Miami food truck a taste of Latin culture on wheels

Mobile grocery store supplies community with everyday essentials Arturo Tamayo stands behind his bodega truck waiting for customers to stroll by.

MIAMI— Before the three-tone air horn finishes its melody, the seniors at Dr. Armando Badia Senior Center are already making their way to the burbling truck in the parking lot with money in hand.

Bagged fruit hanging from the white truck’s open back are still swaying precariously when Arturo Tamayo hops out of the driver’s seat to fold down the metal side that reveals baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables he bought at the produce market at 4 a.m. Customers pool around the produce, shopping out of the cubbies as if browsing the aisles at Sedano’s. Whirring begins almost immediately inside the truck. Tamayo’s wife, Nancy Hernandez, already has four orders for batidos, smoothies made from shaved ice and fresh mango, papaya, pineapple and other fresh fruit she has been cutting up since daybreak.

This bodega on wheels is a common sight throughout Mi- ami, an import of Latin American culture where the convenience stores come to shoppers. It’s the original food truck.

Grocery bags are soon full of the basics. Dried red or black beans. Homestead Tommy Atkins mangoes and chayotes. Bags of Frisbee-sized crackers. Garlic bulbs and malanga, yuca and boniato roots. Green and ripe plantains. Even cans of Goya tomato sauce, evaporated milk and plastic bottles of dry, white cooking wine — essentials in any Latin household.

Every morning, Tamayo shops Allapattah’s wholesale produce markets at 4 a.m., where perishables arrive by shipping container and big rig, from Homestead to Latin America.

Tamayo, 50, picks through papayas and pineapples, checking every piece of fruit. Tamayo shops for a clientele that is Latin American — mostly Cuban.

By 9 a.m., Tamayo has returned home to stock up, picked up his wife, who has dropped off their 17-year-old daughter at school and started his deliveries. He visits daycare centres for the elderly and homebound customers first.

Tamayo and his wife have been in this line of work since Cuba. He was17, she14, when he asked for her hand, and they’ve been working together and supporting one another ever since.

Together, they were running a mobile car wash within a year of immigrating. A year later, they were each selling melons out of separate trucks. Then they went all in on this larger truck.

“You always have to look out for the next opportunity,” he said.