Newton-Needham Chamber Promotes Food-Trucks In Needham Crossing

NEWTON, MA — If you're near the Newton-Needham Line and you're belly is telling you it's lunch time, you might consider swinging by a food truck in the Needham Crossing area for lunch, says the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce.

Look for the food trucks on Thursdays and Fridays around lunch time near the corner of 4th and Kendrick Street and the Partners Health Care building. In previous years the trucks have been situated a bit closer to Needham Street on 2nd Ave. But construction forced them to move down the road a bit.

The Chamber has been working on getting the food trucks up and running for a while, said Chuck Tanowitz the director of the N-Squared Innovation District. But Needham was only opened the program in May. It took a while between coordinating the food truck schedules and going through the town's process. But if you were looking for the trucks and wondering if they were still there, the answer is yes, the season for the trucks is officially on and will continue through November. Just down the road from the normal spot.

The Dining Car is be offering lunch Thursdays and the Cod Squad covers lunch on Fridays.

"We hope to open additional spots within Needham Crossing as time goes on," said Tanowitz who added he was looking into expanding the program.

"Expanding the program could take on a number of different directions and some of that will depend on how we can best work with the community and the town. One option could be to do a single day with multiple trucks in a concentrated location. Another could be to offer opportunities for trucks in a few locations over several days," he said in an email to Patch.

But, wait, doesn't Needham take issue with food trucks? That's true, the issue of just where food trucks could go was taken up at the May Town Meeting. They've been restricted to just the business park traditionally but one man took up a petition that would allow the trucks to operate downtown as well. The main thing people took issue with? Congestion, reported Wicked Local's Emma Murphy at the time.

Newton, meanwhile, has nine Active Mobile Food Truck Permits that operate across the city. Typically the trucks go to different construction work sites throughout the city, according to Robin Williams of Health and Human Services who added there are no areas right now in the city where a Food Truck just parks similar to that in Needham. Williams started working for the city in 1995 and there were food trucks - think ice cream trucks and those trucks that serve construction workers back then.

Here's a map of where to find the Needham Food trucks are situated from 11 to 2 p.m.

Onna Raad of the Cod Squad said business is good, but wants folks to know that ahead of Labor Day Weekend that Friday the truck won't be there. On the rare occasion when the truck has a prior engagement, she said, she hears from the regulars.

"When we don't go people get mad at us, so they obviously look forward to us," she said. The new spot she said actually has garnered better sales this year. And people are out in the rain. Raad who is director of food truck operations for Captain Marden’s, the Wellesley, Massachusetts-based wholesaler, retailer and seafood restaurant responsible for creating the Cod Squad, said the food truck welcomes calls from folks the day before taking requests for specials.