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Guided Food Tours Highlight Street Vendor Options

More Street Food Vendors: Economics Or Opportunity?

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» Link: Columbus Food Adventures

By Rick Reitzel
Published: July 30, 2010
Updated: July 30, 2010 - 10:47 PM

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COLUMBUS, Ohio --

Guided food tours of Columbus' specialty food trucks highlight the different ethnic choices in street food.

One way to discover the wide range of street food in Columbus is on a food tour with Columbus Food Adventures.

"There just really seems to be a lot of buzz about the Columbus food scene at the moment," said Bethia Woolf, owner of Columbus Food Adventures.

The business just launched last week, but their Web site has been up since March 2009. The first stop on our "Taco Tour," was a taco truck at the Shell Gas Station on Georgesville Road. The tour is run twice a week and focuses on trucks on Columbus' far west side.

"It's called Jalesco, because that's the area of Mexico they come from," said Woolf.

The family has been in business for 2½ years and has two trucks -- one on Cleveland Avenue and the newest truck opened for business in May.

"It is a great place to take people so you can get a real range of the different food you can get," said Woolf.

Woolf wrote for a blog called Hungry Woolf, then lost her job a year ago, so she turned her experience with reviewing food into a tour business. Besides the Taco Tour, Columbus Food Adventures offers the Short North Tour and the Alt. Eats Tour.

"We have a lot of great food in Columbus to show off. Columbus has the reputation for being a restaurant town, but there are a lot of interesting ethnic food places beyond the restaurant scene and I wanted to help people discover them," Woolf said.

Oscar Martinez owns the Jalisco Taqueria parked at the Shell station.

"It is hard work and you need to work a lot of hours, not just eight hours, but open to close," said Martinez.

Martinez worked as a chef in another restaurant, but with two trucks he is not tied to a specific location.

For many of the food vendors in trucks and food carts, it just makes more sense.

"Working on a cart, you have freedom it is flexible. In a restaurant, you have to pay rent, utilities, hire employees," said Mr. Lee, whose food cart sits on the sidewalk at Sixth and Town streets, near Grant Medical Center. He's cooked food in his cart for years in the same location and most of his business is with repeat customers.

Business is booming for both the food tour and the vendors and Woolf said she is not sure whether it is because of economics or timing.

Food-truck vendors say startup costs range from $5,000 to $25,000, much less than a traditional restaurant. The downside is that the work can be seasonal and you have to work in all kinds of weather.

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