Haitian food truck owner grateful for community support after presidential debate sparked hate

SALT LAKE CITY — A Haitian food truck owner is thanking the community for an outpouring of support, after describing being the target of hate and experiencing a huge drop in business following a national controversy born out of the presidential debate.

Thursday evening, Roody Salvatore and two employees stayed busy inside the Makaya Caters food truck, cooking up Haitian dishes for customers. The food truck was parked in Rose Park on the corner of 1000 North and Victoria Way.

Kris Reed and his wife Jaime set up shop on a curb in the parking lot with their two young daughters, digging into what they ordered.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had Haitian food before,” Reed remarked.

The couple, who lives in West Jordan, purposely drove up to Rose Park to visit Makaya Caters and give it a try.

“I got to come out and support him, show some love to the food truck,” Reed said.

Salvatore, chef and owner of Makaya Caters, heard similar sentiments throughout the evening.

It’s a far cry from what he described personally dealing with over the past week.

While parked at the farmer’s market in Pioneer Park last Saturday, he said, “Someone walked up to the truck and said, ‘Cat or Dog?’ And I was like, ‘What?!'”

The person was presumably referring to the unsubstantiated statements made by former President Donald Trump during the presidential debate, about immigrants eating pets.

While Trump did not specifically say Haitian immigrants, vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance later zeroed in on Haiti, despite government leaders and police confirming the narrative was false.

“It’s a lie,” Salvatore said. “Fact check. Talk to your neighbors, your Haitian neighbors. It’s a lie.”

Salvatore described the hateful farmer’s market encounter, as well as someone leaving him a one-star review on Google that Google later removed, which also centered around eating pets.

“That hurt, because it felt like for me, this is actually serious,” Salvatore expressed.

He also noticed that business instantly plummeted, saying he made as little as six percent of his normal food sales day-to-day, in the week following the debate.

One evening, Salvatore said he only did $50 in business all night.

“That was very, very scary,” he said. “This is my livelihood. This is what I use to feed myself, my family in Haiti, you know, pay my mortgage, my bills.”

After sharing the struggle on social media, Salvatore explained that community members responded by stopping by to support him.

On Thursday evening, he had “waves after waves of people” show up to buy dinner.

Salvatore laughed with customers, serving them his signature cinnamon pork, and thanking them for coming out.

He said he loves to share his culture through Haitian cuisine, making the dishes he grew up eating.

“It’s one of the many things that is very beautiful about Haiti, that I can actually bring to people because it’s tangible,” he said. “You see it, you can taste it.”

He’s feeling thankful as he looks toward the weekend. Salvatore said he’ll set up at the same Rose Park 1000 North/Victoria Way spot again Friday, and at the Afro Utah Festival at Library Square Saturday.

“We have a lot of people who said they want to come and support us,” Salvatore said. “I am so grateful for that, and I can’t wait to see them.”