Every year, Goldenvoice invites a handful of Coachella Valley businesses to join the ranks of Coachella and Stagecoach vendors.
While many out-of-town food places pop up to feed hungry attendees, festival-goers can also enjoy food and drink lovingly made by locals. Everbloom Coffee, TKB Bakery and Deli and Valley Fusion will return to the Empire Polo Club for this year’s festivals, and Valley Fusions will work with One Stop Taco Shop and FiveO3 Pupusas to serve food all over the grounds during both festivals.
“Coachella helped us get our name out there, especially here in the valley,” said Alexis Jimenez, owner of mobile sushi truck Valley Fusion, during a recent interview. “A lot of people, knowing that we’re there (at Coachella), went to find us. … We also learned how to work at a faster pace as well. We were already ready, because we do a lot of festivals, but Coachella is a different monster. You’ve got to be super-quick. You can’t have people waiting a few minutes.”
While last year was intense for Jimenez and co., Valley Fusion will be even busier this year, hosting three locations at Coachella and two at Stagecoach.
“The food truck will be in the campgrounds (during Coachella), operating from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and then also, after the festival is over, it’s going to be operating from around 11 p.m. to maybe 3 a.m.,” Jimenez said. “We can open 24 hours, if we want, in the campgrounds, when it comes to the food truck. Our booth is going to be inside the VIP (area) again. … My wife has to run one, and then I have to be at the other one, and we have to make sure we’re coordinating, and you can’t be running out of food.”
Jimenez offered a peek behind the figurative curtain to explain how feeding attendees at a festival with 200,000 people actually works.
“You really have to have something big in the back of the house, so they give us a designated area where we can go ahead and park trailers and reefers,” Jimenez said. “Reefers are basically big refrigerated box trucks, and we will have one of those as a backup. If we end up running out (of something), we run a golf cart, and you can drive it straight on the grounds to stock up, because you don’t have time to get out in the traffic and everything. Everything has to be easy on the grounds. … You basically stock for days.”
Sushi may not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of festival food, but Jimenez’s approach has made Valley Fusion a hit, with appearances at many local food-truck events and even other Goldenvoice festivals. During our interview at Coachella last year, Jimenez explained: “We do all types of different sushi rolls when it comes to shrimp tempura, crab, avocado and spicy tuna. We have sushi burritos, and we have chicken teriyaki for the ones who don’t like sushi and spam musubi. You also can’t forget our drinks—our strawberry horchata, cucumber lemon and strawberry lemonade. Everything’s made with real fruit, and it’s mouthwatering, one-of-a-kind.”
Jimenez, during our recent interview, admitted people were skeptical about Valley Fusion at first.
“We don’t want to offer just straight raw options and stuff like that,” he said. “The sushi burrito is a hit in every single festival. It’s basically a big sushi roll, with seaweed, sushi rice, spicy tuna and crab, and then a special creamy cilantro sauce. People are on the go at these festivals. They don’t want to miss the next artist; they want to just grab their food and be out. They want to order, hold it, eat it and then just take off.”
At Goldenvoice’s No Values festival in Pomona last year, I noticed a never-ending line of almost 100 people at Valley Fusion.
“My line was extremely long at No Values,” Jimenez said. “It’s good to have a little line, but you’ve got to be moving it. The food was coming out super-fast, but the line just was never-ending. We didn’t stop from the morning until night time, without a break, 13 hours nonstop. You’ve got to be ready for these festivals.”
Jimenez is happy to be working closely with two other local businesses this year: One Stop Taco Shop and FiveO3 Pupusas.
“It’s really cool to be able to guide some people that don’t have too much experience when it comes to the festivals,” Jimenez said. “… My buddy from One Stop Taco Shop, and my buddy from FiveO3, we’re going to rent a huge reefer together … and it gets a little bit more affordable. We’re three local vendors, and it’s pretty cool that we can do something like that.”
One Stop Taco Shop is an Indio classic. Unlike Valley Fusion, the shop has a brick-and-mortar location—on Indio Boulevard, in between a pawn shop and a gas station—and it serves some of the best Mexican food you’ll ever taste. Trust me.
Owner Arnulfo Valencia shared his excitement about vending at Coachella and Stagecoach during a recent interview.
“These are the moments you wait for,” he said. “… I was a plumber before, and now I’m in this business, and the community just welcomes me everywhere we go.”
One Stop Taco Shop has caught the attention of Goldenvoice, as Valencia has vended at Camp Flog Gnaw, Rolling Loud, Cali Vibes and other festivals. He said attendees love experiencing fresh, authentic Mexican food from the heart of Indio.
“What you see here in my kitchen is what I take out there, so I give them everything fresh,” he said. “My salsas, my guacamole—we’re cooking everything the same day we give it out, so everything’s fresh, and (attendees) come back. They go all over the place, trying different foods, but I know that once they try me the first day, they will come the next day.”
Valencia gave big props to Jimenez.
“Valley Fusions is a good friend of mine, and I’ve learned a lot from him,” Valencia said. “He’s done nothing but festivals and all that. I love his product. He’s one of the guys who cooks there and gives it out the same day.”
One Stop Taco Shop was a part of last year’s Coachella food lineup; Valencia said he’s a little more prepared this year.
“Last year was my first time experiencing it, and I learned a lot, like how to manage more people,” said Valencia. “I know the people who come from out of town. Before they leave town, they stop by and eat before they go, so I’m always advertising my business: ‘Hey, come visit! I have more on the menu (at my restaurant), so come and visit there!’”
Valencia let my girlfriend and me try a new chicken recipe. It was bomb. He grills the chicken and other meats on a grill made out of the back end of an old Toyota pickup.
“I barely started three months ago with (the chicken recipe), and in the beginning, it was a mess,” he said. “I started fresh, with one chicken, and started ordering six boxes a week. Now I’m ordering more than 30 boxes a week with how much chicken I sell. It’s a big, big thing. It takes time to get it right, but we got it.”
For hungry Coachella attendees looking to support local businesses, or non-festival-goers wanting to experience fresh cuisine, I highly recommend One Stop Taco Shop.
“It’s all fresh meat,” Valencia said. “All my meat is cooked with mesquite wood, so it’s a different flavor. My tortillas, flour and corn, we make them by hand.”
FiveO3 Pupusas completes the trio of local food businesses working together at this year’s festivals. FiveO3 has a brick-and-mortar location in Cathedral City, but is mobilizing for a return to the fests. You can find FiveO3 at Coachella in the camping, VIP and general admission areas.
During a recent interview with owner Tito Pinto, he said it was important to be ready for the festivals.
“Speaking to the suppliers and essentially preparing ahead of time is the most important thing, I would say,” Pinto said. “… We start preparing for Coachella many weeks in advance, about two months almost, and we start speaking to the suppliers, gathering our team together, and scheduling all the employees. As we’ve grown over these past couple of years with Coachella, we’ve added more booths and operations. We are going to have three booths this upcoming Coachella, which entails way more employees working a whole day, which means way more shifts as well. Putting together the right team is extremely important.”
Pinto said there is no one-size-fits-all approach to operating at music festivals.
“When I first started with festivals, I asked a lot of questions, but you really don’t know until you throw yourself in there and figure it out,” he said. “What works for one vendor might not work for you, and vice versa. You throw yourself in the deep end, if you’re not afraid to drown a little bit, and you figure it out from there.”
FiveO3’s relationship with Valley Fusions and One Stop Taco Shop runs deep; the owners and employees are always looking out for each other in the competitive food industry.
“I started in 2018, and Alexis reached out to me about three years ago and said he wanted to start something similar with his sushi concept,” Pinto said. “He’s been a sushi chef in the past, and he and his wife began this entire deal. They put together their canopy and started selling at … (Palm Springs) VillageFest. From there, we started doing bigger events and bigger festivals. We got in contact with the right people at the different organizations, so the way we help each other out, essentially, is keeping each other in the loop of what events are next.”
Pinto said the three businesses sharing a box truck is “a win-win for everybody.”
“Coachella is definitely the highlight of the year,” he said. “It is one of the biggest festivals in the world. … The Coachella Valley sees a huge influx of business in all sectors, which is amazing. Personally, we do the weekly VillageFest here in downtown Palm Springs, and we’re constantly letting people know where we’re going to be. A lot of locals attend the Coachella festival, so they look for us there. Here in Cathedral City, we have our restaurant, and with the customers who come in, it’s a fun topic to speak about.”
If you decide to eat at FiveO3, know that you are experiencing some deep cultural history.
“My family and our roots date back to where the pupusas originated, back in an area of El Salvador where the Pipil culture inhabited, an area called Cuzcatlan,” Pinto said. “My mother, my grandmother, they learned all of these different recipes that were passed down from generation to generation, so it’s a very authentic flavor that we offer in regards to our pupusas, and also in regards to our Salvadorian horchata, which is a signature drink for us.
“We’ll be offering the mixed pupusas, which is the most popular. In Spanish, it’s called revuelta, and it has pork, beans and cheese. We will also have a chicken option for people who don’t consume pork, and if they don’t want to consume any animal protein, we will have the beans and cheese, and we will also have a cheese-only option, and a beans-only option. As far as our drinks go, we will have five different flavors of aguas frescas. … They are all made from scratch with real fruits. Lastly, we will have our very popular dish, the fried plantains served with sour cream and beans.”
Since one of FiveO3’s booths will be at the campgrounds, Pinto said his team will even offer a breakfast plate.
“This is two scrambled eggs, a piece of cheese, one pupusa, some fried plantains and sour cream,” he said.