Alberto Garcia — food truck operator

Transcript: Alberto Garcia — food truck operator

We wake up, well, I wake up at six o’clock in the morning. Like around seven a.m., we’re already at the commissary. That’s a place where all catering trucks have to report to. And there we start cooking from seven to two o’clock. Well, there [are] so many types of catering, but in order for you to get a health permit, you have to have all these facilities — meaning a facility where you can get ice. You can store the catering truck there because some trucks are catering, some are taco trucks, so they stay there. And basically, you know, you could wash it, clean it, and legally cook there. I shouldn’t say “legally” — you can cook there.

All catering trucks that have a health permit have to report to some type of... they’re called commissaries. Some are in Los Angeles, we don’t have any in Pasadena, but it’s like I said, that’s where we get our power from. We get there, somebody washes the truck. You can get electricity to keep all the refrigerators running. Mostly all the ice that you see for the sodas, we get there. There [are] restrooms, and then there [are] facilities, and then in some catering, in some parts, there’s literally like kitchens inside the commissary itself. After we finish our operating hours, then basically we just take [the truck] back, so it can be washed and sanitized and everything, refueled.

Let’s say that we get off today at one o’clock [in the morning]. So it takes probably from here an hour to get [to the commissary]. When we get there, we start washing the truck, hosing it down, you know, cleaning it, sanitizing it. Then around seven o’clock in the morning, you know, we start cooking from seven to two, seven to one. From there, we have to wash [the truck] again.