The Food Truck

Carlos and Ana had been working in other people's restaurants in Los Angeles for nine years. Carlos was a cook in a steak house; Ana was a waitress in a hotel. Every Sunday, they made pupusas for their friends, the thick corn tortillas filled with cheese and beans that they had grown up eating in San Salvador. And every Sunday, someone said, "You two should open your own place."

One evening, Ana stopped laughing at the idea. "Why don't we?" she asked. "Not a restaurant. A food truck." Carlos remembered promising himself, years before, that he wouldn't spend his whole life cooking someone else's recipes. They decided to try.

Buying the truck was the easy part. They found an old ice cream van for twelve thousand dollars and spent every weekend painting it blue and white, like the flag of El Salvador. Getting the permits was much harder. There was a permit for the truck, a permit for the kitchen, a permit for parking and a health inspection. Ana spent so many mornings waiting in government offices that she started bringing pupusas for the staff.

Their first day was a disaster. They parked outside an office building in downtown LA, opened the window at eleven, and at half past eleven the generator broke. No electricity meant no griddle, and no griddle meant no pupusas. They spent the afternoon apologizing to hungry customers and trying to fix the machine with a YouTube video.

"Maybe we should stop," Carlos said that night. "We can't afford to lose more money." Ana refused to listen. "We didn't come this far to give up after one day," she said. Carlos's brother lent them a new generator, and they kept going.

Slowly, people started coming back. But there was another problem. Right across the street was Tacos Ramon, a red truck owned by a big man from Guadalajara. Ramon had been parking there for six years, and he didn't enjoy sharing his customers. For the first few weeks, the two trucks avoided looking at each other.

Then one hot afternoon in July, Ramon's truck ran out of gas in the middle of the lunch rush. Ana walked across the street with a plate of pupusas and an offer: "Why don't you plug into our generator?" Ramon hesitated, then laughed and accepted.

That evening, the three of them sat on the sidewalk, eating each other's food and talking about business. Ramon suggested parking the trucks side by side and selling a combo: two tacos and a pupusa. Customers loved it.

A year later, "Pupusas y Tacos" has two trucks, five employees and a long line every lunchtime. Carlos still hates filling out forms, and Ana still brings pupusas to the permit office. But neither of them regrets taking the risk.