There’s no shortage of variety when it comes to dining options in downtown Phoenix, but chances are high that you’ve never eaten at a place quite like The Park.
Located at the Collier Center and set to open in the next few weeks, The Park is a restaurant… in a sense. It is also an indoor beer garden, a concert venue and a commissary for local food trucks. It is an 11,000-square-foot indoor facility with massive artificial trees and a self-serve, 24-tap wall of beers. It has an LED ping-pong table, and will host a live radio show Friday nights on KISS FM.
“I didn’t want to do the norm,” Phil Richard, one of the managing partners of The Park, said. “The juxtaposition between technology and nature is going to be pretty unique.”
Perhaps even more unique is The Park’s menu—it will feature items from a rotating selection of Valley food trucks, with different menus available at different times of day. Food truck owners can rent out The Park’s large kitchen and use it to prepare food for their trucks. The Park will host guest chefs from time to time.
There are 14 food truck partners listed on The Park’s website, creating a menu that consists of a little bit of everything from barbeque to cupcakes to lobster.
Food truck owner Greg Golden of Mustache Pretzels will bring his snack concept—pretzels shaped like mustaches—to The Park.
Golden said that the idea for his food truck originally came to him in college. It wasn’t until years later, after he had gotten married and moved out to Arizona, that he bought a truck and started his business.
“I quit my job as a forensic accountant to start a food truck that sold pretzels shaped like mustaches,” Golden said.
Now, nearly three years later, Mustache Pretzels operates 2 food trucks, a storefront at the Phoenix Convention Center, and soon, will be on the menu at The Park. Golden said that the pretzels will be prepared and shaped off-site before being baked and served on The Park’s late night and everyday menus.
He admits that operating a food truck business hasn’t always been easy.
“I’m still very, very new to this,” Golden said.
He said that Mustache Pretzels’ partnership with The Park will be a good opportunity to expand the brand’s brick-and-mortar presence.
Another food truck joining The Park food truck line up is The Panini People, a food truck owned and operated by Chris LaBarre and his fiancée Lyndsy Maechtle. Both LaBarre and Maechtle had worked in the restaurant industry for years when they decided to “go off and do it on our own.” The Panini People serves grilled sandwiches with made-from scratch aioli and freshly-sliced meats and cheeses.
“We just want to bring the people something whole, natural and fresh, and try to focus on the local market as much as we can,” LaBarre said.
Not unlike Mustache Pretzels, LaBarre said a major goal for The Panini People is to eventually have its own storefront. He said that The Panini People’s partnership with The Park could be a good way to test the plausibility of expanding to downtown Phoenix in the future.
“It’s a good chance to get our food being served downtown, to see how our menu items are perceived and how they perform in a restaurant setting,” LaBarre said.
The Park was originally scheduled to open last summer, but the grand opening got pushed back to this year due to “us being picky,” Richard said.
Contact the reporter at Nicholas.Serpa@asu.edu.
