The Great Kogi Truck Incident of 2009

Alright, I'm exaggerating by calling it the "Great Incident", but I had to share with you my Kogi experience today. For those of you not in the Los Angeles area, the Kogi BBQ Truck is very popular here. It's basically a catering truck (or roach coach, if you will) that serves Mexican food (tacos, burritos, quesadillas, etc.) with a Korean twist. The food is quite tasty (if you like Korean kimchi, you'll love the flavor) and the trucks have a very loyal following. See the Kogi website for more info!

Well, two of the Kogi trucks made their Santa Monica stop today during lunch. My workplace is close by so I decided to make a Kogi taco run and waited in line. After the Kogi trucks arrived and had served about 3 people, the Santa Monica Police Department show up and start harassing the Kogi trucks. The Kogi trucks were parked in a red zone, so I figured the SMPD just wanted to hand out some tickets as they had nothing better to do. However, it turned into something bigger.

After about 20 minutes of questioning, the police officer finally told us that the Kogi trucks were missing a permit from the city of Santa Monica that allows them to 'cater' food. As such, the SMPD was shutting down the trucks and would not allow them to serve food. We stood in line for about 30 minutes only to be denied...yet Kogi had been serving food at this same spot on Wednesday for the past 4 weeks or so. I asked one of the drivers from the Kogi truck what was going on and he said that the SMPD was looking for one particular permit which they did not have. However, they did have other permits which they thought gave them the right to serve food.

You really have to wonder who fucked up here? Did Kogi not realize they needed this additional permit? Or did the city of Santa Monica not inform them of all the permits Kogi needed since they seem to have other permits from the city? Regardless of who screwed up, Kogi lost out on a ton of business today, the state lost out on a good amount of sales tax revenue (yes, Kogi does collect sales tax from every order), and we boo'd the hell out of the SMPD for not cutting the Kogi trucks a break (at least let the Kogi trucks serve the people who had waited for them to arrive).

Here are a few pics from today:


(The SMPD arrive in their squad truck. One of the worst looking police cars I have ever seen!)


(The main SMPD officer who did the work of writing up the two Kogi trucks.)


(The 2 additional officers who mainly stood by and chatted while the other officer did all the work.)