Food truck! They are taking over the streets!

They’ve been around for a while now. How many of us have been getting hot dogs on the streets between two business meetings or hamburgers before rushing into the subway? It’s literally an eating habit that has been in American culture for decades.

So what changed? The food truck business is booming all over the country and is starting to threaten the traditional fast food chains.

This phenomenon started back in the beginning of the 2000s at the start of economic recession, a time when people were mostly looking to preserve their purchasing power by buying inexpensive food.

In this atmosphere, the business of fast food trucks thrived. Less expensive and more practical than having an actual restaurant, they took over the streets and started to change their very essence: going from inexpensive low quality food to diverse high quality gourmet food.

Korean-Mexican, American-Chinese, French-to-go, fruity ice cream, dating meal to-go or even dog food! Creativity is going through the roof and the customer is indubitably the winner.

Diversification and creativity are not enough though, everybody know that. You need to find a way to advertise yourself and to connect with your customers. I guess you know where I’m going with this: Social Media obviously. It was THE real game changer regarding brand loyalty for the food truck business.

Consumers are looking for interaction rather than being hassle by advertising. In this context, they are very receptive to the food truck communication strategy that is to share very basic information such as location or changes in the menu.

Food truck owners also engage in a real dialogue with them through retweet, replies and comments. It’s actually one of the most important aspects of their marketing strategy because creating a connection with the consumer, sharing the story and giving them insights make them feel important and raise their level of involvement. A good fan base will help business owners to advertise through retweet, positive comments on rating sites (like Yelp, extremely popular in the US right now) and word-of-mouth. To make it simple, if they like you they will want to share it with everybody they now.

Bottom line, the game is quite simple here: If you are any good, you’ll eventually get the attention of the so called KOL (key opinion leader) like popular food critics who will trigger a massive amount of new followers and fans.  

So we have great-diversified food, creativity, interaction through social media… What do we miss?

Well, even in 2013, a food truck needs to keep the fundamentals in mind: human contact, simplicity and fun!

Here is a video of the “Food Truck Phenomenon” in LA that could be helpful to complete my thoughts:

PS: I'll be back soon with another post on food trucks. This time we'll talk about the reaction of fast food chains.

G.H.