While the US Food Truck culture is way more mature than in Australia, this infographic highlights and implies some perhaps lesser known benefits of encouraging food truck businesses to begin life in your city or destination.

Hungry Millennials

Millennials represent almost 50% of food truck patrons. If you are in a university city or a have a growing millennial population, this is the perfect vehicle by which to satisfy their desire for variety, health, innovation, gourmet, fast, value-for-money food and keep them from going out of town to scratch that itch.

Food Trucks Survive and Thrive by Social Media

Social media is the marketing tool of choice for food trucks. This means if your city or destination struggles to get leverage or exposure in this space or with millennials, hosting and making food truck vendors welcome, is a pathway to ‘social mention by stealth.’

Intense Competition Drives Innovation

The food truck market is highly competitive. This means they seek and utilise less common cuts of meat and more sustainable fish varieties in their efforts to keep costs down. Food truck owners build relationships with suppliers and growers in their eternal search for fresh and cost effective seasonal fare. They source and create unique condiments and spices, especially valuable if those condiments and spices are sourced from the multicultural import businesses in your city.

Vibrant Cities with Activation and Engagement

Food Trucks help to add buzz, colour and vibrancy to the look and feel of your destination especially if your city infrastructure is looking a little shabby. 55% of Food Truck income is from street site or corners. If you are going through a period of major construction – industrial and construction work sites represent 15% of Food Truck income in the US.

Good for Children

They produce mindful, innovative and fun options for children and generally offer foods which are less processed. Children will eat something green if it is from a food truck.

Make it Easy

Make it easy for them to begin life in your city. They will source their produce and supplies close to home and even if they range far and wide, the income they earn comes back to benefit your community.

Viktoria Darabi is a Food Culture Tourism Whisperer and champion for the power of food culture activities to celebrate multi-culturalism, promote social cohesion, engender a sense of community pride and to transform or construct ‘place’ to define a destination’s identity and distinctiveness.