The Extremely Deserving Roy Choi is On This Year’s Time 100 List

If you’re a food truck enthusiast (and if you’re not, you should be) you owe your lunch routine to Roy Choi. He was named on this year’s Time 100 list as a “culinary trailblazer” in the Pioneers section.

Anthony Bourdain wrote the blurb, and credited Choi with “[elevating] the food-truck concept from ‘roach coach’ to highly sought-after, ultra-hot-yet-democratic rolling restaurant.” He created a model that allowed “talented culinarians to make their mark without hundreds of thousands of dollars in investor money.” Today, major cities like New York and San Francisco have tons of food trucks that wouldn’t have been able to exist if there hadn’t first been Kogi BBQ, Choi’s trucks. Choi was also one of the first to use social media marketing for his business.

Now, he’s involved with a new venture. He and Daniel Patterson are “changing the world with their ambitious startup, LocoL, whose goal is to bring healthy food, at an affordable price, to underserved inner-city neighborhoods across America while employing residents of those neighborhoods—basically, replacing traditional fast food with a more positive, socially responsible institution.”

Choi is also a film producer and is the author of a memoir, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food. As Bourdain says, “Roy Choi has put it all on the line to improve the quality of life for people few others seem to care about. It’s not a pose, it’s not a cause: it’s who he is.”

[H/T Time Magazine]

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!