by Wanyi Jin, News Correspondent

The City of Boston has beenpushing an initiative to support Boston’s new food truck industry  and to increase the number of trucks on the streets. But Adam Gendreau, co-owner of Staff Meal food truck, said the industry is not gaining the momentum he and other owners anticipated.

“It’s a cultural issue. You go to other cities where mobile food culture is ingrained and street food has been in existence for some time. We don’t have that in Boston,” he told The News. “We’ve never had street food so we’re building this whole industry from scratch and we need to build a cultural awareness to ease people’s minds about buying food from a truck.”

Today, 18 licensed food trucks are operating within the city, according to the City of Boston website. Fifteen licensed food truck businesses serve 11 Boston neighborhoods, including locations near Northeastern’s campus such as the intersection of Hemenway and Forsyth streets, the Christian Science Center and Boylston Street.

Despite these convenient locations and the opening of a Northeastern food truck, Hungry Hungry Husky, which debuted in front of Snell Library Nov. 15, many Northeastern students say they are unaware of the newly established mobile dining choices.

“I’ve never seen that many trucks around,” said Jack Szclar, a freshman international affairs major. “Either they’re not flashy enough or they’re not doing enough marketing, because I don’t really know about them.”

The food truck industry is slow not just around the university, but throughout the city as well. In spite of city initiatives, the new enterprise is struggling to grow, wrote Gendreau in an open letter to the city this month expressing his dissatisfaction with the industry’s performance.

“The reality is that the city hasn’t implemented a system that will allow food trucks to succeed,” he wrote.

Though some food truck owners like Gendreau are calling on the city to allow clustering to grow the faltering industry, city officials said they are considering system changes to give vendors more opportunities to do business on city streets and private sites.

“The city has worked very hard at creating the infrastructure for food trucks to be able to succeed,” Edith Murnane, director of the city’s food initiative program, told  boston.com Jan. 19, referencing the city’s plans to grow its food truck industry.

Various recent city government initiatives aim to spotlight and promote the trucks. The City of Boston held a Food Truck Challenge competition in late 2010 to establish operations in City Hall Plaza.

In April 2011, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance to drive the industry forward. Under the ordinance, the mobile vendor permit process was streamlined, making it easier for potential entrepreneurs to execute their business plans. The city also conducted an online survey, where the public could give their input regarding where trucks would be best located. Nonetheless, Gendreau said he believes that the plans were not enough to overcome the startup challenges faced by the fledgling industry.

“I understand it’s hard to entirely fault them since it’s such a new industry. We’re learning on both ends,” he said. “What we’re doing right now is just communications and letting them know what the consensus opinion is. We think the city should be doing a little more to help out culturally.”

Gendreau said the problem lies within the system the city has in place for designating food truck locations. Currently, there are 15 public spaces dedicated to food truck operation scattered around the city, and owners must apply for permits before opening on private property. As a solution, Gendreau proposes allowing trucks to cluster together in more profitable locations.

“I really think they [the city] owe it to us as a new industry to showcase and spotlight us. A way they could do that is to open up more spots in areas where we’re guaranteed to thrive,” he said. “Back Bay particularly because it’s a cultural epicenter of Boston and the Financial District because we’re guaranteed lunch revenue year-round.”

Gendreau said he sees definite potential in Boston for a street food culture.

“We think the demand is there and that there are many people who are OK with ordering food off a truck. Just look at the amount of people that walk around the city. There are a lot of [reasons] why this city would make for a good street food industry,” he said, citing the physical layout of the city and abundance of T stations.

Some Northeastern students said they favor the idea of more mobile dining options around Boston.
“I think clustering is a good plan, especially where there are bars in a high concentration late at night,” graduate student Justin Snow, who is studying college student development and counseling, said. “People tend to want to eat while they’re drinking.”

Szclar also expressed enthusiasm for opening adjacent truck spaces, noting that clustering could have a positive effect on the food truck community as a whole.

“It’s a good idea; it’s nice to have variety,” he said. “If you put food trucks together they may come up with something great.”

Despite students expressing enthusiasm now, Gendreau said he and other food truck owners were surprised by the unresponsiveness thus far on college campuses.

“We all thought college students would bring the culture a little quicker to the city than they are. We thought they would champion the culture a little more,” he said. “The feedback we get from people [on college campuses] is that it’s not really happening as quickly as it’s happening in the Back Bay. That caught be off-guard substantially.”

Snow said he would like to see more food trucks near campus.

“There’s an advantage because the food is cheaper, and it seems to be more readily available,” Snow said. “The service is quicker, too.”

Szclar agreed that more food trucks would be convenient and compliant with a student lifestyle.
“It was nice because it was outside and it was super fast,” he said. “It was very convenient.”

Gendreau said food truck owners are hoping for more spots and deeper effort from the city in the future.

“Hopefully the city decides to take action on this stuff pretty quickly,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of faith in their ability to do this, but hopefully we’ll see more spots in the Back Bay and the Financial District soon.”