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Honestly, the only thing that is scarier than the meat trucks that you occasionally see in parking lots are some of the meat products that you see at "farmers" markets.
I think that I will stick to the supermarkets and carnicerias.
Oh click on the links i posted. Some of the trucks are totally legit, business registered, meat inspected and safe to eat. Always ask all vendors to show their licenses.
The thing about it is the quality of meat they sell. Some people don't mind the quality if the price is right.
You also must buy in bulk. Like a whole case.
Click on to read more.
Lack of refrigeration is a dead give away when it comes to illegal meat sellers.
You should contact either the sheriff’s department, town police or the health department if you see meat being sold illegally in your area.
Haven't seen it in years but way back when I was a kid it was common for guys to come out with a truck full of meat and basically sell door to door. The thing was they would only sell package deals, and you needed a freezer big enough to hold it all. We had the freezer space so my dad would buy sides of beef. As far as I recall there were never any problems with the meat. I sometimes wonder if the bigger money maker for these guys was selling or renting the freezers to people who didn't already have one.
No not meat but seafood yes. It used to be common in the Portuguese neighborhoods I lived in.
I live maybe an hour from the ocean now and I don't see it here in this city. Too bad because I used to get some really good fresh fish that way.
Agree about the fish. When I lived near the gulf in Mississippi, we bought shrimp from trucks all the time.
I'm also thinking that online ordering and home delivery is huge. These could be legitimate companies making this more convenient for customers, or using it like advertising, like if a company like Omaha Steaks (whether you like them or not) drove a refrigerated truck around. I would say most people don't relish the idea of eating from a "roach coach," but look at all the high-end food trucks out there now. I could just see this being a "thing" now.
But if I just saw a truck parked in a parking lot, no, I wouldn't buy from them unless I could check them out.
We've bought meat a couple of times from the guys with a freezer sitting in the back of a pick-up. Both were package deals - so many steaks, so many chicken breasts, so many burger patties, shrimp, etc. It was a huge amount of meat. When the guy first asked us, we said no and one reason was that we only had a small freezer in our refrigerator. He said if he unpacked it and fit it all into our freezer, that he would give us another $50 discount. If he couldn't, he would sell us a few items at a very deep discount (although (wink, wink) he said he wasn't actually allowed to do that). We said go for it, knowing that there was no way all that meat would fit in our freezer. Well, dang if he didn't get it all in there.
We had no problem with the quality of the meat and everything was surprisingly good. And, on a per pound basis, we paid under what we would pay at the grocery store.
The next time we did this, it didn't turn out as well. Price was actually a little lower than first time. Turns out, some of the meat was thawed and was no longer frozen. It was all hidden in the bottom of the box. Although I opened the box and looked at it before we bought it, I didn't look close enough and only saw that everything on top was solidly frozen and good color. Needless to say, we couldn't use about a quarter of the meat because it had spoiled.
If you go to a lot of U.K. cities where they have a Saturday or Sunday market, usually in huge parking lots, with hosts of stalls selling anything from clothes to curtains and drapes, military memorabilia, etc. etc., you’ll almost always find a large refrigerated truck somewhere, with one side open, and one or two guys in butcher aprons, shouting out their wares, steaks, chickens, sausages, pheasants, half a pig, turkeys, bacon, you name it.
They have proper laminated signs, stating that they’ve been trading there for X amount of years, the address of the farms that the meat has come from, with phone numbers and web site addresses, the whole nine yards.
I’ve personally not bought anything from them, and I’m not going to call them as right or wrong, but the customers climb over one another to buy the stuff.
The vendors have to beat the customers off with clubs, they’ve been around for years, and I’m unaware of any food poisoning tales about them.
I figured I would sample the meat and see if it was any good. If I stop posting here on city data you will know it didn't turn out.....
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