By Gary Dickson
While in high school I worked at a gas station. When I was a teenager people didn”t pump their own gas. And, it didn”t matter how much gas the customer bought, I washed their windows and checked the oil. I also checked the air in all the tires, if asked to do so. It was while doing this job that I was first introduced to food vending trucks.
On my first day on the job one of my fellow station attendants or gas jockey, as some people called us, starting hollering, “The roach coach is here.” I walked out of the garage to learn that what I thought was going to be the exterminator, turned out to be the source for lunch. Back then I never found the food to be all that great, but it wasn”t horrible, either. I think the roach coach nickname may have tainted the food taste, for me, before I took the first bite of my purchase.
It has been a long time since my gas station days and that was the only place I have worked that was a regular stop on a food vending truck route. So, I was surprised to learn that the roach coach business has been booming in recent years. Modern technology has even found its way into the industry. Many vendors Twitter their location to their regular customers. For large cities there are Web sites that allow people to track their favorite trucks around town. National Web sites, like mobimunch.com and mobilecravings.com, are springing up to help people locate the closest food truck.
Back when I ate packaged food off of a vending truck the selection was limited. You could get generic sandwiches, like turkey, ham or roast beef. Of course, back then you couldn”t get much more than a hamburger, fries and a Coke or shake at McDonald”s. The trucks of today have a much wider variety of offerings, including many different ethnic foods, too.
We may actually be witnessing the next rise in national franchising opportunities for entrepreneurs. Once, Pizza Hut, Subway, McDonald”s and many other restaurants made plenty of investors wealthy. Now, though, few people can afford the franchise fees of a top-brand restaurant. So, perhaps we”ll be seeing trucks with names like Rickshaw Dumpling, World”s Best Sandwich and Go Burger, roaming the streets of even Lake County in the near future.
The aforementioned three trucks are all from New York City, where a recent New York Magazine article listed the top 25 food vending trucks in the city where hundreds of vendors ply their delicacies. Portland, Ore. was recently crowned the top food truck city in America by CNN. It has more than 400 different vendors.
Today and tomorrow in Jack London Square in Oakland the second annual Eat Real Festival is taking place. It is a celebration of Bay Area street food vendors.
If you give it enough time, in this era of reality television, someone will make a show out of just about anything. Recently, because of the popularity of food vending trucks, Chef Tyler Florence debuted a new series on the Food Network called “The Great Food Truck Race.” The food truck teams have no rules to follow other than each team starts with the same amount of money and an unmarked food truck. The winner is the truck team that takes in the most money. The teams can cook and sell whatever they wish and stay out as many hours as they choose during the days of the race.
Around the country, the word on the street is that many of the food truck vendors who have been around for years are not too happy about the sudden influx of all the competition. Pardon the clich? but “It is a dog-eat-dog world,” even if we”re talking hot dogs.
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
