"I built this business when there were only seven or eight food carts in town, maybe nine," Rich Winiarski told The Bulletin in early September. "It was a whole different experience. It has changed a lot."
His Polish cart, Big Ski's Pierogis, served its last plates on Sept. 14 after more than 11 years at The Podski. Winiarski said he had planned to retire and spend more time with family, but he also said the money side of running a cart has changed. Breweries no longer let carts park for free or cheap. "Now everybody sees the value in a food truck," he said. "We're at our max."
Look at this year's closures together and one pattern stands out. The carts that left mostly got through summer fine. Winter is what hurt them. Heading into this cold season, the details that will matter most are where a pod's seating is and whether it has heat.
Last Winter Is the Reason These Carts Are Gone
Several of the carts that closed this year named the same stretch of the calendar. The Bulletin's Sept. 4 story on whether Bend is "maxed out on food carts" reported that Big Ski's and Dump City Dumplings both had a slow winter, made worse by poor snow at Mt. Bachelor, which brought fewer tourists to town. Dump City had run a cart and a brick-and-mortar on NW Galveston Avenue for 17 years before closing at the end of August.
Tenzin Sherpa ran Himalayan Bites at On Tap for a decade, serving Nepalese, Bhutanese and Tibetan food. He closed at the end of August and described what the work is like inside the trailer:
"We have harsh winters. That is one brutal part that I didn't want to deal with anymore. Then during the summer, we don't have a cooling system. It's like I'm living in a box."
Sherpa said he plans to take six months to a year off and then open a brick-and-mortar restaurant with a new menu. Jason Wiggers closed IndoDaddy, his Dutch-Indonesian cart, in late July after four years. He had moved from Bevel Craft Brewing to the newer Ballers & Brews, expecting more business. "I went backwards," he said. He is reworking the menu and looking for a new spot, ideally on the west side.
The same pressure reached beyond carts. Rapa Nui, the second-floor tiki bar in the Old Mill District, closed Sept. 18 because the Old Mill District plans to take over the building. Co-owner Andrew Soriano said the location depended on tourists. "When we had a dip in tourism, you could feel it big there," he said, and with a bad snow season on top of that, "you're like at the end of a knife." He said the bar may come back as weekend pop-up takeovers once winter is over.
More Pods Are Splitting Roughly the Same Crowd
Overall demand for carts in Bend has held up. Pods have passed 1 million visits a year for four years in a row. As of early September, the 16 pods that report to Visit Bend had logged more than 900,000 visits in 2026, nearly half of them from June through August.
Those visits are spread unevenly. Tim Neville of Visit Bend told The Bulletin that total visits are up slightly from the same point in 2025, possibly thanks to Base Camp and Ballers & Brews. More than half of the lots, though, are below last year, and the biggest drop is about 12%. He also noted that total visits stayed nearly flat from 2023 to 2024 even after another pod opened. "This indicates average traffic per location could be slightly diluted as the options on where to go increased," Neville said.
As of August, about 153 food carts were operating from permanent locations in Bend, according to Deschutes County Public Health Department data, out of 290 across the county. With that many carts and a crowd that grows only slowly, each pod has to give people a reason to show up. From October through March, that reason is often warm seating.
The Pod Map, Sorted by Where You'll Actually Sit
Each pod handles cold weather its own way. The table below uses each pod's own website plus Visit Bend's 2026 guides. Cart lineups change often, so check a pod's page before you head over for one particular cart.
| Pod | Where | Winter setup | Carts confirmed this year |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Lot | 745 NW Columbia St | Seating enclosed in cold weather, heaters, heated benches, gas fire feature | Fricken Faco, Maki Maki Sushi, A' La Carte |
| Base Camp | 319 SW Century Dr | Two stories of indoor seating, tavern open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily | Pho 88, Thaipas, Kove, Let's Roll, El Taquero and more |
| On Tap | 1424 NE Cushing Dr | Renovated indoor tap house with heaters, outdoor fire pits | Āina, CurBBQ, Ma Dee Thai, The Bleu Rooster, Rush's Squares |
| Crosscut Warming Hut No. 5 | 566 SW Mill View Way | Indoor bar seating, fire inside, fire pits outside | Abe Capanna's, Alebrije Oaxaca, On A Wing & A Crepe |
| Midtown Yacht Club | 1661 NE 4th St | Large covered bar area, fire pits | Barrio, PotLuck, NorthFresh Sushi, Chasin' Pizza |
| Ballers & Brews | 20869 Redside Ct | Built for year-round use, two heated covered pickleball courts, heated rooftop deck | Yoli, Manzanita Barbecue, The Mighty Greek |
| Ponch's Place | 62889 NE Oxford Ct | Beverage pavilion paused since Aug. 7, trucks open on their own hours | Tony's Mexican Food, Volcano Wings |
The Lot, which opened in 2013 as Bend's first pod, describes its winter setup in detail on its website. Once the cold sets in, it closes the garage doors around the seating area and turns on the heaters and heated benches. The site says guests who arrive "in your puffy down jacket" should "be ready to strip it off." It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., staying open until 10 in summer. On Tap lists fall and winter hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. Its indoor tap house has communal seating and heaters, with fire pits out in the beer garden.
Ballers & Brews is also where IndoDaddy struggled, and Visit Bend's summer lineup there still lists that cart, so Ballers & Brews is the hardest roster to pin down this month. What's confirmed is that Joe Kim, owner of the downtown Korean restaurant Yoli, started a Yoli food truck there in mid-July. Kim said the truck already has regular customers.
A few pods are harder to plan around once it turns cold. Crux Fermentation Project at 50 SW Division St puts its carts out on the lawn, and Bunk+Brew at 42 NW Hawthorne Ave has a backyard beer garden. Neither pod's own pages say anything about covered or heated seating for winter. Some Crux carts, such as Mountain Mahalo Shave Ice, are described as warm-weather carts. Visit Bend describes a large indoor bar at The Podski, 536 NW Arizona Ave, but the pod's website hasn't named a replacement for Big Ski's yet.
Base Camp Opened With Two Stories of Indoor Seating
Of all the new pods, Base Camp is the one built for cold weather from the start. The McGee family opened it in mid-July next to Powder House on the west side. It has 10 carts, two indoor kiosks and 36 taps. Its cart-partner page lists a wide range of food, including P53 Fresh, Chonies Pizza, Jazzy Joes, Pho 88, I Love Ceviche, Mundrellis, El Taquero, Let's Roll, Luckey's Woodsman, Kove, Thaipas and Southern Accent. That's 12 names against the homepage's count of 10, so some partners likely rotate.
General manager Hayden McGee doesn't think the scene is overcrowded. "I see all the other lots are busy and so are we," he told The Bulletin. "So it seems like there's plenty and plenty of pieces of the pie to go around right now, especially as the town expands."
Mikel Lomsky, who owns The Podski, put it more bluntly. "Everybody's getting squeezed now because more carts are available," he said. "Unfortunately, you're going to see your carts that you love so much go away and new ones will replace them."
Where the Next Pods Are Supposed to Go
City and chamber officials see room for more carts in particular parts of town. City Economic Development Officer Katy Brooks said there's still space, especially in north and southeast Bend. Bend Chamber of Commerce CEO Sara Odendahl said, "I don't think we've reached an apex as much as we've reached maturity."
Two projects in the south and southeast fit that description, but neither will be open this winter:
- Hangar 97, an aviation-themed pod and taphouse planned near Murphy Road and Silverado Springs Drive, hasn't been approved yet. As of early September it was expected to break ground sometime this year. A February forecast of a fall opening no longer holds.
- Easton Neighborhood Food Lot, an eight-cart pod proposed next to Caldera High School, had a pre-application filed with the city in mid-June.
Some cart owners are still on their way in. Nataliya Gonzalez opened a permanent downtown location for her creperie, Crepe Oh! Holics, in mid-August while she waits on food cart permits. She plans to open the cart early next year if she can secure a spot. Sherpa plans a brick-and-mortar after his break, and Wiggers is looking for a west-side spot for IndoDaddy. Two of this year's departures are already planning their next locations.
Through March, Bend's cart pods with enclosed seating and heat are The Lot on Columbia, Base Camp on Century Drive, On Tap on Cushing, and Crosscut on Mill View Way.
We follow how Bend's food scene changes from season to season because we spend time in it too. If you'd like more local updates like this one, or have a question about the part of Bend where you'd like to spend your winters, the team at Bend Homes and Land is glad to talk it through over coffee from one of these carts.
