Portland Summer Food Cart Festival

This event was for a good cause but that’s about all it had going for it, along with plentiful and free parking at MHCC this year. We paid extra for the VIP entry, hoping we would have access to more food options since the year before the few carts they had ran out of food quickly. There were only around a dozen food carts this year and only a couple had decent food, two of the food carts were not open, carts were running out of food early on, some vendors didn’t have change available, lines were short but very very slow, the entertainment was not great, the vendors for the kids zone were a no-​show so there was nothing for the kids as advertised, and overall it was a huge let-​down. This type of event has so much potential in Portland, but it is very poorly organized. We thought we’d give it another chance this year, but that will be our last. It’s really too bad.

This annual food cart festival/​fundraiser for the group Adult Learning Systems of Oregon (ALSO) just had it’s second annual event. It’s a great non-​profit organization that has provided supported living, residential and vocational services to people with developmental challenges since 1998.
Given that all the proceeds go to ALSO, I was fine the drive out to Gresham and the $ 5 entry fee/​donation. The Mt. Hood Community College parking lot was plenty big enough so that no one was crowded, they had live music, and a few other non-​food related promotional booths.
As far as the food goes, they had 14 carts listed in attendance, but only ~half of those had real entrée-​sized meals; the rest specialized in more drinks/​snacks. Unfortunately, by 6pm a lot of the carts were already sold out of a number of items even though it was supposed to go until 9pm.
For next year I’d recommend getting more food carts to participate (and giving them an accurate idea of how many people to expect so they can plan accordingly), and trying to find a more central PDX venue (a PCC parking lot in SE/​NE?) to turn out more people,
I think both of those changes would really improve the festival and the revenue for ALSO.
Overall it was a decent festival for a great cause. Definitely 3-​star worthy and not a bad showing for only being its second year.
I look forward to seeing it grow and improve for years to come!!!