The Growing Food Truck Industrial Complex

The food truck phenomenon is here to stay and stimulating tangential industries that include truck outfitters, permit expediters, lawyers lobbyists, website designers, and marketing professionals.

1 minute read

October 24, 2011, 12:00 PM PDT

By George Haugh


Once known as 'roach coaches,' peddling sub-par fare at construction sites and other temporary work spaces, these mobile purveyors of ethnic and specialist cuisine are now providing those needing "a new way of making a living a chance to break into a new industry," says Richard Myrick, editor in chief of Mobil Cuisine Magazine.

Culinary schools in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina have begun offering mobile food courses to their curriculum, alongside others that have added truck fare to their traditional cafeteria offerings. The trend has resulted in new growth opportunities in mobile app production and other web marketing services.

Opposition has come from brick and mortar restaurateurs in many cities and large chains such as Qdoba Mexican Grill and Sizzler are planning to launch competing mobile services to regain market share. New York food vendors have experience a doubling in the cost of a black market vendor license, a jump which has been attributed to the accelerating growth of the city's food truck industry.

Friday, October 21, 2011 in The Atlantic

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