yumpling is one of the hottest food
trucks in new york city it's been
serving up taiwanese fair since it
opened for business in 2017.
this is chris he's one of the co-owners
and his day starts early
every other morning he picks up the
truck at 1 am finds a parking spot in
manhattan or brooklyn and sleeps in the
truck overnight
extra coat extra scarf
i would just sleep like this
to understand what it's really like to
run a successful food truck in the
culinary capital of america i spent a
full day with the yumbling team
it's about 12 30 a.m
[Music]
good morning sorry morning it's a
tuesday so we head towards midtown
manhattan where the truck parks on
tuesdays and thursdays
the reason we're meeting in the middle
of the night is because in this business
location is everything
chris doesn't mind sacrificing sleep to
guarantee a good parking spot though by
the time we arrive there's already one
other food truck parked on the block so
this is a prime spot 1221 is our go-to
location so we want to be as close to
the front as possible get a backup
camera
yep it's very helpful very good
investment this backup camera has helped
us many many times
immediately after parking chris turns on
the generator it powers everything
including the fridge and freezer where
the food is stored the way the
regulations are set up in new york city
chris can't just park the truck and
leave it there he has to be in it at all
times so he'll camp out overnight the
trick is you have to
[Music]
tilt the wheel so the wife side faces up
[Music]
and then you can stuff everything in
here
and then that becomes
a portable pillow and he can't sleep in
the back of the truck either
i'll see you guys in the morning i'm
gonna get my baby sleep
yeah away goodbye
goodbye all right
goodbye i head home to get a few hours
of sleep and meet back up with chris for
morning prep at seven how was your uh
sleep last night
it was good i gotta
i got uh more sleep than i usually get
i got five hours of sleep he and the
rest of the team prepare salads
pre-fried chicken cook rice and label
containers sometimes a little tough
because in the winter we don't have a
heater in the truck so it's pretty cold
and the summer's pretty hot and we don't
really have an ac so
i guess it's just part of the process
that you just have to get used to the
window opens at 11 30 a.m but customers
start lining up for dumplings and fried
chicken sandwiches as early as 11. the
beef bowl is a crowd favorite i got here
right before they opened
so i think that was the third one in
mine but i recognized five minutes later
down the street so
i'm glad i got here when i did because i
saw the long lines like basically every
day i passed this through so i just want
to try why this one is so different
nothing draws a crowd in new york city
like a long line at a food truck by 11
50 the beef bowl has already sold out
yeah it is a running joke that it's a
myth yeah yeah it doesn't exist it does
exist guys
throughout the day they'll accumulate
parking tickets
a lot of people will say oh you know
trucks are great because you don't pay
rent uh well you do in different ways so
like getting parking tickets daily is is
one of the ways that you end up paying
the tickets all are all approximately
the same price so usually the cheapest
ones we'll get are about 65
and the most expensive ones are
in the hundreds and then
you can get as many as two or three per
day on a bad day sometimes a lot of days
you don't get any yumpling can serve up
to 250 customers in just three hours
we got chicken rice balls
it's 2 30 they're about to close up shop
the only things they have left were
dumplings and the chicken bowl and they
just sold out of both of those so
a successful day on a good day we can go
through approximately i would say 12 to
1400 dumplings in terms of number of
covers we'll do i'd say like 200 to 250
covers and a three hour window cover is
like uh is one person ordering at the
window so it will include people who
order multiple items yeah that's still
just one cover and so you've been awake
for over 24 hours how are you feeling uh
i feel good
good i always feel good uh but i might
crash in about a couple hours but
i feel good right now
you look good chickens wake you up guys
the team will head back to long island
city around 3 p.m to do a deep clean of
the truck and then replenish it for the
next day
at 6 00 pm after hours on the truck
their workday is finally done
the whole food truck game is not just
all happy and fun just like any other
job any other startup you know there's a
lot of work behind the scene that people
don't know we pride ourselves on doing
what we do because you know i think the
biggest joy for us is to serve people
what we enjoy doing which is very
satisfying very rewarding at the end of
the day i would say all aspects that are
tough it's not really that tough when we
see people giving us compliments giving
us a good review
that makes everything worth it yeah
chris lives on yelp
yeah he lives for it
[Music]