You don't have to live in a big city to experience one of
the latest restaurant-industry trends: food trucks.Some restaurant companies, such as Taco Bell, International
Dairy Queen and Gold Star Chili, use trucks to reach more customers and
increase name recognition. Aspiring restaurateurs see them as a low-cost way to
break into the business. And well-known chefs are using them to break out of
their niches.Here at the National Restaurant Association, we’re excited
to support the trend. At our recent Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago, we had a new
pavilion that showed off two trucks and products and services to support them.
Food truck operators and representatives from related companies also conducted
education sessions at the NRA Show and our Marketing Executives Group’s spring
meeting. The media coverage we received drew attention to a Chicago law that bans trucks from selling hot
food and led to legislation to change that law.
- Trucks are a way to enter the restaurant industry or expand a restaurant operation without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a new store, says Jason LaGrange, president, Cart Works Inc. His restaurant customers use the carts to introduce their food to potential new customers at supermarkets, arenas, commencements and high school sporting events.
- They help other businesses that support the restaurant industry – and the economy. For example, sales of Thermohauser of America’s lightweight, foldable, insulated transportation boxes have increased as restaurants launch catering operations to increase business or as operators start with a cart and expand into catering, says Scott Kuniewich, sales and marketing manager.
- They help restaurateurs develop partnerships with customers. For example, Scott Baitinger gets locally grown vegetables for his Streetza Pizza toppings from his Milwaukee customers. He stops the truck at their homes, picks up the vegetables, puts them on the pizzas and serves the pizzas back to them.
- They result in happy customers. According to Association research, more than half of consumers indicated a desire for home or office food delivery.
