Sidewalks of New York—Big Apple Goes Organic

González called the cart—operated by his new com­pany Organic Carts NYC—a pro­to­type sim­ply because it was a test to see if some­thing like this would fly with on-the-go New Yorkers. But the pro­to­type, cur­rently found at Fifty-Third Street and Park Avenue, has done so well that he is now plan­ning the imme­di­ate launch of two more carts.

“We’ve been sold out every sin­gle day since we’ve been there,” González said. “We have been increas­ing the food quan­tity of the cart by 20 or 30 per­cent, and we’re still sell­ing out.”

Like its par­ent restau­rant, the organic cart has a very tasty menu. “We’re serv­ing sal­ads and soups—we have a soup of the day and a salad of the day,” González related. “We serve the same empanadas that we serve in the restau­rant; we also serve what we call tapi­tos, basi­cally a wrap con­tain­ing filet mignon strips grilled with veg­eta­bles, on a bed of greens, and much more besides.”

Lunch at the cart is not expen­sive. You can eat a meal there for under $10, tax included.

Because of González’s stress on main­tain­ing a sus­tain­able oper­a­tion, no bot­tled drinks are served from the cart. In fact, organic juices are freshly squeezed from fruit right on the spot and served in bio­com­postable cups. “You can stop and have a freshly squeezed organic orange juice right in the mid­dle of Manhattan,” said González. “We also have our home­made lemon­ade, which is very pop­u­lar, brewed iced tea and more.”

The cart itself is oper­ated as sus­tain­ably as pos­si­ble. All the food from the cart is cooked fresh every day. Most pack­ag­ing for the food is bio­com­postable, and the remain­der is 100 per­cent post-consumer-recycled card­board imprinted with soy ink. The straws, knives and forks are made from potato straw, and the refrig­er­a­tor is pow­ered from a solar panel atop the cart.

It has not been an easy road. Getting the cart actu­ally out onto the street has taken González and his team nearly a year. “There were all kinds of bar­ri­ers,” González explained. “The licens­ing was a com­pli­cated issue. The cart itself had to be com­pletely over­hauled for us to pre­pare the food the way we do and to keep the right tem­per­a­tures for the food’s pro­tec­tion. It was dif­fi­cult to find some­one to cook the food prop­erly on site and who could explain our whole con­cept of oper­a­tion. We had to put a solar panel on top, and we had to dis­play all the infor­ma­tion on how we were doing busi­ness in a green way. Everything seemed to be a strug­gle. But it’s his­tory now; it’s already there and we’re plan­ning to launch a cou­ple more.”

González is aim­ing high. “Our goal is to take over many of the exist­ing NYC food carts cur­rently serv­ing con­ven­tional, processed and pack­aged food and trans­form them into some­thing better—providing only cer­ti­fied organic food and using truly green prac­tices,” he said.

If you’re near New York City, come on by! For more infor­ma­tion, visit the web­site at www.organicartsnyc.com.