BUFFALO, NY — Dan Kothen and Heather Stack are in a tough place. They’re new business owners, trying to make it in the busy and competitive food truck game in Greater Buffalo.

But it’s a little tough to do that when the vehicle they use to cook the food is parked behind a fence — and technically, the property of the city.

“So we saved some money, got ourselves a food trailer,” said Stack, who’s also a local comedian. “Got it back to Buffalo — we bought it in Pennsylvania — we brought it here, scraping and saving whatever money we could.”

Dan and Heather are the proud owners of Buffalo’s newest restaurant on wheels, Munch Box.

They’ve invested approximately $20,000 for the trailer, the food service equipment, permits, licensing, registration — just about everything they’d need to go into business.

Turns out, they needed something more: A parking space.

“Where it was parked, we can walk right outside our apartment, look down the street and see it,” she said. “So any time we were coming or going, it was there.”

That was until Monday morning, when Kothen left for work. The Munch Box was no where to be found.

The couple assumed the worst.

“Our immediate thought was maybe somebody has a chop shop, somebody took it, started selling everything inside, selling the metal, and we’ll never see it again,” Stack said. “But sure enough, it looks like it was stolen by the city of Buffalo.”

Find the entire article with video at wivb.com [here]