PIZZA TRUCK VIES FOR
LUNCH DEVOTEES

Restaurant owners have dismissed the food trucks parked on Mulberry Street as unsanitary freeloaders who do not have to pay property taxes like they do. Years ago, they went to City Hall to complain. They did not get very far.

The lunch-truck vendors did not budge. After all, they were here to make a living just like those restaurant guys.

Then, one day this spring, a shiny, new red truck showed up on the block by the Gateway office center near Penn Station. It was a novel concept: pizza on wheels.

The arrival of Lost Brothers Pizza also did something few could have expected. It gave the restaurants and other trucks something they could agree on. Both sides believe the new kid on the block is infringing on their business.

The griping about the pizza wagon also underscores the competitiveness of Newark's lunchtime scene. With such a small window of time to work with, food establishments want to capitalize on the supply of hungry office workers who stream out everyday for lunch.

Simply put, everyone wants a slice of the pie.

"You gotta protect what's here first," said Andy Kalliman, owner of Nicky's Cafe & Grille, a sandwich spot on Mulberry Street. "There's no rules and nobody enforcing rules to protect what's here."

Wilson Menendez, owner of Ana's Hot Dogs, which sells dirty water dogs for under two bucks, said the pizza truck was parked a little too closely to his truck and another one down the block, Jimmy's. One day, he said, the Lost Brothers' truck even took his prized spot on Mulberry and Market streets. There are no designated spots for lunch trucks. They can park in any legal spot on Mulberry between Market and Commerce.

"These guys are getting close," Menendez said, while serving up dogs. "I think he should move someplace else."

Jimmy, owner of Jimmy's lunch truck, who has been doling out gyros, sandwiches, burgers and breakfast for 15 years, allegedly went over to his new pizza neighbors one day and ordered them to scram because he was there first, said Howie Stern, the owner of the Lost Brothers Pizza truck.

Jimmy, who declined to give his last name, refused to be interviewed. "Ask them if they have their permits," he said, shooing a reporter away.

Turns out they do.

Indeed, being the new guy on the block hasn't exactly been a cakewalk for Stern and his manager, Asad "Maverick" Sheikh. Stern, who started his mobile pizzeria business early last year, said he would not characterize the friction as a war.

"A war is a two-way thing," said Stern, a Franklin Lakes resident. "This is just this guy being a little too protective of what doesn't be long to him -- like the public street."

Stern came up with the idea of the mobile pizzeria several years ago after seeing a similar concept in Manhattan. The truck in New York, though, had its pies premade and heated them in the truck.

Stern, 37, wanted to take the idea to a different level. "Why not turn it into a pizzeria on a truck?" he said during an interview on his truck, which really is as hot as an oven.

He quit his corporate job in re tail printing and pursued the idea. He studied different models of lunch trucks before finding a manufacturer in Canada to custom design one for $100,000. The finished product is a vehicle that has all the trappings of a regular kitchen with two ovens, a sink, a water tank, refrigerator and air conditioning.

Using homemade sauce and manufactured dough, the pizzas are rolled out in the back of the truck and then cooked.

He called the company Lost Brothers, in memory of his brother who died of AIDS in 1988 at the age of 23, and his wife's brother who died of a heart attack years later. "The two of them lived on in pushing me to do this," he said.

He started in Florham Park in February 2007, and moved to Newark about three months ago. He got a frozen reception.

Sheikh, 27, a former computer technician, said Jimmy came over one day and accused the pizza truck of stealing his business. He argued that he wasn't because they sell different products. "It's a free enterprise," Sheikh said. "This is the United States."

Around the corner, Tony DiNardo, a co-owner of the Queen Pizza restaurants in Newark, said the cops are letting the truck park illegally in exchange for free slices. "I know because some of them told me," he said.

Stern said the cops have insisted on paying for their slices.

DiNardo, who has been selling pies from Commerce Street for 15 years, said he thinks the pizza truck has hurt his business a little. But he pointed out that lunch trucks have come and gone, while he has remained.

The friction between the trucks and the restaurants, he said, is nothing new. "How long will they last? I don't know," he said.

Asked whether he has tried the competition's slice, he laughed.

The answer was no.

story courtesy of the Newark Star-Leger: http://www.nj.com