PHOENIX, AZ – Food trucks have become a stitch in the fabric of downtown’s culinary culture, a growing market in a rapidly expanding industry that pairs outside-the-box creations with mobile eateries.

As food trucks rise in popularity and number, many have banded together over the past two years to create the Phoenix Street Food Coalition.

The coalition’s main goal is to bring food vendors, local businesses and the community together and to shed light on how street food can help cities and local businesses.

Brad Moore, owner of the food truck Short Leash Hot Dogs and chair of the coalition, said he and his wife, Kat, wanted to create an association that would enable all the like-minded individuals in their industry to band together and have strength in numbers.

“(We) wanted the kind of power in numbers and the voice type deal,” he said. “We have a pretty formal organization now. We have bylaws and we have application requirements for people to become members.”

He said the coalition, founded in August of 2010 and made up of at least 54 trucks, wanted to be a business that was about supporting other small businesses.

“One of our requirements is that 30 percent of the menu has to be sourced locally or at least something that is made from scratch,” Moore said.

In addition to sourcing locally, members have to submit their menu and a list of the vendors they use in order to apply.

“They can use local farms or local meat shops or local bakeries that they work with to purvey some of their products,” Moore said.

Scott Schraml, owner and founder of Mojo Bowl, which is part of the coalition, said he thinks it’s important to source products locally for the same reason he hopes people would buy from him—it keeps everyone going.

“We’re local, we’re not franchises or big companies,” he said. “We’re little mom and pop operations and we wanna keep it all in the family so to say.”

Find the entire article by Chantelle Patel at DowntownDevil.com <here>