Thanks to every­one who attended the First Annual Street Food Con­fer­ence, an explo­ration of food, pol­icy and eco­nom­ics.  We all enjoyed the lively dis­cus­sions about the cre­ation of viable eco­nomic mod­els that allow small-scale food entre­pre­neurs to bring the foods they love to the cities in which they live.

All con­fer­ence activ­i­ties took place at the Hotel Vitale, a lux­ury Joie de Vivre hotel on the San Fran­cisco water­front. We launched the First Ever Con­fer­ence with a pre-conference brunch fea­tur­ing Chef Kory Stewart’s Amer­i­can food vs. the carts of San Fran­cisco. It was a lovely morn­ing with all you can drink mimosas and bloody marys on a patio over­look­ing the Bay.

This event would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the gen­er­ous sup­port of Union Bank and Joie de Vivre, the Offi­cial Hotel Spon­sor of the 2010 SFSFF Conference.

Detailed pod casts of the ses­sions will soon be avail­able thanks to Pin­na­cle Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Below are this year’s ses­sion descrip­tions. We hope to see you at next year’s Conference!

Sun­day, 8/22 – Ses­sion #1, 1:45–3:15pm:

Open-Air Mar­kets, Hawker Stalls and The Art of Mak­ing One Great Thing

Global street food is an unin­tended cel­e­bra­tion of entre­pre­neur­ial spirit, the nature of giv­ing and the drive to make one great thing. Across the world, chefs and infor­mal cooks use open-air mar­kets and mobile vend­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to bring their culi­nary cre­ations to the masses. In every place, this means some­thing dif­fer­ent, and the ways in which the world sells and eats food can tell you a lot about a place. In this panel, join some of our favorite chefs as they tell you, and show you, the ways food makes it from the chef to the consumer.

Mod­er­a­tor: Jes­sica Bat­ti­lana, Food Edi­tor, 7×7 Magazine

Pan­elists: Charles Phan, Chef, The Slanted Door

Mourad Lahlou, Chef, Aziza

Iliana de la Vega, El Naranjo

Sun­day, 8/22 – Ses­sion #2, 3:30–5:00pm:

Truck-Food Nation; The Streets of America

Amer­i­can street food is noth­ing new, but over the last cou­ple of years there has been an unde­ni­able explo­sion in the pres­ence, atten­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in the foods that are made and con­sumed on the streets of Amer­ica. Some of this is lam­en­ta­ble, as we’ve seen the past get erased, but there is also immense cre­ativ­ity and oppor­tu­nity in the inge­nu­ity of these ven­dors. In this panel, John T. Edge will drive us across the coun­try with the insights of some of the lead­ing inno­va­tors across the country.

Mod­er­a­tor: John T. Edge

Pan­elists: Kamala Sax­ton, Mar­i­na­tion Mobile (Seattle)

Bryan Petroff and Doug Quint, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck (New York)

Veron­ica Salazar, Chef, El Huarache Loco

Jon Ward, Kung Fu Tacos

Mon­day, 8/23 – Ses­sion #1, 9:00–10:30am:

Meet and Eat – The Cul­ture and Face of Street Food

There is an unde­ni­able con­nec­tion between the peo­ple who cre­ate street food and those of us who enjoy con­sum­ing it. Per­haps its allure lies in the faces behind the food, and the human con­nec­tion that results from a street food trans­ac­tion. In Amer­ica, and across the world, the peo­ple who take to the streets to make food are defin­ing the locale and its cul­ture. In this panel, we will exam­ine the faces behind the food, how they are per­ceived, and the ways in which our expec­ta­tions are often con­tra­dicted by our expe­ri­ences. We will dis­cuss the race, cul­ture and gen­dered issues of street food and how we as con­sumers, and all of us as cities, approach these identities.

Mod­er­a­tor: San­jit Sethi, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Pan­elists: Erin Glenn, Los Loncheros – Los Ange­les, CA

Molly O’Neill, Food Writer

Sean Basin­ski, Direc­tor, The Ven­dor Project and The Vendy Awards

Mon­day, 8/23 – Ses­sion #2, 11:00am-12:30pm:

A Cart on Every Cor­ner? Urban Pub­lic Space, City Pol­icy and the Informal/Formal Busi­ness Model

Our cities are emblems and inno­va­tors. Across the coun­try, cities are try­ing to deal with the his­tory, present and future of street food. In doing so, there have been suc­cesses and fail­ures. This panel brings those expe­ri­ences together to cre­ate an under­stand­ing of the best prac­tices and real­is­tic out­comes for an urban pub­lic plan­ner to cre­ate a healthy infra­struc­ture to sup­port a suc­cess­ful street food venue.

Mod­er­a­tor: Mar­garet Craw­ford, Pro­fes­sor, UC Berkeley

Pan­elists: Alma C. Flo­res, Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Plan­ner, Bureau of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­abil­ity, Port­land, Oregon

Mar­i­anne Moroney, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Toronto Street Food Ven­dors Association

War­ren Hansen, Madi­son, Wisconsin

Greg Smith, Atlanta Street Food Coalition

Shel­ley Garza, Ris­ing Sun Entrepreneurs

Mon­day, 8/23 – Ses­sion #3, 2:00–3:30pm:

Mobile Ven­dor Eco­nomic Policy

Using the Bay Area as a case study, we will dis­cuss the eco­nomic via­bil­ity of the street food ven­ture and its abil­ity to pro­duce a sus­tain­able indi­vid­ual income. The panel will look at a few exist­ing mod­els, from the ille­gal food ven­dor to the ultra-formalized truck. We will explore how spe­cific cities sup­port these indi­vid­ual ven­dors and how this affects each local econ­omy. The panel will exam­ine urban pol­icy that works and doesn’t work while dis­cussing steps that cities can take to encour­age and sup­port mobile food business.

Mod­er­a­tor: Kate Sofis, SFMade

Pan­elists: Larry Bain, Let’s Be Frank

Dan Sider, San Fran­cisco Plan­ning Department

TBD from Parks & Rec

Matt Cohen, SF Cart Project

*Click here for the Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion from the Social Media Work­shop.*

Can you hear it? It’s the buzz of social media. And it’s every­where.

It has become a nec­es­sary strat­egy for small busi­nesses to have a pres­ence on social media sites. Yet sort­ing through the sites and hype can be over­whelm­ing and con­fus­ing. A big buzz kill.

Join us for a hands-on work­shop that will help you under­stand the social media tools that will ben­e­fit your busi­ness and get started right away.

You’ll learn:

• The key social media tools for small busi­ness mar­ket­ing and how to use them -  Face­book, Twit­ter, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogs
• How to uti­lize social media for offers and promotions
• Tools to help max­i­mize your small busi­nesses efficiency
• How to main­tain a con­sis­tent brand image through social media to reach your customers

Par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to bring their lap­tops or print outs of their cur­rent social media mar­ket­ing efforts.

The work­shop was held on Feb­ru­ary 16th at 6 PM at The Women’s Build­ing on 18th St.

*Click here for the Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion from the Social Media Work­shop.*

Mod­er­a­tor:  Jen­nifer Benz is founder and chief strate­gist at Benz Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a bou­tique con­sult­ing firm that focuses on employee ben­e­fits com­mu­ni­ca­tion. She is also a long-time La Cocina vol­un­teer and helped develop La Cocina’s mar­ket­ing cur­ricu­lum. Her busi­ness is fea­tured on Open Forum Pulse, an aggre­ga­tion of small busi­ness lead­ers on Twit­ter -  She will share her own expe­ri­ences and insights from her time with both Benz Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and La Cocina businesses.

It’s all the rage, there’s no deny­ing that. And maybe you have an idea; ramen, elotes or some­thing we’ve never even seen before. Maybe you’re doing it right now and you want to for­mal­ize or maybe it’s some­thing that you’ve long dreamt of. Either way, this work­shop is for you. Rules and reg­u­la­tions are chang­ing to meet demand in San Fran­cisco, but often not fast enough. Join La Cocina, Matt Cohen (SFCart Project) and city rep­re­sen­ta­tives to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly for legal street food in San Fran­cisco. This work­shop is free for pro­gram par­tic­i­pants and clients of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, $15 for com­mer­cial users and $25 for the gen­eral pub­lic. Check out the audio link to the work­shop here.