Hasta La Gadget!

The street-food business, which includes food trucks, is a $1 billion industry that grew by 8.4% between 2007 and 2012. Between 2010 and 2015, the food truck sector of the business experienced an even higher growth rate of 9.3%. However, despite the sector’s boom, investing in a food truck may not be for everyone. A food truck is a good first commercial real estate investment for people who know food and can manage the expenses and develop a solid business plan.

Why should a person invest in food trucks?

Food trucks offer opportunities for entrepreneurial people who love food but find the cost and risk of opening a restaurant to be prohibitive. According to a respected study, 25% of new restaurants fail in their first year while 60% fail within three years. This is because, unless a restaurant is backed by investors and features a high-brow concept, it is difficult to build a solid customer base. Moreover, opening a restaurant can be extremely expensive, with costs ranging between $250,000 and $500,000 for rent, staff, inventory, utilities, etc.

By comparison, a food truck costs much less to open. The biggest expense is the truck itself, which can range in price from $15,000 to $100,000. Staff salaries may also be a factor, but with 78 percent of food truck owners employing four or fewer people, this should not be a huge expense. Food truck owners will also need to pay roughly $10,000 in licensing fees, $2,000 to $4,000 in annual insurance coverage, $400 to $800 per month for commissary, a few thousand in licensing fees, and a few thousand in initial inventory. Altogether, the cost of opening a food truck ranges from approximately $25,000 to $115,000.

How profitable are food trucks?

Food truck owners typically sell food priced between $8 and $10. A gourmet food truck may charge more, but a food truck’s goal is to feed people relatively inexpensively. Determining how profitable a food truck can be depends on the owner’s business plan, which should incorporate information on where the truck will be located, the approximate amount of people in the area at the time the truck will operate, the percentage of those people who will buy from that truck, and a variety of other considerations. Based on these factors, food trucks can generate anywhere between approximately $50,000 and $200,000 in annual revenue, and 50 percent do bring in at least $200,000.

Should investors know how to cook?

Many investors in food trucks are chefs or cooks. Knowing how to cook the food one’s truck will offer reduces costs, as it negates the necessity of paying a chef’s salary. Additionally, because typical food truck entrepreneurs spend many hours each day running errands or securing ingredients for their truck’s operation, knowledge of cooking helps ensure that the truck has the proper foods and supplies. As the former Communications Director for SOMA StrEat Food Park put it, one enters the street food business “because [one’s] passionate about the food.”

But a successful investment in such a business depends even more on knowing how to gauge the market. It’s been suggested that food truck entrepreneurs spend time studying the market so that they can plan a menu. They should consider which foods are popular in their city, which ingredients are easy and cost-effective to purchase from local wholesalers or markets, what can be cooked or heated up without much difficulty, and what foods customers can easily carry away from their truck. The originality of one’s recipes can also be a factor, as a new entrant into the food truck scene does not want to serve the same food that is offered by other trucks, especially if this entrant plans to sell at festivals or other locations where food trucks gather in masses.

What’s the bottom line?

Food trucks are a great first-time commercial real estate investment for people who know food and are passionate about preparing it for others. Their mobility allows for trying different markets while their lower cost makes it easy to make a relatively cheap investment in a commercial property. However, because food trucks require lots of time and energy to run, investors looking for less involvement in the day-to-day operations of a property should probably look for more attractive opportunities elsewhere.

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Labor Day is right around the corner and folks around the country are gearing up for what will likely be their last road trip of the summer. Unlike years past when the price of gas might persuade people to stay close to home, drivers are in for a bargain this weekend as gas prices are at a 10-year low across the United States.

While the prospects of spending less will likely steer more people on to the roads, saving at the pump isn’t the only way drivers can save money on gas. Whether you’re driving an SUV rated at 15 MPG, or a subcompact which can reach 45 MPG, you still have the ability to save a buck or two on fuel costs. There are plenty of articles that suggest better driving habits to increase fuel economy but many lack tangible results. I spoke to Richard Reina, product training director at CARiD, who provided some low- or no-cost improvements to your vehicle that can actually help you improve your car’s mile-per-gallon and keep those gas savings in your pocket.

All vehicles obviously should be regularly maintained with tune-ups and oil changes at prescribed intervals, however, each of the below five recommended practices will result in incremental improvement in fuel economy. Combined, they have the potential to save you 3-4 miles per gallon, which can add up to several hundred dollars per year.

Maintain tire pressures by the book. Tires low on air don’t roll easily, meaning more engine power (and more fuel) is needed to make them rotate. Fortunately, this is one of the easiest things to check on a car. Pressure gauges are inexpensive and can be kept in your glove box or trunk, making it easy to quickly check the tires at every (or even every other) fill-up.

Be stringent about using the prescribed numbers on your car’s tire pressure label, which is generally found in the driver’s door jamb. In the majority of cases all four tires will have the same pressure number, but certain models will require different pressures for front and rear, so be sure to educate yourself.

COST: $9.95 for the gauge, zero to check and add air.

Get regular alignments. Despite the many myths published online, hitting a pothole will not throw your alignment out of whack. Front ends go out of alignment over time, as various suspension components wear. The effect is gradual and hardly noticeable, but a poor alignment will force your engine to work harder to push against tires that scrub instead of roll.

While a newer car shouldn’t need an alignment for several years after purchase, older vehicles would definitely benefit from a professional alignment every year or two. As the miles add up, certain wear items may need replacing, but getting this done will benefit your driving safety and comfort, while ensuring your car isn’t overworking to get down the road.

COST: $89.95 annually.

Remove extra weight. Consider this: when designing a car, automotive engineers sweat over how to remove several ounces of weight to improve a vehicle’s EPA mileage rating. So what kind of performance boost would you get if you removed several pounds? Maybe you’ve got the kids’ soccer gear in the back, or you’re carrying around golf clubs that you won’t need on your trip. Make it a habit to only carry what needs to be in the car – especially on a road trip – and watch your fuel economy improve.

COST: zero.

Drive with windows up and A/C on. Automotive aerodynamics have improved so much that driving with your windows down actually creates drag, which negatively impacts your fuel economy. I know, this goes against the old adage you were taught years ago – “Using the A/C burns gas!” – but it’s true. Modern electronics within the car have completely overridden this concern, as they efficiently manage A/C performance. The net effect is that your car will get better mileage if you keep the windows up and utilize the A/C to stay cool. You’d probably rather have gas back in your tank than wind in your hair.

COST: zero.

Service brakes to avoid drag. All modern cars now have front disc brakes, and most have rear discs too. Disc brakes are great because they’re self-adjusting, but this can also lead them to start to drag as pads, pins, and pistons collect dirt and corrosion from miles of use. A sticking brake, which is hardly ever felt by the driver, fights the engine and burns fuel.

Get your car’s brakes checked regularly – most vehicles benefit from a brake service which cleans and lubes moving parts, even if pads and rotors still have life left in them. The less fight, the less fuel burn.

COST: $99.95 for brake service.

It’s time for the last trip of the summer, so don’t save at the pump only to burn fuel on the road. Follow these tips and get the most out of each tank.

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Sarah MacLean is an award winning and New York Times best-selling author of historical romance. She pens a monthly column about romance for The Washington Post, and is a fierce advocate, not only for the genre, but also the women who read it and write it. Sarah’s novels have been translated into over twenty languages and covered by Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, and Jezebel. Sarah is a Smith College and Harvard grad who resides in New York City with her family.

MW: Sarah, I’m guessing you read the Jennifer Weiner opinion piece that appeared recently in The New York Times, titled, “The Snobs and Me,” and I’m wondering what your own experience has been, as a Harvard grad turned romance writer. Do you find yourself having to defend yourself and you work or have people been accepting and or supportive of your choice to write romance?

SMac: I think every romance writer has had to defend the genre at some point or another. Jennifer’s experience with her Princeton classmates’ pride is very similar to what I’ve experienced with peers at both Harvard and Smith, but there are certainly people in the world who gleefully disparage with snide remarks (a particularly odious dude approached me a funeral to ask me if I was “still writing dirty books”) and the super hilarious questions (asking my husband if he gets to “help with research”) and, my favorite comment of all: “But you’re so talented; you could write a real book!” It’s easy to get angry when faced with this kind of overt disdain, but then I remember that romance is a billion-dollar industry that is by, for and about women, our triumphs and our pleasure, and I feel pretty good about things.

MW: Your latest work, A Scot in the Dark, has been called a feminist manifesto.
SMac: (It has? Cool!)
MW: Did you set out to write something that challenged the status quo or was the message intrinsic to the plot? How are nineteenth century gender roles relevant today? Have we come a long way or are Lily Hargrove’s experiences applicable to today’s socialites?

SMac: When I conceived of the Scandal & Scoundrel series, I knew it would be inspired by modern day celebrity gossip. The first has a little Beyonce, Jay-Z, Solange at the start, and some Kardashian-esque shenanigans in the middle. But this one was the one I wanted to write from the beginning–the celebrity sex tape. When I was plotting the series, Jennifer Lawrence’s cellphone was hacked and the world was asking why she had salacious pictures on the phone to begin with. And I was fascinated by how the more things change, the more they stay the same. We hold women to such an unachievable standard. We ask them to be good girls and the moment they reveal themselves as sexual beings, we judge them for it. We prize virginity in women and we prize experience in men. We slut shame even as we honor the rake. And there’s nothing about it that’s new. It was easy to lift this conversation from 2016 and set it down in 1833–too easy. The romance genre stands on the shoulders of Austen, possibly the greatest social commentator of her time, so I was proud to continue the tradition in my own small way.

MW: You’re a historian and you write historical romance. For readers who may have only ever read contemporary romance, what is the appeal of the historic setting? How does it differ from what they’re used to?

SMac: There’s a reason why we love bad boys, why we love secret trysts and forbidden love. There’s a reason why stepbrother romances and motorcycle clubs and BDSM all feel so deliciously right. Because rule breaking is sexy. In historical romance, rules reign. Every inch of society is about reputation and rules and manners and what is and is not done. Confined by all those boundaries, characters can’t help but fight to be free. To go wild. Which is why historical romances can be so gleefully, deliciously entertaining.

MW: How do you do your research? Is it a grueling process or do you find it enjoyable?

SMac: I love the research bits. I love the research bits more than I love the writing bits, most of the time. Of course, the problem with the research bits is that then you know so much. For example, I know more than you could ever imagine about swimming pool filtration in the 19th Century. I learned all about it when I wrote a hero who owned a private swimming pool. But the story is the most important thing, of course, so when I wrote the big scene about the swimming pool, and it involved all sorts of naughtiness, charcoal and sand filters did not seem exactly appropriate. So I took all that stuff out. And I still get mail from readers who are concerned that my hero & heroine were doing it in a cesspool of waterborne illness. (They weren’t.)

MW: In Lillian Hargrove we have a non-traditional Lady, and yet the Duke is just as unconventional a character as she. How did the inspiration for these two come to you and will we see them again in the next book in the Scandal and Scoundrel Series?

MW: Warnick came first – he was a secondary character in the first book in the series, The Rogue Not Taken, the best friend of the hero of that book and the dude who could see the truth even as the hero could not (one of my favorite archetypes). Of course, he was big and brawny and the ladies loved him, but he wasn’t interested in being loved. Or, rather, he didn’t think he was good enough for love. As he was a secondary character, I didn’t have to delve too deeply into the reasons for that, but once I decided I loved this Scot as much as the female population of Britain, I started to, and it became very clear that this whole book was going to be about sexual politics. In the 19th Century and today, which aren’t that different, unfortunately. You’ll definitely see Warnick and Lily again in future books!

MW: Who are some of your favorite unconventional literary heroes and heroines?

SMac: The heroine of Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels (widely believed to be the best romance novel ever written) is beautifully unconventional. Stunning, strong and willing to do anything to get what she wants…I like to think of her as the godmother of all my heroines.

As for unconventional heroes, I think about Derek Craven, the hero of Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You, often, because with him, Kleypas blew the doors of the historical romance genre, delivering a deeply noble, deeply heroic, deeply broken hero who was not aristocratic in any way. Craven was born into the gutter, son of a prostitute and an unknown man, he was crass and cockney, with a snaggle tooth and hands scarred beyond measure because of all the fights he’d fought to get where he was – a king of the London underworld. And when he falls in love, it is glorious.

MW: Can you tell us what’s coming once you’ve completed this series?

SMac: There’s one more book in this series – The Day of the Duchess, about the eldest Talbot sister, Seraphina, who returns to London after years in exile to wrest her future from her husband, a duke who still loves her desperately.

I’ve got another idea for what comes after that, but I haven’t even told my editor about it…so all I’ll say is, if it works out, Fallen Angel fans will be very very happy.

Thanks so much for having me, Mara! xx

You can read more about Sarah MacLean and her work at http://www.sarahmaclean.net or on her Amazon page, https://www.amazon.com/Sarah-MacLean/e/B001JSEB9S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1472567502&sr=1-1https://www.amazon.com/Sarah-MacLean/e/B001JSEB9S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1472567502&sr=1-1 Her novels are available at all major ebook and print retailers.

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As any art history fanatic knows, there exists not one, but four copies of Edvard Munch’s well-known masterpiece, “The Scream,” on this planet Earth.

One of them ― a pastel version ― sold for a mind-boggling $119 million to an American billionaire back in 2012. The other three, painted between 1893 and 1910, live in Oslo, Norway. The specimen highlighted above, housed at Oslo’s National Museum, is the earliest version. But a far more interesting legend sets it apart from its cousins: It was for a long time rumored to be speckled with small flecks of bird poop.

Bird droppings ― the bane of outdoor art ― are not generally a threat to fine art that hangs inside. But for years, people have speculated that the white splotches located on the screaming figure are the work of a defecating winged animal. 

“Why, for god’s sake, why?” you might ask.

Because Munch reportedly liked to paint outdoors, as evidenced by photographs of the Norwegian artist at work during his lifetime. Proponents of the bird s**t theory point to little else, while many experts have continued to decry the unconventional explanation. Thierry Ford, paintings conservator at the National Museum, had this to say in opposition of the theory: “Bird excrements are known to have a corroding or macerating effect on many materials, a statement that most car owners can confirm.”

Another dissenter is a very level-headed professor by the name of Tine Frøysaker. She and a team of researchers at the University of Antwerp decided to analyze “The Scream” once and for all, using a Macro-X-ray fluorescence scanner to hone in on the curious white marks. The non-invasive scan, initiated in May of 2016, ruled out bird poop ― along with white paint and chalk, former suspected culprits, as no white pigments or calcium were detected in their samples.

“Undaunted by this negative result, the interdisciplinary team decided to take the research to the next level by extracting a micro sample from the white stains,” a paper hilariously titled “Solving a Cold Case: the Bird Droppings Mystery” reads. “PhD student Frederik Vanmeert [sic] who analysed the sample at the micro scale using X-ray diffraction had a surprise in store. ‘I immediately recognised the diffraction pattern of wax as I encountered this material several times upon measuring paintings.”

The moral of the story: The spots are not bird poop; they are, instead, most likely the result of molten wax splatters that accidentally dripped from a candle in Munch’s studio.

Mystery solved. Case closed. But not before Dr. Geert Van der Snickt, cultural heritage scientist at the University of Antwerp, went the extra mile to provide a reference sample.

“Initially, I planned to go sightseeing on my last day in Oslo,” Van der Snickt is quoted as saying. “It turned out that I spent most of my time looking down, searching for bird droppings on the ground that could serve as reference material [for the study]. After some time, I found a perfect specimen right in front of the opera building. I must admit I was a little embarrassed collecting this sample material in front of groups of tourists. For a second sample, I decided to look for a more quiet place, around the castle.”

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Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an anti-immigration hard-liner and prominent Donald Trump supporter, said he’s not bothered by the GOP nominee’s failure to discuss payment for his proposed border wall during Wednesday’s meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Trump, who has made construction of a wall that Mexico will pay for a campaign’s signature issue, said during a joint news conference with Peña Nieto in Mexico City that the issue of who will fund the wall would be resolved in the future.

“We did discuss the wall,” Trump said. “We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date.”

Trump has promised repeatedly that he would make Mexico pay for construction of the wall. When he asks supporters who will pay for the wall at campaign rallies, crowds roar in near unanimity: “Mexico!”

But Arpaio, the controversial Arizona sheriff known for his outspoken stance against immigration, gave Trump a pass on that detail. 

“What difference does it make? The wall is important no matter who pays for it,” Arpaio said in an interview on CNN. “If Mexico doesn’t pay for it, they do get foreign aid. Maybe we can deduct the price from the foreign aid. I’m not trying to be nasty.”

Trump’s campaign has estimated that construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would cost $8 billion. More realistic outside estimates have pegged the bill at $25 billion. In comparison, U.S. foreign aid to Mexico in the next fiscal year is projected to be about $130 million ― a meager sum compared to the billions it would take to build a wall.

In his interview on CNN, Arpaio also praised Trump for having the “courage” to go to Mexico and meet with the country’s president, who has criticized Trump for insulting the country’s people and has even called him the “devil.”

“What a great day this is that the president of Mexico invited Donald Trump to Mexico, and he had the courage to go into the heart of Mexico and talk to the president,” Arpaio said. “There is mutual respect there.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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