San Francisco Blog

​At a lunch at La Cocina last week, we spoke with director Caleb Zigas and a handful of the incubator kitchen's clients about the phenomenon of new-wave Mission street-food vendors, and what they might have in common with more traditional food vendors. Much of the conversation focused on the challenges all home-based food businesses face when they try to score the proper permits and business licenses to go legit, a process Zigas calls moving from the "informal" to the "formal" economy.

One enormous difference between old- and new-school vendors? Twitter. While businesses like Gobba Gobba Hey and Bike Basket Pies deftly use the social networking medium to draw customers -- even sell directly to them -- more traditional vendors rely pretty much solely on having a presence on the street, formally or, uh, informally. But with the first tweets last week of Mexico City-style food vendor El Huarache Loco, that may begin to change.

Huarache owner Veronica Salazar has only tweeted twice since launching her page, and she tweets in Spanish. But they represent huge potential for relationship-building, even with customers whose high-school Spanish has gotten a tad rusty. Check out El Huarache Loco's Twitter page -- you just might be witnessing the birth of a new local movement.