Better commissaries for Philly's burgeoning, sophisticated food-truck industry

Over the last few years, Philly's mobile-food industry has finally begun to catch up with the city's impressive restaurant scene, as dozens of chefs and entrepreneurs debut creative concepts well beyond gyros and soft pretzels.

Now, those food trucks selling pork-cheek tacos and grass-fed burgers are spurring a secondary market: new and improved commissaries designed just for them. The facilities are equipped not just with basic prep tables and sanitizing sinks, but also with full commercial kitchens, secure parking, and lots of extras.

Mike Sultan, who co-owns the Street Food Philly and Taco Mondo trucks, said the new commissaries are critical to the industry's image - and are in high demand as more trained chefs, like him, opt to go mobile.

"We don't want to be perceived as roach coaches," he said. "We want to be perceived as restaurants on wheels."

Sultan prepares his food at the Bridesburg Commissary, which opened in September. It's owned by Craig Weizer, a developer, storage-facility owner, and self-described "find-a-need-and-fill-it kind of guy."

And the need for better commissaries has been great. Vendors have long complained about the lack of adequate facilities in the city. Some have made the best of subpar commissaries, while others sublet space from restaurants and caterers. Shared commercial kitchens, opened in the last few years, have helped fill the gap - but the hourly fees are more than most truck owners can easily afford.

In recent years, Weizer fielded a number of phone calls from vendors looking for places to plug in, wash, and park their trucks.

"The calls got more frequent, so I started to pay attention," he said.

He bought a warehouse in Bridesburg in February and plunged half a million dollars into bringing it to code. He fitted it with two full kitchen lines, a walk-in fridge with cages for each tenant, custom plumbing, and secure parking. He now has 10 truck tenants, including Spot Gourmet Burgers, Dapper Dog, and Lucky Old Souls, bringing him almost to capacity. He's already planning to expand into a second warehouse next door.

Across the city in Brewerytown, a 30,000-square-foot mobile-food commissary was being fitted out with its own commercial kitchen this month, aiming for a Feb. 1 opening.

Gary Koppelman, owner of USA Mobile Commissary and publisher of Mobile Food News, said he has known of the need for a few years - but it took months to find the right space, an old spring factory. The rehabbed building includes indoor parking and a double kitchen line, walk-in refrigerators, and freezers.

Koppelman is also offering tenants wholesale supplies like serving containers and condiments, and has a fleet of 20 trucks for lease by marketers or new vendors looking to ease into the business. He said four new food trucks were rolling out this year on rented rides.

He expects the new commissaries to stimulate more growth in the sector.

"Commissaries in the city are sort of a joke. In South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, you'll see these little individual garage stalls," Koppelman said, "and each one will have four or five different food vendors."

It's an improbable setup, he said. "The question is: Where do they prepare their food?"

He and Sultan said it was an open secret that some vendors are registered at commissaries (to meet licensing requirements), but prepare food at home.

"The majority of people in this industry do not have any prior food-service experience," said Sultan. "So for them to be preparing food at home, with no guidance about how to properly prepare and store food, is problematic."

Palak Raval-Nelson, director of environmental-health services for the city, denied that commissary facilities in Philly have been insufficient and said there hadn't been complaints about overcrowding.

She said that the commissaries self-regulated scheduling and that the city did not impose limits on the number of vendors that could be registered to a space.

Though at least one commissary-inspection report cited "food prepared in private home," she said, she has not received complaints about that.

She is working with other departments, including Licenses & Inspections, to develop a guide to starting a mobile-food business in Philadelphia; when Weizer started out, he had to hire a restaurant consultant to help him figure out how to bring his facility to code.

Some vendors have opened their own private commissaries for lack of better options. Jonah Fliegelman of Pitruco's Pizza said his first commissary was "close to a disaster," without proper heat and hot water. He and two other vendors now split a space in Mount Airy.

Jon Adams of Rival Bros. Coffee also put in his time in "lunch-cart purgatory." He recently relocated his truck to USA Mobile Commissary.

"It's honestly like a Third-World environment at a lot of these commissaries," he said.

His new commissary has a number of amenities, but for him, the most enticing was the secure indoor parking. Trucks are often loaded with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment - plus, Rival Bros.' truck has several water lines, which could be damaged if frozen.

Rent and kitchen access costs $600 to $875 monthly at Bridesburg. Koppelman is asking about $750 per month from tenants.

Alan Krawitz, who runs Say Cheese Philadelphia, which serves lacto-centric dishes like fresh-mozzarella sticks and brisket cheesesteaks, moved last year to Bridesburg Commissary. He said it delivered real savings compared to the hourly kitchen-share he'd been using.

"It gave us a great platform to grow our business and scale it," he said.

For example, the ability to plug in the truck overnight allows him to get food prepared and loaded into trucks ahead of large catering engagements.

Plus, he has space to set up his own slicer, curing chamber, and other gear.

"That equipment allows us to be very specific in what we can put out," he said. "That's very important because it allows us to deliver something unique to our customers."

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