What the Food Truck?
Food trucks have been the latest craze in the food industry, and this rise in food trucks can be seen nationally. New York City has a permit waiting list 10,000 people long and a new Green Cart program that shortens the wait if a vendor agrees to sell only fresh produce and target neighborhoods with a need. Los Angeles holds its annual L.A. Street Food Fest and boasts a large turnout every single time. San Francisco is home to the Off the Grid company, which hosts food truck gatherings often by advertising them on Twitter. The number of food trucks in Austin have increased by 600 percent since 2010, and the trend is looking like it’s continuing.
The food truck trend grew largely in conjunction with the advent of social media and cooking shows on channels such as The Food Network and Cooking Channel. Tyler Florence, creator of the Food Network TV show The Great Food Truck Race, believed the food truck trend grew in Los Angeles in large part due to the economic slump around the early 2000s and that his show helped popularize a trend that was slowly gaining ground in the United States.
Although food trucks now offer many different cuisines, it hasn’t always been this way. The earliest known form of the food truck is the chuck wagon, which was used to prepare and sell food to cowboys who would be stuck on the prairie for weeks on end. This arguably might not have had a direct connection to the modern food truck craze, but it definitely influenced the way we as humans perceive food today. Many of us want to consider food as art, but have lost the time and motivation to do so because of today’s society. That is where the magic of the food truck comes in.
In 2008, a full-fledged battle of taco trucks broke out in Los Angeles, California (Hernández-López, 2011). Native Los Angeles residents know it as the Great Taco Truck War.
Now, calling it a “war” might be overkill, but to many food truck owners in Los Angeles, that’s exactly what it was. The city had started fining food trucks for parking too long in a certain area, and many owners needed to find a solution immediately. This food truck war was so widely contested that it finally went to court. In a major decision by a judge in August of 2008, he ruled to throw out a law requiring taco truck operators to move every hour or face $1,000 fines and possible jail time.
This instance is one of many that have dealt with the novelty and unconventionality of the food truck industry. Due to how new this whole trend is, there aren’t many laws and regulations that are specifically aimed at dealing with food trucks (Sheppard, 2013). As a result, there is a grey area when it comes to relations between the city and food trucks.
The process of getting a permit to run a food truck in the city of Austin is a long and rigorous process. First, one has to fill out this application in order to apply to be a “Mobile Food Establishment” that is approved by the city of Austin. After their application is reviewed and approved by the city of Austin, they have to set up their food truck in their neighborhood of choice and make sure it complies with all zoning laws and regulations.
Austin is most famously known for its taco food trucks, which can be found all around the city. However, it still hosts a wide variety of cuisines, ranging from desserts to chicken and waffles to noodles (Hawk, 2013). Many food trucks like to place themselves near college dorms and apartments, due to the demographic of people that live there. College students often desire a quick, cheap, and delicious alternate to the dining halls, and food trucks offer that same reprieve that they are looking for.
Even though I couldn’t contact any of the West Campus food truck owners, I had the chance to talk to Sarah*, a UT student who worked at the food trucks on 26th and Rio Grande.
So, how long have you been working at the food trucks here?
I started working here last December, after my finals had finished. I mostly work at Cold Cookie Company, but my boss moves me around to different trucks depending on the customer flow that day.
How come you can move around like that? I thought each food truck was its own business.
Actually, not at all. My boss owns many of the food trucks in this complex, so he likes to rotate us around. I actually prefer it that way so that I don’t get too bored of one job after a while.
Do you like working in the food trucks? I can imagine that it would be extremely different than working at a stationary restaurant.
I actually love it. You get to interact with so many different types of people, especially here in West Campus, and I love how my job allows for me to be flexible in where and how much I work. It’s great.
Since many food trucks are not chains and do not boast a large employee base, they have to find other creative ways to advertise to college students (Wessel, 2012). One technique that I have witnessed firsthand is offering free samples to many kids who are walking home from class. This is an especially successful business tactic as college students and West Campus residents will be craving hot food on-the-go as they return tired from their classes. Food trucks have found success through a multitude of different advertising techniques, but all of them have one thing in common: they know how to appear memorable to their customers.
To many West Campus residents, it may seem that food trucks just appear overnight and start selling their food. However, this is definitely not the case. The process to open up a food truck of one’s own requires an almost impossible combination of a keen business eye, apt for the culinary arts, and right timing. Those who are successful, however, enjoy long, bustling lines of overeager college students who crave a hot meal on a budget.
*all names are changed for the purpose of privacy
References:
Peer-Reviewed:
Hawk, Zachary. “Gourmet Food Trucks: An Ethnographic Examination Of Orlando’s Food Truck Scene.” (2013).
Hermosillo, Jesus Alberto. “Loncheras: A look at the stationary food trucks of Los Angeles.” Unpublished Master of Arts). University of California Los Angeles (2012).
Hernández-López, E. (2011). LA’s taco truck war: how law cooks food culture contests. The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 43(1), 233–268.
Sheppard, A. M. (2013). Curbside eating: mobilizing food trucks to activate public space (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Wessel, Ginette. “From place to nonplace: A case study of social media and contemporary food trucks.” Journal of Urban Design 17.4 (2012): 511–531.
Websites:
Butler, Stephanie. “From Chuck Wagons to Pushcarts: The History of the Food Truck.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 8 Aug. 2014, www.history.com/news/hungry-history/from-chuck-wagons-to-pushcarts-the-history-of-the-food-truck.
Eat/Dine. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2018, from https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/tyler-florence-how-great-food-truck-race-influenced-america-s-food-truck-scene.html
Food Truck Vending. (2016, September 16). Retrieved April 12, 2018, from https://policies.utexas.edu/policies/food-truck-vending
Keegan, R. W. (2008, April 25). The Great Taco Truck War. TIME Magazine. Retrieved April 6, 2018, from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1735104,00.html
Table, One For The. “A Look at Austin’s Food Truck Scene.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 12 May 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/one-for-the-table/a-look-at-austins-food-tr_b_2861623.html.
Vann, Mick. “Mobile Food.” Some Tips on Getting a Foot in the Door of the Trailer Business –Food — The Austin Chronicle, 20 Aug. 2010, www.austinchronicle.com/food/2010-08-20/1070852/.
