Food truck evolution
Owners strategize as the novelty wears off
NEW YORK—Starting a food truck to sell tacos or barbecue on downtown streets may seem easy or fun, but owners are finding they need more sophisticated plans now that the novelty has worn off.
A culinary fad a decade ago, food trucks have lost some luster and even new ones may not draw a crowd. Many prospective restaurateurs now use trucks as low-cost test kitchens and as literal marketing vehicles. And food truck operators soon realize they need to think strategically—especially about the winter.
Jack and Max Barber started a food truck called Mainely Burgers in 2012, selling burgers and fries at the beach in Scarborough, Maine, and the next year added a second truck in Portland and an ice cream truck. But the competition with Portland’s restaurants was tough.
“We were definitely bummed out that doing the streets of Portland wasn’t working,” Jack Barber says. The brothers realized they had to change their business model. While the trucks are still a big part of the business, catering is a better way to bring in revenue.
The Barbers now have a full catering calendar, and business has been good enough that they have a restaurant in Cambridge, Mass.
Food trucks are still appealing to chefs and entrepreneurs because they cost less than restaurants to open—tens of thousands of dollars versus hundreds of thousands or more, says John Gordon, a restaurant consultant with Pacific Management Consulting Group. That difference was particularly attractive during the Great Recession, and the cheap menus drew consumers who could get unique food for less than at a restaurant.
But trucks feel less special to customers now, particularly in big cities, restaurant consultant Clark Wolf says.
“They’re no longer a kind of secret, movable, underground treasure,” he says.
The biggest growth in the industry is past, according to market research firm IBISWorld. It counted 4,046 food trucks in the U.S. last year, nearly twice the number of 2008. But it projects annual revenue growth of 3 percent from 2017 to 2022, compared to 7.3 percent from 2012 to last year, when revenue totaled nearly $1 billion.
When Gerald and Chizuru Abraham started their Japanese food truck in Los Angeles three years ago, they were undaunted by the fact that “the glory days are over,” Gerald Abraham says.
“The heyday when trucks could pull up just about anywhere and build a line in minutes is nothing short of a fantasy to us,” he says.
But Okamoto Kitchen has been successful, and added a second truck a year ago, because the couple has
chosen their menu carefully. Rather than sushi and tempura, they serve meat, fish and sandwiches using traditional Japanese flavors like ponzu.
“To survive, you have to have some sort of unique concept,” Abraham says. The couple also doesn’t bring the truck to the same locations too often so customers won’t tire of their cuisine.
But selling vegan pizza daily at the same spot, outside Buzz Mill, an Austin, Texas, bar and coffee house, works for Robbie Lordi.
“We feed their regular customers, so they don’t have to leave to eat elsewhere,” says Lordi, who started his truck, Li’l Nonna’s, two years ago. It’s common for Austin bars without their own food operations to arrange with trucks to park nearby.
Lordi also has a regular clientele, and business is growing enough that he’s considering adding a truck or opening a restaurant.
Finding a regular place has made Bruce Smith’s fried chicken truck, Chick-NNooga, a success—a turnaround from his first food truck, which succumbed to slow winter sales in 2013. Now Smith sells to employees
of Amazon’s warehouse in Chattanooga, Tenn., several days a week. That meant a 50 percent increase in revenue last month compared to May 2017.
“Amazon is the reason I survived,” Smith says. He’s now considering whether to expand, and like Lordi, deciding whether to do so with another truck or a restaurant.