Food trucks are rolling onto Market Street.

On Wednesday, a taco truck and a German food truck parked in a loading zone at Sixth and Market streets, two days after receiving a permit from the city.

It’s the first time San Francisco has allowed food trucks on the city’s main drag — and their arrival brought plenty of excitement, with a small side order of chagrin.

“If you work somewhere long enough, you get bored of the options,” said Elyse Kanagaratnam, a video producer at the software company Zendesk, as she stood in the rain with friends happily holding a plate of cheese spaetzle.

The gritty Mid-Market district has chewed up plenty of restaurants recently.

At least 10 notable establishments nearby, including Volta, Cadence and AQ, have closed in the past three years as an influx of tech workers to the area failed to revitalize the dining scene. But Mayor London Breed remains determined to clean up the area, with its striking combination of high-end new offices and open drug dealing.

Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Breed, said that when the proposal arrived in her office, her staff helped it clear hurdles.

“Food trucks bring people out not just for lunch, but to gather in public, as we see all over San Francisco,” he said in an email. “We want everyone to be able to enjoy our public spaces, and we want to continue to partner with companies and organizations that want to make our streets more welcoming.”

A loose coalition of city officials, tech workers and community organizers set out about a year ago to bring two food trucks to 1028 Market, in the shadow of the Hall, a boarded-up gourmet food court that closed in 2017.

Zendesk, which makes customer support software, pushed particularly hard for the food trucks. Many employees, including Kanagaratnam, had frequented the Hall, and needed new options.

The Hall “was really our extended lunchroom, and when that closed, we really felt it,” said Tiffany Apczynski, head of public policy and social impact at Zendesk, which, unlike some Mid-Market tech companies — including Uber and Twitter — does not have an in-house cafeteria.

The two food trucks now across from Zendesk’s headquarters are both run by La Cocina, a Mission District nonprofit that helps low-income women who have been selling their food informally grow their businesses. The trucks are on trial for six months, after which they could become a permanent fixture.

“Historically, only food carts have been there,” said Matt Cohen, founder and CEO of Off the Grid, a company that organizes gatherings of food trucks and is not involved in the Sixth and Market venture. He called them “an exciting new amenity” that will draw passersby with diverse food options.

One truck at the Market Street location, Mi Morena, an affiliate of La Cocina, will serve tacos on Wednesdays, Thursday and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. La Cocina will rotate vendors for the second truck — for a changing palette of pupusas, German spaetzle and Korean fried chicken, according to La Cocina executive director Caleb Zigas.

The rules establishing where food trucks can park are clear: They must be located in a legal parking space and have a minimum clearance of 12 feet from bus stops.

Not everyone welcomes the food trucks.

Del Seymour, a formerly homeless veteran turned philanthropist who is also the founder of job readiness program Code Tenderloin, called Zendesk “a perfect steward” of the community. But he worries that the private security hired to keep the peace near the food trucks will make some of the people normally in the area feel unwelcome.

“There’s two ways of displacing people — forcing them out of their apartments or displacing people whose hangouts are there,” he said.

On Wednesday, police officers stood in the doorway of a vacant storefront, steps from the food trucks. The mayor has directed the Police Department to increase foot patrols around the Mid-Market corridor.

Zendesk said the security group it hired to make the area around the food trucks more inviting takes an unconventional approach. Urban Alchemy, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides security attendants at public toilets, libraries and BART stations, hires mostly formerly incarcerated individuals.

“We don’t interfere with people who are not threatening the safety or cleanliness of the public,” Urban Alchemy founder Lena Miller said in an email. “If they do, we seek to negotiate ... behavior with love and respect.”

On Wednesday, Muklis Marta, who owns an audio equipment store down the block, tried the schnitzel from Little Red Riding Truck. He is optimistic that the food trucks will draw crowds, as they did that day, and drive away drug dealers who hang outside his store.

He’s also excited to have more food options in the neighborhood. “Something different,” Marta said.

Melia Russell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: melia.russell@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meliarobin

An earlier version of this story misspelled Caleb Zigas’ name.