What do Ukrainian food, soft serve ice cream, and Thai fusion tacos have in common? All are served in trucks built from scratch in an industrial building on Anaheim Street along the Los Angeles River.
“This is where food trucks are born,” said Martín Ramírez, owner of California Food Trucks.
Over the past 15 years, he has quietly contributed to the success of some local businesses and major corporations. He has built custom projects for Long Beach dessert shop SnoCorner and Peruvian food truck Mikhuna, along with major 30- and 40-foot catering trucks for high-profile clients like Google and Monster Energy.
Ramirez, his store manager Cody Madole, and four other employees are a one-stop shop for everything a food truck needs, including plumbing, welding, and electrical work to transform vans and commercial trucks into working mobile kitchens.
It is a specialized manufacturing business that serves entrepreneurial chefs and restaurateurs who are testing a concept or traveling to music festivals, farmers markets, or eating in offices.
The food truck industry has grown as the costs of starting a brick-and-mortar restaurant have steadily increased. In a business characterized by razor-thin profit margins, a truck is a safer bet, and one that can also be resold if things don't work out, Ramirez said.
Ramirez, who grew up in Bellflower, found his way into food truck manufacturing through his stepmother. In the late 2000s, he discovered how lucrative the business could be when he bought a truck to start selling tacos in Miami. Before selling his first taco, he decided to list the truck on Craigslist to test the resale market. A few days later, a buyer offered him double what he had paid for it, Ramírez said.
After some convincing from his family, Ramirez realized he was perfectly equipped to create mobile kitchens from scratch.
He had spent more than a decade remodeling homes as a general contractor and also had experience in metal fabrication thanks to a job building race cars. Food truck manufacturing was like a mix of both, Ramirez said.
Martín Ramírez, owner of California Food Trucks, at his workspace in Long Beach, where he builds food trucks.
(Thomas R. Córdova / Long Beach Post)
For years after he started building trucks, Ramirez and his cousin also ran a taco truck called LA Tacos & Co.
He is no longer involved in that business, but runs a pizza truck with Avalou's Italian Pizza founder and Long Beach resident Louis Lombardi.
The two met through a mutual friend, Lombardi said. Ramirez loved pizza and offered to build a truck to make the emerging concept mobile.
“We hit it off and have been great friends ever since,” Lombardi said.
Starting next week, the couple plans to sell pizzas for delivery through UberEats from the truck parked outside Ramirez's California Food Trucks business.
Working in food truck businesses has given Ramirez firsthand knowledge of how to efficiently design a mobile kitchen and set up new food vendors so they are successful before they even pick up a knife.
Ashley Monconduit, owner of SnoCorner near Long Beach Polytechnic High School, commissioned Ramirez for a custom food cart in 2024. Her brick-and-mortar business specializes in New Orleans-style shaved ice, called Snoballs, but Monconduit was looking for a cart to serve beignets and soft serve ice cream at corporate events and birthday parties.
Ramirez made the cart “based entirely on what I had in my head” and even made the soft serve machine removable, Monconduit said. That's been a big help for events that only serve beignets because the soft serve machine accounts for a significant portion of the cart's weight.
Ramirez also tries to stay at the forefront of innovations in the food truck industry. It now steers customers away from using generators in favor of solar-powered batteries. Ramírez knows from experience that if a generator is used, “it will break down at the worst moment.”
With most batteries you install, you can troubleshoot from your desk no matter where the truck is.
But it still does a fair share of on-site repairs for drivers who accidentally cut a side mirror or roof exhaust fan in their struggle to get to an event.
Not all repairs are a pain: He's built several trucks for customers in Hawaii. Ramírez, an avid surfer, makes it a point to visit those trucks whenever his schedule allows.
Jacob Sisneros writes for LA Local, a nonprofit newsroom covering Los Angeles communities.
