Permanent place

City’s first fixed food-truck lot opens Monday

WILLIAM HARVEY/THREE RIVERS EDITION
Wendy and Steve Lewis of Batesville will open The Food Lot, 201 Central Ave., on Monday. It is the first permanent location for food trucks in the city. Although one truck will open Monday, room is available for eight food trucks, Steve Lewis said. Also, a mural will be painted on the concrete wall on the lot, and landscaping and picnic tables will be added.
WILLIAM HARVEY/THREE RIVERS EDITION Wendy and Steve Lewis of Batesville will open The Food Lot, 201 Central Ave., on Monday. It is the first permanent location for food trucks in the city. Although one truck will open Monday, room is available for eight food trucks, Steve Lewis said. Also, a mural will be painted on the concrete wall on the lot, and landscaping and picnic tables will be added.

The Food Lot in Batesville will open Monday as the city’s first permanent food-truck park.

Steve and Wendy Lewis transformed two longtime vacant lots at Central Avenue and College Street to a park for up to eight food trucks, starting with T’s Boxed Lunches.

“Food trucks are really popular all over, so many cities have the food-truck courts, so we just wanted to bring one to Batesville,” Wendy said.

“We’ve been talking about it for several months,” Steve said.

Steve is a manager for CenterPoint Energy for the Batesville/Searcy territory; Wendy is a registered nurse for White River Health System in Batesville.

Steve also has restaurant experience; he was a partner in Fox Creek Barbecue and one of the original owners of Bigs of Batesville.

“I sold both of those, and they’re still going,” Steve said.

The gnawing desire to be in the food business wouldn’t go away, though.

He said The Food Lot project was fueled by the Batesville City Council approving an ordinance to allow food trucks to locate permanently in a space.

“Right now, it’s the only lot in town where you can stay unlimited. The others are one day or 30 days. That’s the problem; they’ve always been temporary. … That’s what made me want to do The Food Lot — they don’t have to move every six months.”

Drs. Shailendra Singh and Jyoti Chaudhary own the property, and the Lewises will run it.

Kyle Christopher, director of tourism for the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce, said The Food Lot is an outgrowth of Food Truck Fridays, which he and other chamber members started last spring.

The event was held for several months in Riverside City Park during lunch, as well as at dinner, in conjunction with free movies shown by Batesville Parks & Recreation. He said five to six local food trucks participated.

“People really embraced it,” Christopher said. “Hundreds and hundreds of people would come, and the food trucks would sell out.”

The movies aren’t shown in the winter, he said, so when the screenings ended, the food trucks stopped gathering there, too.

People loved having the food trucks in one location, he said.

“From that energy, from that excitement, a couple of local investors saw an opportunity to open something more permanent,” he said, referring to the Lewises.

The Lewises got a bank loan in January and a low-interest loan through Main Street Batesville, he said.

Steve said the couple’s primary investment was putting utilities on the property.

“We’re providing power and water, and we’re also purchasing some picnic tables, both adult and kid sizes,” he said.

Steve said additional improvements will be to paint a mural on the property’s concrete wall, as well as to add landscaping.

Leia Parks, the K-3 art teacher at Southside Elementary School in Batesville, offered to create the mural.

She said her husband, John, a teacher, is also a singer in Batesville, and the Lewises are fans of his.

“We were just hanging out one night, and I said, ‘If you ever want a mural done, [I’d be interested].”

“They want a mural with some funky food trucks on it,” she said. “[On March 15], I’m going to take 10 of my third-grade students, and they’re going to help me sketch it out; I’ve made these stencils for them.”

Parks, who is in her 16th year as an art teacher, said she has painted murals before in different venues.

The concrete wall on The Food Lot is big — “it’s really big,” she said. Although it’s only 3 to 4 feet high, “I walked it out, and it’s like 52 yards — it’s a long wall.”

She hopes to get started painting soon, weather permitting.

The Food Lot will be an attractive addition to downtown Batesville, the couple said.

“We’re hoping to definitely contribute to Main Street Batesville,” Wendy said, “and we can have families come up and maybe grab dinner before they go to a movie at the Melba [Theater].”

Shannon Haney, executive director of Main Street Batesville, said she’s happy the first food lot is downtown.

“Anytime we see a vacant property become enlivened again, that’s always exciting,” Haney said. “The fact that someone has taken on one of our vacant properties and has invested in it and has a business plan people are definitely excited about — that’s a win.”

Haney said although food trucks are popular across the country, they are “just now becoming a bigger thing in Batesville.”

The Food Lot is “another feather in our cap and another reason to go downtown,” Haney said.

Wendy said T’s Boxed Lunches will offer sandwiches, “things you can pick up to go,” she said. “We will have picnic tables out, so people will have a common seating area where they can sit out and enjoy the weather, or they can get it to go and go back to their office.”

Steve said he doesn’t think The Food Lot is in competition with local restaurants, “because I think if you’re going to go eat at a food park, you probably weren’t going to go in and sit down at a restaurant.”

He expects The Food Lot to fill its eight spaces quickly with a variety of food trucks. “There is lots of interest,” he said. “I have people asking almost daily.”

However, he said, there is a lot of confusion over the city regulations, “what [food trucks] can and cannot do.”

“Even with a mobile-food permit, they don’t have to move,” Steve said.

“Starting up a restaurant takes a lot more capital than it does to start a mobile food-venue business,” he said. “It will give people who want to try that a place where they can set up permanently.

“It’s going to be open as long as anybody wants to have a truck available.”

He said the key to The Food Lot’s success is “just trying to keep it simple. I think the success part is, vendors will be able to build their clientele in one location, instead of people trying to find them.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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