Phoodio beginnings #1: I’m not very tech savvy and other things I’ve been told

First things first: since this is my first post I should tell you what Phoodio is. Firstly, Phoodio is a website intended for hungry people. They are able to quickly find food trucks near them and make a list of their favorites so they can quickly find them again. Secondly, Phoodio is a tool for food truck operators to be able to inform their regulars and potential new fans of where they are now and where they will be in the future.

The idea occurred to me late one night after I had spent the day roaming the industrial park near my work looking for my favorite burrito truck that said it was in the area, but damn if it wasn’t hard to find. Another time the food truck wasn’t even there despite their Facebook status update.

I noticed that while food trucks were a great place to find interesting food, their operators weren’t necessarily the best at keeping their websites up to date or their social media pages accurate. I wanted something where I could tap a button and see a list of the closest trucks. I wanted this information to be easily available on my phone and I wanted to see a map of where there were located. Phoodio was born. At least in my mind.

For the next few years I worked on the site when I had a few minutes. 2016 rolled around and I really dug in and created v1.0 of what is now Phoodio.com. Food trucks could sign on and update their location with a few clicks, they could chose to post their location updates to Facebook or even import their Facebook events into Phoodio so their profile would show their future locations as well as their current one.

I worked stupidly late hours and had a big case of tunnel vision, as my friends and family will attest, but I am very proud of what came out of it. Next step was to introduce it to the food trucks.

I’m not very technologically savvy

I’m not very good at marketing

I heard these many times. Which is why I created the site. I wanted to make these things easier so it wasn’t such a manual process. Being a developer, tech doesn’t phase me but I’m also the guy who taught my mom how to use the internet so I understand how daunting it can be.

I invite any truck operators who are reading this to set up a profile on the site and give it a shot (phoodio.com/register). Take a look at the help section linked to at the bottom of the site (phoodio.com/help), or shoot me an email with questions.

I know a few things: I love finding awesome food trucks around town and if I can teach my mom how to use the internet I can show you how to make your life as a food truck operator easier by making use of this awesome little site I made so I could find my favorite burrito truck.

Cheers.