Food Trucks -- Spicing up the Suburbs

Food trucks at Fleet Peoples Park, Winter Park Florida

Food trucks provide a valuable service to many suburban communities,giving them the ability to fashion community-building events and create instant third spaces.  According to Daniel DJ Heffernan, food trucks fill a niche not being met by restaurants, adding choice and diversity to a city's food scene, which is so important for suburban locations where "place" identity is lacking.     

From the vendor perspective, food trucks offer many entrepreneurs a low-cost way to get into the restaurant business. Where the cost of start-up for a food truck ranges from $50,000 to $100,000, the costs for starting a brick-and-mortar restaurant can be upwards of $250,000.  Cathy Cheney has followed the food truck phenomenon in Portland, OR.  She has observed that food truck experience is like boot camp for restaurant entrepreneurs.  The would-be restaurant operators learn customer service and how to build a business under the trying experience of a confined kitchen with no storage space.  Most will never generate enough business to justify conversion to a permanent restaurant.   Those that do make the transition have exceptional food and a strong business plan. A sampling of these include: Beaver's Coffee & Donuts in Chicago, Calexico in NYC, District Taco in Washington DC, Taqueria Authentica in the Newark, NJ area, Pok Pok in Portland, and Clover Food Lab in Cambridge/Boston.

I recently interviewed Michael Bavaro, a local food truck vendor and owner of ubergoodfood.com in Orlando, FL.  He actually sold his restaurant at a suburban location to go into the food truck business.  For him, the change provided some cost savings-including elimination of the rent and the need to hire servers.  Rather than waiting for customers to find a fixed location, the food truck allows him to take food creations to his customers.   Bavaro's major concern was the number of new food trucks entering the market, a market where the number of events and locations are more or less fixed.  His strategy included co-marketing and event teaming with several other trucks, catering private events, and serving up high quality food creations.

Clearly, food trucks are providing suburban America with a way to begin the evolution of a community gathering place with the all-important food component.  In a future blog I will explore ideas of how suburban cities might proactively encourage the successful food truck vendors to establish fixed restaurants in their city.

Don Martin
dsmamerica.com