Frustration with local food truck scene

We really enjoy eating many the local food trucks but have become frustrated with them recently because there is no central place to go to find out who is where. When they were first starting out there with a calendar on one of the for truck websites that showed each truck and where was going to be on a given day, that has long since disappeared. There are also two different websites, that I know of, with local food trucks on them but even then they are not all accounted for. I know most of them use Facebook but that's difficult to chase down an individual truck for a specific day.

It would certainly be nice if they had some central location where you can determine which truck was going to be where when. Now in most cases you only find out where they are going to be that day through a tweet but you can't plan something in the future in most cases. I guess it doesn't matter so much if you work someplace where trucks normally congregate to provide lunches but for those of us who don't we don't know where to go when to visit our favorite food truck.

Does anybody else have the same frustration?

I think a big part of it is that most of our local food trucks are operated by folks as side businesses. They go to major events and get out where the can, when they can around their day job(s). There are some exceptions and the ones who have established a regular rotation do well. Pagva Victor of Traveling Kitchen is #1 at this - he's at the same four or five locations each week, always on the same day of the week, so his customers know what to expect. Consequently (and because his food is delicious), he's built a huge following and has big lines everywhere he goes.

I think a big part of it is that most of our local food trucks are operated by folks as side businesses. They go to major events and get out where the can, when they can around their day job(s). There are some exceptions and the ones who have established a regular rotation do well. Pagva Victor of Traveling Kitchen is #1 at this - he's at the same four or five locations each week, always on the same day of the week, so his customers know what to expect. Consequently (and because his food is delicious), he's built a huge following and has big lines everywhere he goes.

How do I even find out about trucks like this that are always on the same place at the same day? We don't have a regular schedule so we just supposed to come upon them while driving around? Even if it's a part-time business you need to let people know where and when you are going to be someplace so they can find you!

[Robin Garr]

I'm probably overdue to update this Twitter list, but it's pretty complete and moves a lot of traffic from the local food trucks listed.

https://twitter.com/RobinGarr/lists/hotbytesfoodtrucks

Twitter is actually probably the best way to follow food trucks. I know that's hard to understand for us Baby Boomers, but if you want to partake of a different culture, it's helpful to learn that culture. We might wish that they would accommodate their ways to us, but I expect we're not going to have much luck persuading them to do that, when Twitter works well for them.

Again, if any of you who are food-truck savvy see trucks that should be added to this list, or no-longer-active trucks that should be removed, please let me know, and I'll do a seasonal update as summer begins.

https://twitter.com/RobinGarr/lists/hotbytesfoodtrucks

It's not Twitter that's directly the problem. It's the fact that Twitter is great if you work at one of the places where they are going to be set up but Twitter posts my food trucks normally are only published a couple of hours before they set up. Not really a method you can use to determine your schedule for a day if you want to eat at a particular food truck. Probably even in many cases people work where they are set up have already made other plans for lunch or taken it with them so they can take advantage of the opportunity. As I said in my first post when they were just starting up they were on one website and that website had a monthly calendar that showed what truck was going to be where when. That was a great system, too bad it is in continuing.

By the way, the only thing that frustrates me about twitter is the 140 character limit! The younger generation doesn't know how to talk in phrases longer than that.

I can understand if some one has a particular truck or two they like to follow. But in a city that has as many food choices as we do here, why would I want to hunt down "food trucks" in general terms. If I happen to be at a festival, park , outside a bar, etc. where a truck offers convenience, fine. But I can hardly cover a small percentage of the restaurants I've been jonzin to frequent.

Oh well, I guess if I don't have an app on my phone to check réservations, or don't seek trucks through Twitter I guess I'm considered old-fashioned.

[Robin Garr]

... don't seek trucks through Twitter I guess I'm considered old-fashioned.

I think a lot of us are in the same boat, James!

A centralized scheduling hub would be an exceptional idea, but it would be a logistical nightmare to try to organize and consolidate. Trucks with a set schedule/location would be easy, but trucks that move around a lot or only do events would be a challenge. Just getting the information from the owners would be a full time job. (as most operators are busy just trying to conduct the basic tenets of their business).

Still a great idea if someone had the time and money to do it.

Me no undertandy tweets and twits and whatnot. It's enough for me to check my email and post here.

Liz from Grind here. I'm actually the one who set up and maintained that calendar being referred to. It was only for trucks in the Street Food Alliance (I know, the group separation doesn't make finding trucks any more convenient) but while the calendar was great it was very time consuming to get trucks set up and I spent dozens of unpaid hours updating and coding the calendar to keep it running and up to date. At some point it just wasn't worth my time any more. Then when we left our truck group and went solo I certainly wasn't going to keep up with making sure people knew where other trucks were. With that being said, truck apps are inconsistent and if you train your customers to look at an app that could close at any point then you're not doing yourself any favors then either. Or if you forget to update where you are when you arrive then you're losing those customers that only look at that site. The apps sound good in theory but never seemed like a good idea to us. We prefered to keep a calendar of just our events and locations and to post on Facebook and Twitter. At some point if a customer isn't willing to check our website or Facebook or Twitter then they really didn't want to find us that bad. Yet another reason why I'm glad we're in a permanent location now - no more hunting us down.

Liz, I certainly understand your point but looking at the consumer point of view that me give you an example. Say we have a doctors appointment at a given location downtown next Tuesday. We'd like to know if there will be any food trucks in the vicinity of where our appointment is that we could eat lunch at prior to the appointment. If we don't know of one we'll probably eat lunch at home or someplace near there prior to going downtown. I'm not a website programmer but from what I know about how they operate it should be fairly simple to set up a calendar that any food truck operator could log into using their password and enter information for their truck into the calendar on that site. It would certainly benefit everyone both consumers and food truck operators and shouldn't be hard to maintain.

You are correct. It is very simple for someone to log in and update a calendar. But getting said calendar to display all the information on a website is more difficult. And hounding people to update their locations is even more difficult. From a consumer point it certainly is easier that way but realistically the only trucks that would use it are probably the trucks that are already posting. But if you know someone willing to build a website for free where all the trucks to update their own calendars then you might be onto something. I did it for 2 years and it was one of the most frustrating tasks I did as food truck owner/industry supporter but it was a good tool while it lasted.

I'm sure Leah from The Dessert Truck will see this post. She might be able to shed some light onto the whole calendar situation too. I know she was trying to build something like that a while back for the truck group she manages.

. (as most operators are busy just trying to conduct the basic tenets of their business).
.

One of the basic tenets of any business is letting people know where you are and when you will be there. The operators are missing out on a lot of customers because we don't know that information. Bad business sense whether they are full time or part time.

Agreed. Not to sound too snarky but if they are mobile operation and haven't figured out they have to post where they'll be each day/week they probably won't be around long anyway. Just check Craigslist. It's a sea of trucks you've never heard of because they didn't know or take the time or understand why it was important. I will add this though that we would post our location to Facebook and Twitter and sometimes within 20 minutes get messages asking where we were and why we never posted our location. Sheesh.... Sometimes you can take every step possible and people still won't take the 5 seconds to look.

But if you know someone willing to build a website for free where all the trucks to update their own calendars

Simple solution. Create a Louisville Food Truck Facebook Group, which is free and open to any food truck operator in the city who also maintains a facebook page for their truck.
Any members of said group can post to the calendar (Google calendar, with link at top of group page), hopefully ahead of time, where and when they will be places. They can also just make posts on the group page the day of, or add events for the group as well for special occasions. The admin, since they arent getting paid, is NOT responsible for hounding said truck operators for info. If they dont post it, then no one will know where their truck is, and they have no one to blame but themselves.


Like this! ...... https://www.facebook.com/groups/370675429794434/