reserved 14 cookies to bring back to New York City for herself and her college friends.

“It’s been amazing,” Deb Varvoutis said. “The response has really confirmed that I’m going to miss the people the most.”

Magic Carpet has been hawking pita pockets, vegan meatballs, and other global veggie-centric fare since 1984. The food is prepped in an industrial kitchen in South Philly, but Deb and Dean Varvoutis work — often side-by-side — from one of the trucks in a partitioned kitchen, preparing orders and making wide-ranging small talk with customers.

The work was all-encompassing but generally fruitful, Deb Varvoutis previously said, until the pandemic hit in 2020, when Penn’s campus closed and the city briefly banned food trucks from operating. Magic Carpet received $5,000 in coronavirus relief funds and over $23,000 in GoFundMe donations, but the business still hemorrhaged around $10,000 a month during the campus closure.

Deb Varvoutis said the decision to sell Magic Carpet has nothing to do with financial fallout from 2020. Instead, she said, it has to do with her and husband, both 64, aging out of the grind.

“As you get older, you realize time is more important than money,” said Deb Varvoutis, who is looking forward to having their “entire home clean at the same time” in retirement. Her husband, meanwhile, plans to work part-time as a handyman.

Deb Varvoutis said that she and her husband are looking for a buyer for Magic Carpet, but some customers are concerned about what new ownership would mean for the customer service — and the giant, healthy-esque cookies.

When it comes to finding a new owner, Varvoutis said the couple is prioritizing a buyer with connections to Penn’s campus — alumni, for example, but not an enterprising student looking to pad a resumé.

“It’s a lot of work, so we want someone who will love it as much as we do and take care of our customers,” said Varvoutis, who said the co-owners have received a couple of possible offers. “We don’t want to sell it to some, like, corporate entity that will trash the food.”

Varvoutis said she and her husband are looking to sell the Magic Carpet brand — including the trucks and prep kitchen — as a whole, or the brand and South Philly kitchen separately. The couple declined to name their ideal price.

For regulars, however, the value Deb and Dean Varvoutis brought to Magic Carpet is priceless.

Erica Messics, a rising Penn senior from the Poconos area, fell in love with the truck the moment she tried it during her freshman year in 2021. She recalled Deb Varvoutis doling out a handful of free samples, which led Messics to settle on her go-to order: mock pepper steak, made of seitan, and a cookie.

“They just melt in your mouth,” said Messics about the sweet treats.

Stanger agreed: “I could eat them for breakfast and dessert.”

Messics is vegan and bemoaned the lack of affordable, meatless options on campus now that Magic Carpet is set to close.

Stanger, on the other hand, said she is most going to miss the Varvoutises, who used to set aside the day’s special for her when she was running late to lunch.

“The trucks were part of a routine for me,” said Stanger. “The small talk, the regular interaction, helped keep me stable.”