How the City’s Food Carts Are Made
Food trucks, trailers and carts are nearly everywhere. Somebody is making these things in masses, and I wanted to know who and where.
My quest lead me to Ozone Park and to Jack Beller, the guy in charge of 800BuyCart, a division of Worksman, which primarily builds industrial bicycles.
Beller’s father Edward worked in the sheet metal trade on the Lower East Side, and in 1948 opened Admar Bar And Kitchen Equipment Corp., next door to a roofing firm that made illegal cookers for wooden hot dog carts. One day when the neighbor was away, he was asked if he could make a hot dog cooker.
He saw how grungy and hard to clean existing carts were, and gave it a try. He used stainless steel warming pans with radiused seams so they could be easily cleaned; used better wheels (sourced from Worksman), better heat sources, built lighter weight carts entirely out of stainless steel, developed trailers that could be towed by cars, and pretty much created many of the street vending options we're now familiar with.
The company now makes hand carts, trailers and traditional step vans for food purveyors all over the country—about 40% of their business is out of state.
During a factory tour I observed workers fitting a variety of stainless steel carts for vendors of Italian sausage and hot dogs (Nathan's Famous is a client), ice cream, rolled ice cream, halal meats, and tacos. While they have ready-made designs, carts can be completely customized to suit vendors' needs as well as meeting local, state and National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) sanitary codes. Propane provides heat for cooking and warming, as well as for hand washing; and refrigeration, either from electrical generators (more common in trucks) or holdover refrigeration, in which a refrigerant is supercooled overnight, and works much like the blue freezer blocks used in picnic coolers, to keep food safe during the carts' working hours. All this is efficiently squeezed into the tiny confines of the carts, trailers, and trucks—think smaller than a New York apartment, even smaller than the interior of a boat. Even Marie Kondo would be amazed.
Jack Beller | @jack.beller
800BuyCart | @buycart
Worksman
Nathan's Famous | @orginalnathans
Marie Kondo | @mariekondo
