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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 25 FOOD TRUCKS Another food-truck hotspot is Cedar Street near Yale New Haven Hospital and the Yale Medical School complex, home to about 30 more vendors. Most of these purveyors sell from carts, smaller setups that can be towed into place and tended by a single person. e third major location is Sachem Street, between Yale's Ingalls Rink and the new Pauli Murray residen- tial college, where about a dozen carts and truck cluster on busy days. About a dozen other trucks are scattered across downtown and the Yale campus. Food trucks and carts add to New Haven's lively street culture, Fontana said. "ey bring a level of energy and excitement... we're a very walkable city. People enjoy being able to pick something up and keep moving." Immigrants plan for the future e shadows are lengthening and the wind picking up on Sachem street as Rachid Hmidouch packs up for the day around 2 p.m. on an October Friday. Containers of rice and vegetables are stashed in a cooler as his wife, Manal, cradles their daughter Sophie in the pas- senger seat of a waiting car. e couple work together every weekday to serve Moroccan cuisine at their Sophie's Café food truck, dishing out spiced chicken, couscous and sides like cooked raisins and onions. ey've been at it for some 14 months, and have cultivated an avid fan base for their "fast-food" take on North African specialties. Sophie's Café is the only Mo- roccan food truck — or Moroccan restaurant of any kind — in the New Haven area, and Rachid Hmi- douch hopes to keep it as authentic as possible. "If you want to make Moroccan food it takes time, if you want to do the tagine [slow-sim- mered meat stew] or couscous it takes time, so I try to make little changes so I can make it as fast as possible," he explains. e couple, natives of Fez, Mo- rocco, are grateful for the success they've seen so far. ey started off serving 20 or 30 customers a day, mostly Yale staff and graduate students. By this October they were serving between 60 and 80 people a day, with customers traveling from as far as Ansonia and West Haven to sample their fare. "People like the Moroccan cuisine," Hmidouch says. Now they are so busy they are looking to hire someone to help with prep work. eir ultimate dream: to open a restaurant. "We are planning a Moroccan restaurant, maybe next year, maybe two years from now, in New Haven," Hmidouch says. To prepare for their next move, Manal Hmidouch has completed a hospitality degree. "For many people food trucks and carts can be a route into the middle class," says the city's Fontana. City small-business development staff can help aspiring restaurateurs take the next step, hooking them up with storefronts that are restaurant-ready, he adds. "We appreciate seeing people in- vesting their hard work, coming up with a great idea and then making something. It's an exciting thing and a really positive thing." Al fresco options Only a year or so aer opening their Ethiopian restaurant, Lalibela, in New Haven's downtown, Shilmat Tessema and her family started operating a food cart near the Yale Medical School. At the time, around 2001, there were only seven or eight vendors on Cedar Street, and business was booming. Now the restaurant operates carts at both Cedar Street and Sachem Street. Competition from many more carts in recent years has cut into profits for Lalibela, and the city's new fees and regulations aren't helping the bottom line. "It's become more difficult, it's not like before," Tessema says. Having a cart also at least partly cannibalizes lunch traffic at the brick-and-mortar Lalibela at 176 Temple St. "If the people don't come to eat lunch at the restaurant, we take the food to them," she says. "At the same time you keep your customers away because they've already had your food. ere are two sides." But for Tessema, operating a food cart is about much more than dollars and cents. "First, it's like advertisement," she said. "ey see a food cart, they eat, they know that the restaurant exists and they come...ey don't know that there is a Ethiopian restaurant... somehow you have to get to these people." Also, since Ethiopian food is rel- atively rare in the U.S., Tessema and her employees have an opportunity to explain unfamiliar ingredients like the signature berebere spice blend of chili, garlic and onion, and Continued on next page One of the many vendors that specialize in Mexican street food at Long Wharf in New Haven.

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