The cold weather has been a challenge for Ad Mare, a seafood truck at Slater and O’Connor streets.
Ottawa food truck owners are looking to make some cold, hard cash this year, but the seemingly endless winter has been keeping them from getting back to business.
The extended snowy weather has had an impact on food trucks throughout the city, forcing some businesses to postpone spring re-openings or keep reduced winter hours.
Jake Thomas owns Dosa Inc., a food truck that specializes in South Indian crepes which is parked at Somerset and Lyon streets in spring and summer.
“The weather has put our anticipated opening day back by a good two weeks,” says Thomas. “We’re a seasonal business and every day counts.”
Cold temperatures not only keep customers away from food trucks, but they can also be hazardous to the trucks. The freezing weather caused a pipe in the Dosa truck to burst, which delayed the spring re-opening even more.
Ad Mare, a seafood truck that’s parked at Slater and O’Connor streets, has been open throughout the winter and owner Mario Burke says he was surprised that he still got some customers despite the frigid temperatures.
“It was amazing,” says Burke.
But he says extra work went into keeping the truck maintained. He ran heaters around the clock and had to keep water moving to keep pipes from freezing.
“We had to dress like we were outside all day,” he says.
And frying up seafood became a bit of an adventure.
“If you drop any water on the floor it becomes a skating rink.”
Burke admits that he is considering closing his truck during the colder weeks next winter.
“We’re probably going to do it again next winter, but maybe take all of January off . . . -20 C is just too cold.”
Ben Baird’s food truck, Ottawa Streat Gourmet, has been parked at Queen and O’Connor streets all winter as well.
“The cold has not been fun and we are looking forward to warmer weather,” he says. “But it has not impacted our business.”
With better weather just around the corner food trucks should be up and running soon.
“If we don’t have good weather, people generally don’t want to come to food trucks,” says Thomas.