With the summer season and the festivals and events that come with it just around the corner, food truck operators from far and wide are gearing up to serve St. Albert.
Two of those trucks are Sosyal Scoops and the Hungry Beast, both of which attended the city's Food Truck Inspection Round-up on April 24 to get their 2024 operating permits.
The city's inspection event involves fire prevention officers and city safety code officers meeting with food truck operators and walking through their vehicles to ensure ventilation systems, heating units, deep fryers, fire suppression systems, and more, are all in tip-top shape.
Sosyal Scoops is the food truck spin-off of Edmonton-based ice cream maker Yelo'd, which is owned and operated by Jason and Ailynn Wong.
“Our ice cream is Philippine and Asian-inspired flavours,” Jason said. “All flavours my wife and I grew up with and we fuse them a little bit with North American flavours.”
For instance, as opposed to a regular North American Neapolitan, which would be strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, ours is ube, which is sweet purple yam, pandan, [which] we liken to an Asian vanilla, and mangga, which is mango.”
Wong explained that the business got its food truck in 2020 as a response to the pandemic.
“We just needed a way to reach people where they were,” he said. “It was kind of just our way of keeping our distance from people and kind of still being able to be in the community, and then it ended up being a pretty popular option.”
“We have a full set of different flavours than we do typically at our shop, and it's been very good.”
Wong, who mentioned his personal favourite flavour is Keso (made from mascarpone cheese as well as ube cake), said Sosyal Scoops will be set up all summer long at the Farmers' Market.
Joan Degoma, the owner and operator of The Hungry Beast from Red Deer, has been working in food trucks for more than a decade.
Degoma said limited space is certainly one of the hardest parts of running a truck, but she's gotten used to it over the years.
“It's chaotic if it's really really busy, ” she said. “But I got that.”
The Hungry Beast serves up a range of dishes, but Degoma said what keeps her customers coming back is the Filipino pork buns (siopao), a dish called pancit (which is Tagalog for noodles), and barbecue skewers.
The menu hasn't changed much in the seven years the Beast has been on the streets, she said.
“People just like coming back.”
Degoma said her crew will be working the St. Albert Rainmaker next month, as well as the Calgary Stampede, Big Valley Jamboree, and a few other big events in Alberta.
“Wherever you see the Beast, come and try our food,” she said.
Fire prevention officer Michael Bos told the Gazette that even though Sosyal Scoops and The Hungry Beast have entirely different menus, safety inspections are pretty similar for both, and all, trucks.
“We look for all the safety factors,” said Bos. “Starting off with their heating, ventilating, [and] air conditioning (HVAC), we look at the vent that's coming out the top to make sure that any grease-laden vapours are getting exhausted through there so they don't build up on the inside — that becomes a fire hazard.”
“In addition to that, we also want to make sure that the exhaust is taking out any products of combustion, so they might have gas equipment in there that's burning so we want to make sure that they have adequate ventilation.”
An integral part of fire safety in food trucks beyond accounting for combustible gasses or grease-laden vapours, Bos said, are fire suppression systems.
Fire suppression systems in food trucks are commonly chemical foam systems, unlike more common suppression systems such as sprinklers in buildings, because using water to put out grease fires in kitchens will only make fires worse.
“There's going to be two ways that [a fire suppression system in a food truck] is going to activate,” Bos explained. “One is if there is a fire in there then the fusible link goes and all the flame resistant (or fire extinguishing agent) product gets put on to the surface.”
“There's also a manual pull station, so a manual pull station they can activate if there is a fire and then that will also release the extinguishing agent from the fire suppression system.”
Bos said that since food trucks have become increasingly common in recent years, it's rare for inspectors to see any egregious safety concerns on trucks nowadays.
“When food trucks first started becoming a thing, then people had the idea that they could just do whatever they wanted,” he said. “So we would see a lot of different things [like] using unlisted (or unregulated) equipment; putting a barbecue [with] charcoal briquettes or something like that inside one of these; not having fire suppression; [and] not having the proper ventilation.”
“We've seen a lot of different things, but honestly, I can fairly safely say that that's behind us.”
Only three trucks in total registered for the city's inspection event this year, but Bos said it's probably because the city also issues permits based on inspections completed in Strathcona County and Edmonton, and the county held their own inspection event earlier in April.
“Strathcona County, we accept their inspections right across the board,” Bos said. “We want people to come here, or Strathcona or Edmonton, get their approvals, and then we're more than happy to go ahead and let you go about your business.”
“We don't want to be in the business of going to an event and telling people that they have to take down their food truck and go somewhere else.”
