Food Trucks' Next Frontier? The 20th Floor

Categories: Food Trucks

Jennifer Silverberg
This, but twenty stories up.
There seems to be no easy answer to the conflict between food trucks parking in the city and the bricks-and-mortar restaurants that don't want them there.

Or have we just not been thinking creatively?

An article in today's New York Times suggests a different direction.


Yes, a New York City building has introduced a "vertical" food-truck court.

Every weekday in recent months, fancy-food trucks have been rumbling into the gigantic freight elevator of the Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street in West Chelsea. After being hoisted aloft, they roll out into the concrete truck bays on the upper floors of the 81-year-old, 19-story commercial building. There, they post menus and proceed to sell inventive meals to office workers and their guests.

Is there any reason something similar couldn't happen in St. Louis?

(Spoiler alert: Yes. But, damn it, Gut Check can dream.)

As the city enforces a 200-foot no-go zone around each bricks-and-mortar restaurant in the downtown vending zone, we'd need a twenty-plus-story building that has a working freight elevator.

Any candidates?

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