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Downtown Huntsville Inc.'s final Street Food Gathering will be held Oct. 21. (File photo) (Matt Wake mwake@al.com)

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Some 50,000 or so attendees later, Downtown Huntsville's Inc. Street Food Gatherings will end where they started.

As previously reported, after the Oct. 21 Street Food Gathering, scheduled for 5-9 p.m., DHI will retire the brand. The location of the finale however had been unannounced until DHI CEO Chad Emerson recently informed AL.com the event would be held on the downtown Huntsville square, the site of the very first Street Food Gathering in October 2013.

"We thought a little bit of closure on this incredibly successful concept was a fun idea," Emerson says.

The free monthly food truck events have also previously been held on Church Street in front of Big Spring Park as well as outside bar, restaurant and music venue AM Booth's Lumberyard.

More than 40 mobile food vendors will line the four streets around the Madison County Courthouse for the finale SFG. If additional space is needed, DHI has permission from the City of Huntsville to use Eustis Avenue, Emerson says. At this point, DHI has not finalized the October SFG food truck lineup. However, some trucks including Tex-Mex specialists Fire & Spice, pork-centric I Love Bacon, cupcake makers Sugar Belle and newer vendors like Hindsight Coffee and Manic Organic are confirmed. Sugar Belle was among the handful of food trucks at DHI's debut Street Food Gathering more than three years ago. Emerson says this last SFG, which since 2014 have typically been held April through October, will be the 25th DHI has hosted.

I Love Bacon owner/operator Keith Hill says, "Honestly, I don't believe there's been anymore more important for the food truck scene in Huntsville" than the Street Food Gatherings.

"Anytime you put four or five or six thousand people in one place that you can put your brand it front of, even something as small as seeing a logo or hearing word of mouth or seeing a plate that comes off your truck, that's tremendous," Hill says.

Hill believes the Street Food Gatherings show how much Downtown Huntsville Inc. and the city has supported local food trucks, which have become an integral part of the culinary scene here. "In so many cities, even cities near us, food trucks are facing a battle against the city most of the time."

I Love Bacon has appeared at Street Food Gatherings for three years now. The menu runs $8-13 and boasts the Carlos Santana, their take on Uruguayan sandwich chiveto, with ingredients including flank steak, bacon, ham and egg.

After relocating from Texas, where they'd been working as cooks and in restaurant management, married couple Thomas and LeAndra Poux took over operation of the Fire & Spice truck from Tina Ford and Stan Stinson, owners of Earth and Stone Wood Fired Pizza, in April 2015. The Pouxs purchased the truck last November. Fire & Spice menu runs $9 - $12, and features Lone Star Tacos, with sliced brisket. Thomas says Fire & Spice does between 300 and 400 tickets during a Street Food Gathering. That's a big jump for their typical dinner service, at say a local brewery, when the tickets are less than 100.

"It's helped us grow the brand more than anything else," Thomas says. "It's a free event so we get anywhere from families to teenagers to the older crowd, so it's fantastic for a city the size of Huntsville to put an event like that on is pretty incredible."

Even though SGFs as we know them are ending, DHI isn't getting out of the food truck game.

The nonprofit development organization has announced it will debut a new series of events, Battle of the Food Truck All Stars, starting in May 2017. This winter, food trucks based in Madison County and immediately adjacent counties will be able to submit an application to participate. Next, a jury of "food truck experts," which Emerson says will interview applicants "in a public meeting where you can come and see the interview and enjoy the give and take." The jury will pick the top 10 applicants.

There will also be online voting for two "people choice" food trucks, to round out the 12-vendor lineup that will be at every Battle of the Food Truck All-Stars. At each event, there will be opportunities for participating vendors to earn points and at the end of the series, in October, the vendor with the highest point total wins the "battle." Lots of details remain to be ironed out. These include how/where food trucks will initially apply, the jury members (although Emerson says they "will include a diverse set of participants ranging from culinarians to marketers") and the point system used to determine the winning vendor.

"This is going to highlight not just the best menu or the best truck or the best marketing but a combination of all of those different pieces," Emerson says.

So, was it a difficult decision to retire discontinue the Street Food Gatherings, which have become immensely popular signature Huntsville events, drawing thousands of people at each one?

"I wouldn't say it was a difficult decision but it was a very deliberate decision," Emerson says. "We didn't just do this on a whim. We had been tracking everything from attendance to truck participation to a variety of factors, including social media interaction, on the event. And we noticed the event to a degree had plateaued. It was still very popular. But we recognized that with these types of events happening all over the region now, it may not be as unique. And so we still wanted to do something that had a strong food truck component but we also wanted to do something that was different from what the other people are doing now."

LeAndra Poux says, "When we were told (DHI's food truck event) was changing we just were very excited because that's a positive thing." Keith Hill says his only hopes regarding the format change were that DHI "would keep it fun." (Neither LeAndra or Hill was aware of exactly what the new DHI food truck format would be when interviewed for this story.)

In addition to mobile victuals, the Oct. 21 Street Food Gathering finale will feature the musical stylings of local big-band ensemble Silvery Moon Band, whose repertoire includes "Summertime," "Come Fly with Me" and "Witchcraft". The October SFG will also coincide with DHI's latest version of their Pop Up Parks, featuring 10 miniature parks designed to the theme of "Space To Innovate," downtown Oct. 13-23.