Downtown Redmond's food truck aficionados should find it easier to secure their street-food fix with today's opening of the Redmond Food Truck Corral.

The group includes eight local food trucks serving cuisine that ranges from Caribbean to barbecue to Thai/Hawaiian fusion. Located in the parking lot of Redmond Auto Detail at 15904 Bear Creek Parkway, the corral is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays. Michael Cunningham runs the Jerk Station food truck and was the main person who organized the new corral. He said some of the new group's vendors had been stationed on the campus earlier this year while the company renovated three of its cafeterias. When the food carts' contract ended, many were looking for new spots to take their food carts.

After an office worker in the Legacy at Riverpark development requested the Jerk Station park near her, Cunningham said he realized the location might be viable for a food truck corral and obtained permission from the parking lot's owners. "Once I realized that I had somewhat of a stable client base on this street...it just kind of grew from there," he said.

It's common in many other food truck-friendly cities, such as Portland, for food carts to set up shop in groups, sometimes referred to as "pods," but this is the first similar group in Redmond. The current rotation includes two trucks each Monday, Tuesday and Friday, and one truck on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Eventually, Cunningham said, the group would like to invite other trucks to join them and possibly extend the pod's hours into the evenings and weekends, but for now they are focused on building a reliable client base with the current trucks and schedule.