By Alan Forsythe

It used to be someone selling hot dogs on the street was almost the lowest of that low when it came to entrepreneurship, maybe a just a step or two above hawking newspapers.

Street food has come along way since the days of the lowly hot dog vendor with his pushcart. Starting in 2008 in Los Angeles (Roy Choi’s Kogi truck is often attributed as being the first) gourmet food trucks quickly proliferated. Whomever was the first it is clear their genesis was a combination of bad economic times and the rise of social media.

As some chefs pointed out (not all are in the food truck business) social media allowed these businesses to connect directly with the consumer, and relatively low start-up costs made proof of concept much less risky. It’s a lot easier to find out if your gourmet tacos or BBQ ribs are going to sell using a food truck than setting up a bricks and mortar restaurant.

Jasmine Wolf, the chef behind The Lobos Truck, voted by LA.Eater.com as one of the top 18 must-try food trucks in L.A, has a little more esoteric take on the appeal of food trucks.

“Food trucks are really cool, [they’re] traveling restaurants! All over the world street food is a big part of culture, it was only a matter of time” [that we would see such a rise in their popularity].

While it is certainly true that street food is a big part of culture tall over the world, only in North America has it achieved such a premium niche and devoted following of foodies.

That said,  The Lobos Truck is hardly what you’d call gourmet. It’s more comfort food done really, really well. Or as Wolf says, “My concept: American comfort food is love on a plate.” For example Wolf describes one of their signature items, Wachos - nachos prepared on a waffle grill. It sounds like something one would have at a carnival and probably regret later. But done right people, that is people who usually frequent cafes and trendy bistros, will come back for them again and again.

“I had them on the menu as a side originally, but they became so popular we sell six different kinds now.” Wolf describes her demographic as kid and foodie friendly. It’s comfort food, but as noted, done well and with imagination, so a family with two young children will be just as happy with it as the local hipsters.

Wolf says the path to creating a successful food truck business is to think fresh and simple, and to focus on your demographic.

“My menu is great for lunch because folks can get a burger or salad and fries, or mac [and cheese] & a drink, and at dinner people can go family style and get wings, ribs & wachos. We hit all the flavor points.”

Wolf says she loves what she does and got into the business, because she saw it as endless opportunity. “I saw the food truck industry like the wild-west, untapped potential. I got one [food truck] and one became four very quickly.”

Strangely it was in the west, in Los Angeles that the food truck craze first took hold. Strange because Los Angles, unlike NYC or even San Francisco, is not known for it’s pedestrian traffic, one would think that would be a critical factor when looking at the market for mobile take-out food outlets. And in fact if we look at street food around the rest of the world those types of outlets are always found on pedestrian malls, plazas or open-air market places where thousands of people congregate.

It indicates how successfully social media was utilized by the food truck industry. Through Twitter and Facebook (although mostly Twitter) food trucks announce at what locations they will be at and for how long. Take-out street food is no longer approached as an impulse buy that attracts people by the scent or look of whatever food is on offer as they amble by. Now food trucks, despite their mobility, have become destinations.

In Los Angeles there are designated areas where food trucks and people congregate on given days. The Main Street Lot in trendy Santa Monica is one such location, where once a week you will see the rare sight of Los Angelenos out of their cars, walking. Many people even arrive on a bicycle.

In some cities restaurants have complained that the rise of the food truck industry, with their low overhead and mobility, has taken an unfair bite out of their sales. However in Santa Monica The Victorian bar, adjacent to the Main Street Lot, allows patrons to bring in food truck items (as long as they buy a drink in the bar of course) despite the fact they have a full menu.

Similarly, in Vancouver food trucks often park that outside of micro-breweries (that don’t serve food) and complement their business. Local micro-breweries in Vancouver will even advertise online which food-truck will be parked outside of their business on what days.

Although despite being mobile finding a good location is not always so easy, as owner of the Pressure Box food truck Scott Lesko has discovered.

Opened this past July he admits the food truck business has been a steep learning curve, despite his years of experience as a cook at Vancouver’s Joe Forte’s, Chin Chin and several locations of the Glowbal Group.

“Knowing where to take the truck is the first challenge,” said Lesko. Originally he thought his menu of pressure cooked casual American food would appeal mostly to downtown business people looking for a quick lunch. “People downtown didn’t seem too receptive, so I had to move around a lot. I parked in front of a few craft breweries, and really found my business was out of the downtown area. Some food trucks do find one place and park there and it works for them. Others [like me] have to keep moving around.”

He refers to food trucks like Mom’s Grilled Cheese, which has a regular location in front of Vancouver’s downtown art gallery building, which does a booming business (and yes, except for a couple of items, it’s pretty much just grilled cheese sandwiches) as one of those food trucks that seemed to have successfully found their niche.

He admits that it’s been a struggle to figure out how to create demand, and that he has been slow to take advantage of social media. “I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of it [social media] in the beginning. And because of my background I’m not all that proficient at it, but friends have been helping me and getting me up to speed.”

Like Los Angeles, Vancouver has a weekly food truck festival (during the summer months) at a vacant parking lot close to downtown where food trucks and people congregate every weekend. Unfortunately for Lesko he started a little too late in the season to be part of it, and he’s not in the Street Food Vancouver Society, a non-profit organization that organizes the food truck festival. In Los Angeles it’s the Southern California Mobile Food Vendor’s Association that organizes and designates who’s included in the weekly Main Street Lot gathering. There is also the NYC Food Truck Association.

Membership in these organizations is based on some straightforward criteria, such as having a valid business licence and health permit, but other, admittedly subjective criteria play a part as well. Mainly how good, original, creative is your food, and how good are you at marketing it?

Being included in one of these organizations is a huge advantage to any food truck proprietor. Besides organizing and promoting food truck gatherings, it also provides or helps to facilitate public relations, media coverage and helps to streamline the regulatory process.

Obviously these organizations wish to represent businesses that are either successful or are deemed as having a good chance at achieving success in order to reflect positively on the industry as a whole. However these organizations demonstrate that the wild-west mentality of the industry’s early days is rapidly giving over to organization.

But the industry does need a lobby, since street vending and food trucks are still not a widely accepted business across North America. In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, food truck businesses are very tightly regulated, down to how they look and the menu on offer. As a result Toronto has not experienced the boom in the industry that Vancouver has.

Even Los Angeles has struggled with its regulatory approach to food trucks, and laws pertaining to street vendors across the U.S continue to evolve (not always favourably towards the industry).

Portland, Oregon, which some would argue is the true birthplace of the food truck, has the most open, and business friendly approach to the industry. As a result the Pacific Northwest city of just over 600,000 has over 800 food truck businesses. Portland unlike Los Angeles does have more pedestrian traffic, and Portland’s city council created food truck pods to help spur economic activity in less prosperous commercial districts.

These 'pods’, similar to the weekly gatherings in Vancouver and Los Angeles, are groups of up to 20 food trucks positioned around the city, creating an instant take-out food market, with shared resources to allow them to work more safely and efficiently.

Portland, along with the state liquor control authority, has also recently allowed food truck vendors to obtain liquor licenses, a first for North America, and a step towards a more European approach to street vending.

Foodtrucksportland.com is not an association or society, however they do promote for the industry locally with reviews and maps of businesses, as well as conducting food truck tours around Portland. By taking a more egalitarian approach to their collective promotion of the industry one could argue they have helped make it stronger and more diverse.

Back in Los Angeles, that whatever the hurdles, Wolf remains very optimistic about her business at least.

“My model was created for duplication, so I can go as big as I want it.”

Although each of her 'locations’ are small trucks, each one has a manager, assistant manager and their own set of employees and that team is responsible for the ongoing quality and efficiency of their truck. She sure makes it sound simple, and the proof is in her track record.

“I have never been inspected by the health department in my more than three and a half years as a [food] trucker.”

She adds that generally people in the food truck business are people with a long history of restaurant experience (15 years in her case) and  they have a passion for what they do. “It’s hard work (and expensive) to book, cook and run a food truck.”