Brian and Margita Webb are the owners of this, the Hey Joe! food truck. Brian was a former chef at the Pointe South Mountain Resort in Phoenix and Pure Sushi North in Scottsdale. The couple decided to start a food truck service specializing in Filipino street food.

Occupying Food Street

The streets became where the action was in 2011. Between the politically charged Occupy movement, which took over not just Wall Street but the center drag of every Main Street, USA, to the once-frivolous flash mobs of social media’s earlier days taking on their own darker edge in some cities, young people in particular took their passions and concerns to the streets like never before.

Eventually, these new asphalt activists began quietly protesting the street’s hot dog vendors. New societies were being formed, new ideologies were being forged — yet every day, the same $3 Vienna wieners? Sure, economic equality is a tough fight. But can a street trooper get a decently priced bratwurst with maybe some roasted green chilies and mango chutney?

Enter Brad Moore, co-owner of Short Leash Hot Dogs and president of the Phoenix Street Food Coalition. A few years ago, Moore was himself a member of the banking industry. But recently, he began longing for involvement in something that was more connected and nurturing to the community.

“I was growing increasingly tired of the banking industry and wanted to do something different,” says Moore, whose wife, Kat — “a fantastic cook,” he raves — was also looking for a change from her work as an interior designer. “We’d always talked about opening a restaurant, but that seemed way too expensive to get into. So I started doing some research and read about the food-truck craze that was going on in New York, L.A., Portland and places like that, and I asked her, ‘Why don’t we start a food truck?’”

At first, Moore says Kat balked at the idea, operating under the popular perception of food trucks as the old “roach coaches” that served up bland tacos at construction sites. Eventually, however, she came around. The couple decided to specialize in all-natural hot dogs, using locally produced ingredients from Schreiner’s Fine Sausages and topped with unusual combinations like grilled peaches, pinto beans, fried pickles and blue cheese.

They started the coalition after learning the peculiarities of local ordinances and permit requirements regulating food trucks around the Valley, to create public spaces where several food trucks could legally operate together. Glendale, for example, has a ban on food trucks except for city-sponsored events, while Mesa requires additional insurance for each person working in a truck, and Gilbert allows trucks only at farmers markets.

“It’s a bit different than L.A., where a food truck can pretty much park anywhere and just feed the parking meters to sell right off the sidewalk,” Moore says. “Here you have to do it in a bit more of a controlled environment, just to show the cities we’re not here to cannibalize the restaurants or ruffle feathers.” To attract like-minded food-truck foodies to the spaces and “bring a different flare to the culinary scene,” the coalition added its own requirements.

“To become a member, 30 percent of your ingredients have to be sourced locally,” Moore says. “You also have to have a concept that’s specialty in nature. We want all the food to be somewhat artisan, so that’s why you can see everybody’s got a theme or a concept built into it.”

Indeed, some of the trucks around the lot at Central and McKinley, shadowed by the venerable Hotel Westward Ho just across the street, look more like pimped-out mobile LAN gamer buses than traditional food trucks, with flashy graphic wraps dressing up the old diamond-patterned aluminum.

Brian and Margita Webb, whose Hey Joe! food truck is wrapped in colorful graphics with slogans like “Street food is not a crime,” even dress the part. Upon traveling to the Philippines for their wedding in Margita’s hometown of Lapu-Lapu, where the white American was constantly called “Joe” (a holdover, Brian says, from the “G.I. Joe” nickname given U.S. soldiers during wartime), the former chef from the Pointe South Mountain Resort in Phoenix and Pure Sushi North in Scottsdale decided to start a food truck service specializing in Filipino street food. Fittingly, Webb serves up his trademark sizzling pork sisig and deep-fried bananas in Army fatigues.

“I think the Food Network kind of changed the public’s perception of what a food truck can be with The Great Food Truck Race,” says Webb, referring to the reality series, now in its second season, that pits competing food trucks in a cross-country competition to score the highest sales total. (Each week, the truck with the lowest total must turn around and head home.) “People come a little more accustomed to finding top-quality food served out of what used to be the ol’ roach coaches.”

Not to mention a little showmanship. Webb says that comes from being in closer contact with the diners, something the average restaurant chef seldom has the opportunity to do.

“You get to interact with the people a lot more,” he says. “When you’re working in a restaurant kitchen, you don’t really get to see the people who eat your food. With the truck, there’s constant interaction with the customers.”

Brad Moore says that’s what he likes best about running a food truck, too. “It’s by far the hardest work I’ve ever done, but also the most gratifying,” he says. “We’ve already met some lifelong friends and incredible people through that little window.”

Brad Moore, co-owner of Short Leash Hot Dogs and president of the Phoenix Street Food Coalition, was formerly a member of the banking industry. He says he recently began longing for involvement in something that was more connected and nurturing to the community.

Each of the trucks has already developed its own following: fans keep tabs on where their favorite food truck is each week by checking in on its Twitter and Facebook pages. Moore says part of the coalition’s mission is to deliver that following to other worthy businesses by catering their events. “We want to be small independent businesses that support other small local businesses,” he says.

Of course, having a fan following can also have its drawbacks. “Being mobile makes it a little tougher for people to find you,” says Webb. “Every time I have a day off, I always get at least one customer calling me to ask me where I’m working that day.”

Old School

Among the mobile servers who assemble for Food Truck Fridays — which today also includes beet strEAT, “the healthiest and most veggie-friendly truck in the Valley,” according to frequent Friday-er Rachel Rummel, and Torched Goodness, a strictly creme brûlée truck which has unfortunately sold out its supply of the creamy treats (“the torched sugar on top is perhaps the best I’ve had the pleasure of tasting,” Rummel raves) — Darryl King is kind of an old hand.

“I’ve had my truck for 12 years,” says King, whose bright yellow 24-foot Taste Rite! truck offers up a tasty mix of soul food favorites like smoked hotlinks, pulled pork and Caribbean beef sandwiches, all served on sweet hoagie rolls with a side of garlic potato tots and Kool-Aid. “I was doing catering before I got into the food-truck scene.”

Boisterous and colorful, King appears more at home hanging out of a food-truck window than many of the relative newbies here today. Handing off a pulled pork sandwich to a hungry customer, he counters the notion that mobile food has improved since the hipsters got in the game. “The food’s always been good,” he shrugs. “It’s just gotten busier now!”

Brad Moore insists there’s been no class warfare between the new kids on the block and veterans who’ve been rolling up to construction sites and office complexes for decades.

“We have a different style of doing things,” he admits. “We’re doing longer service windows — typically three to four hours in one designated location to try to get the customers to come to us — versus their business model, which is to take the truck directly to the customers and they hit corporate centers in 20-minute increments. But those guys have built great successful businesses doing what they do. Everybody here has nothing but respect.”

Michael Brown confirms that. “At the end of the day, I park my truck among 60 or so that have been doing this for years, and I see how they operate. They’re not ‘roach coaches’ to me. They operate very clean, a lot of ‘em are run by families that have been passing the business down from generation to generation. And they’ve built up a trade that a lot of us could learn from. They’re the pioneers of this kind of thing.”

Perhaps more importantly, Brown and his cohorts have also come to experience the special pull of the road that has kept the old food-truck operators at it for so long.

“My biggest thrill was the first day I rolled out with a load of jambalaya on the grill,” he says. “That smell’s wafting up through the truck, and I thought, ‘I’m actually driving around with all this good food, bringing it to people that I know will love it.’

“That’s a little bit different than preparing it and then waiting for the people to come to you,” he adds. “Don’t get me wrong, I love both experiences — I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 14. But there was just something sort of cerebral about rolling out with a full load of jambalaya on my truck,” he says smiling, heading back in the truck to hit the road once again. “Yeah!”