PORTLAND, Ore. — Food trucks are synonymous with Portland. Every travel brochure about the city has them all over it. With so much of everything else shut down, food trucks were often able to stay open.
Will Marquez-Hendershott, a cook at Fried Egg I'm In Love, said food trucks are much more manageable at times like this.
"Food trucks are already built to go," Marquez-Hendershott said. "It's not a sit-down."
He said before the pandemic the food truck was packed, but now people aren't showing up as much.
"I understand that some people don't want to come out of their houses and they are a little afraid or what not because of the pandemic," Marquez-Hendershott said.
Fried Egg I'm In Love has two trucks in two locations and a traditional brick and mortar restaurant on Hawthorne. Marquez-Hendershott said he thinks food trucks are doing a lot better than actual restaurants at this time.
"It's a lot of extra steps," he said. "We try to take the extra steps to try and make people feel safe and do what we have to do, but we have a lot less than if you go inside a restaurant."
There's room to social distance at his food truck, but Marquez-Hendershott said more people are ordering online.
Even with the pandemic, he said he still feels lucky and is keeping his optimism.
"I feel like I'm much luckier than a lot of the other people I talk to," Marquez-Hendershott said. "Especially people in the restaurant business that have an actual building to go to."
He said he wants to remind people to support food trucks and restaurants so they can stay around.