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Restaurants on Wheels

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By Norm Elias


April 25, 2012


The National Restaurant Association (NRA) recently expressed that restaurants in their mature stage or widely known restaurants should consider making a food truck. According to their research, 59 percent of the subjects the NRA surveyed said they would visit a food truck if it was one of their favorite restaurants. After researching why many haven't conformed to the idea of a food truck, one thing the food truck doesn't offer is the atmosphere that a customer receives when they walk into a brick and mortar restaurant.

When you walk into a restaurant it is comforting to know that you are being seated or that you have your own area to sit down and relax while you enjoy your meal, versus looking up at someone encased in a metal contraption that eventually hands you your food and you walk away into the vast emptiness of a parking lot.
The idea of a food truck sheds light on convenience and how fast paced our society is, but the idea can lead to better sales because the restaurant can constantly change location. The idea is fantastic, but instead of customers socializing and enjoying a sit-down atmosphere, they are constantly on the move. In this new trend businesses make sacrifices, but these sacrifices don't hurt their wallets. Regardless of the impact these mobile restaurants may have, the trend is growing very rapidly in the Northeast and in the West.

The restaurants have such an opportunity to be volatile and make the most of their surroundings at the cheapest cost. If the Northeast doesn't work during a certain season it can go south and try its sales down there. For one, the cost for a mobile restaurant to relocate is very inexpensive and for the food truck to add a better sign or any new investment is cheaper than a brick and mortar restaurant moving because their foot traffic has depleted due to various reasons.

The food truck trend is such a simple but truly amazing idea, and some of the most brilliant business plans come from the simplest ideas, like the Vita Coco craze for coconut juice. Moreover, the mobile restaurants are at their beginning stages of being so much more than they are now. Later on in the future, we might expect to see fold out chairs and tables that could seat a handful of customers, a traveling band, or better yet a five star mobile restaurant. Soon the day will come when you walk outside your apartment and smell seared steak with lemon peppered shrimp, and it will be the 18 wheeler parked a block from your house.



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Posted by Brian Carrick on 4/27/12 at 2:03 AM EST

Wow, who would think that this day would ever come and yet, it makes sense. I just cannot imagine which member of my crew I would send to work the truck, it would be one of the worst insults I could deliver to any employee of mine. Besides, that employee would also have to be above reproach as they would be able to do whatever the heck they wanted to do wherever they went and with whom they were. The concept might be a good one but in this day and age of employing either illegal aliens or extremely immature American citizens, the only guy I could put in a truck would be the oldest member of my crew: Chef Joe, a man in his late 70s as I know he could be trusted to do the job. Save the MEALS on WHEELS program for social services NOT high-end, fine-dining, gourmet restaurants, country clubs, or specialty ethnic operations. Good for the County Fair but not for one's hard-earned, respectable reputation!
Posted by Brian Carrick on 4/27/12 at 2:07 AM EST

To add to what I just said, I think it could start a range war of sorts with different restaurants and their hated competition parking close to their doors. Not a good thing, definitely. Chef Brian Carrick, 40+ year foodservice career, worked in California, Hawaii, and Washington State and ACF member.





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