In 1872, a pressman running for the Providence, Rhode Island, newspaper The Morning Star named Walter Scott decided to end his task searching for a brand new course. Catering to his former coworkers, he reduces a hole in a horse-drawn light freight wagon and eventually gives delivery to two standards that have persevered to this present day. One becomes the diner—or, as any self-respecting Erieite is aware of it, the dinner. Many of those secure eateries had been customary from former educated vehicles and got their name from that railroad designation, the “eating automobile.”
These flourished into the mid-20th century, lots of which might still be in operation nowadays. Places like the recently closed (and soon reopening) Crossroads Dinner in Edinboro leaned into this idea, their lineage being visible in both name and, till its renovation within the late ’90s, its structure. While a few eating places transitioned from an existence traversing the nation-state with the aid of rail to a sedentary, brick-and-mortar life, Scott’s other progeny opted for the other direction completely. These, of course, were food trucks.
As summertime starts its fickle march to the southern beaches of Lake Erie, outdoor eating becomes a staple of the hotter months. Over the beyond few years, the number of mobile meal carriers has risen, possibly achieving a critical mass and truly catching the general public’s eye. “It picked up lots,” defined Ernie Schaffner. As proprietor and operator of Ernie’s Food Truck, Schaffner became the original face of Erie’s meals truck network. “I’m the first, the pioneer,” he admitted. “I took the initial bounce to do it because it changed into what I was doing already, and it simply seemed just like the move,” he said.
He started his enterprise in 2009, now not in a truck but a tent. By the following year, however, he determined his authentic calling, on the wheel of an understated white automobile with a small four-color rainbow using the door, forgoing the pun-encumbered names and ostentatious paint jobs of most popular vehicles. He now owns five unique meal trucks, but the one you probably recognize him for is the conventional downtown truck. Others exist to truthful circuits, right down to locations like Pittsburgh, or they get rented out.
Schaffner’s preference for business went particularly unopposed for its first several years. In 2011, USA Today, bringing up growing remarkable culinary benchmarks, suggested that “fancy meals trucks are rolling out throughout the united states and into the wider tradition.” in evaluation, for that same term within the early 2010s, the meals truck craze changed into achieving excessive levels in coastal metropolises like New York City and Los Angeles.
They then started creeping into pop culture: a food truck competition was featured in a Season Two episode of Bob’s Burgers in 2012, and food trucks have been a first-rate plot factor in the 2014 movie Chef. In the one’s days, the Best of Erie award became known as really “Best Mobile Food Vendor” — an honor Ernie’s Food Truck obtained in 2015. By the next 12 months, however, it turned into renamed “Best Food Truck.” Since then, that honor has long passed to Tim Grow and the Que Abides each year.
Tying the Community Together
“Sometimes, there may be a man, well, he’s the person for his time and area.” Sam Elliott grumbled these words throughout the outlet of cult classic movie The Big Lebowski. While Schaffner changed into certainly became the neighborhood pioneer, Grow helped bring in a new boom of Erie food vehicles. A lifelong barbeque fanatic, Grow’s ardor became plans for a profession in food. Originally planning to open a traditional venue, he went on a road ride from San Diego, California. To Austin, Texas, with his brother, and “the food truck scene in those two towns by myself blew me away.
I came domestic with the mindset that I was going to start a food truck in Erie.” He joked that “there had been several folks who thought I had changed into nuts and that it wouldn’t make a difference. Still, I kept thinking of the old shaggy dog story, ‘Erie is 10 years at the back of the relaxation of the USA.’ I figured if that had been proper, we would be hitting this at the right time. By the appearance of the booming population of food vehicles in the metropolis, it virtually seems we did, in truth, get started at the right time.”
The Que Abides has been considered to receive the award for Erie’s Best Food Truck for 3 consecutive years and is often the de facto face of our community’s food truck scene. Describing his early days in 2015, Grow defined that “we might grind the first couple of seasons, doing little or no business in hindsight. So many days, we sat in Perry Square with minimal orders; however, people saved coming. Slowly but surely, we commenced having regulars who began to deliver pals, who became regulars, and so on. Word of mouth and social media were massive to get going.”
