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Millcreek Journal

Food truck rallies bring international fare to locals

Jul 29, 2021 10:58AM ● By Lindsey Baxter

Food truck rally at Millcreek City Hall on 3300 S. 1300 East. (Lindsey Baxter/City Journals)

By Lindsey Baxter | [email protected]

Millcreek has embraced the food truck phenomenon and involve these restaurants on wheels with almost any event they have. Venture Out has created another great community weekly event—Food Truck Rallies have been taking place on Thursdays at Millcreek City Hall from 5-8 p.m. and have been quite the hit. They will go through Aug. 26.

Millcreek resident of 30 years, Mont Rogerson and friend Andrea, came to their first Thursday night rally with high expectations. They’ve been to the Millcreek night out and tried the food trucks there and wanted to come try it out on another night. Rogerson said, “I definitely missed the events last year so I’m making up for them this year. The plan of action for the night is to try a little bit of everything here as it all looks so good.”

Abby Ensaqa, owner of Falafel Tree for 40 years, moved to Utah four years ago. He has been serving from Falafel Tree on different nights and in cities all over. “…I have been in Millcreek for three years. I was by Mount Olympus before and now I live on this same street. I love being in Millcreek,” Ensaqa said.

Ensaqa spoke about food truck nights. “I love food truck nights as they have become very popular over the last some years. The Food Truck League have done very good marketing and spreading word in the cities and helping business. This definitely helps our business and helps our exposure for residents in every city to know who we are and which food we present. We have a Facebook page which is Falafeltree and Instagram. The Facebook is much easier to engage customers with.”

Bonnie G. Bruchs, owner and operator of Udder Rivals, also uses Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to help her customers to follow and see where she is going to be. Bruchs came up with the clever name for the truck walking through the Utah State Fair with her husband. Her husband saw they were having a big creamery night and he saw that both USU and BYU would be there and said that “not only are they rivals in football, but they are udder rivals.” Bruchs said that was a million-dollar idea and they went with it. She has been the owner and operator for three years.

“I love meeting the people that live in my community. I live just by Skyline and Wasatch and this is where I live. This is where my kids have grown up. I love seeing their old teachers come up and say hi to them. It’s just a beautiful community, and I love to be part of Millcreek,” Bruchs said.

Since Millcreek has become their own city, Bruchs said, “We feel a lot closer together. I feel like it’s given us an identity almost. And having food truck nights is a huge part of that. It’s really brought a sense of community that we were all missing before. Before we were kind of just an unknown corner of Salt Lake City, now we have people who are looking out for our needs, we’re getting our streets improved, a lot of facelifts on the buildings. This has been a really big improvement for us.”

Bruchs said patrons want to continue doing the food truck rallies until the snow starts to fly. 

“As you can see, there is food from literally all over the world. You can get a falafel from Egypt, you can get Puerto Rican food from Papito Moe’s. This is just a great microcosm of the world,” Bruchs said. “Concentrating so much energy on being globally minded, how can you do that better than supporting a little tiny microbusiness that represents the entire world, it’s fantastic!”