Can Love Park Become An Urban Foodie Paradise?


Yup. The rise of the gourmet food truck phenomenon has grown to the point that City Hall sees an additional opportunity at Love Park. Truck vendors have until April 2 to submit their application to join the mobile fooderies who are already serving food on-site at the park.

And it’s clear the folks in charge are looking for more than another cheesesteak vendor.

“The City’s goal in issuing this RFP for the Food Service Program is to provide each day in JFK Plaza a variety of unique or uncommon menu items, or new varieties of familiar items, with a higher quality of ingredients and presentation than is readily available from nearby food carts or trucks, or from convenience stores, in the vicinity of JFK Plaza,” the department says its official request for applications—”JFK Plaza” being the lesser-known but still-completely-valid name of the area people most Philadelphians know as Love Park.

The are supposedly three spaces for full-sized trucks in front of the welcome center at 16th and JFK, and room for two pushcarts closer to the LOVE sculpture itself. It’s all very complicated. But the bottom line: Love Park may soon be an urban foodie paradise.