Maine Lobster Festival tries to prevent food truck from selling the lobster trolls, moving it next to the toilets when the owner refuses – Jalopnik

It has been a long week, but it is finally Friday, so I say we all deserve a break. The Autoweek is about to start in Monterey, and we will have a lot of revealing to cover soon. However, let’s take a minute and enjoy an incredibly low-stakes drama (for those who do not live in Maine, at least) about the Maine Lobster Festival that is said to say food truck operators that they cannot sell lobster bread at the festival and then try to hide the toilets when they refused. After all, food trucks are technical transport.

According to Bangor Daily NewsSeveral Food Trucks operators have accused the Maine Lobster Festival of it to prevent them from selling lobster rolls at the Lobster Festival. When Richard Curtis, who operates the Mac Attack Food Truck with Siearra Cook, refused to do this, he told the newspaper that the festival moves its truck behind an inflatable bouncy castle and next to some Porta Potties. Amato’s owner of the food truck, Omar Hadjaissa, the newspaper also told him that the festival told him that he should hand over $ 8 for every lobster role he sold, and if he didn’t, they would block his food truck with something big enough to hide it from festival visitors.

“I am a generation misser. Lobster is our mascot and lobster is a big item on our menu,” Curtis told the Daily newsAdding: “Siearra [Cook] And I decided to stand up for ourselves “by refusing to sign the agreement in order not to sell lobster. Hadjaissa, on the other hand, reluctantly agreed to the conditions of the festival and said:” How is that fair? I am a small company trying to survive. “

When the Daily news Sent in touch with a response, festival president Celia Crie Knight, “said she had no comments at the moment.” In the meantime, the city said that when an organization reserves the park for an event, they can move sellers if they want.

Yet it seems a bit strange for a lobster festival to prevent food trucks from selling lobster rolls, right? Isn’t it a lobster festival? Well, as with so many things in life, it sounds like it comes down to money. In particular, the festival wants to charge a lot of money for lobster rolls, and it wants the food trucks to increase their prices, so that they do not undermine the profit of the festival.

Apparently the festival tried to force the operators of the food truck to charge at least $ 30 per roll to agree with what it charges. The $ 8 that the festival demanded for every roll sales? That is the difference between the $ 30 for which they sell lobster droles and the $ 22 that cost amatos for his lobster roles. Regarding the punishment of the offensive food truck operators by moving them to unwanted locations, that seems to be because the festival does not have the authority to dictate the menus of sellers, but it does have the power to decide where they can find their trucks.

You could certainly make the argument that the festival is interested in ensuring that suppliers do not praise their food so low, no one else can possibly compete, but at the same time it still feels pretty scummy. Especially when the minimum price is $ 30, not like $ 20, for example.