Food Truck in Pittsburgh - Novel Concept

I've mentioned many times how great of a food scene there is in Pittsburgh right now.  You have restaurants that match up against restaurants in any of the food meccas in the United States.  But what has been severely lacking has been the mobile food truck.

The majority of the problem are the legal and outdated roadblocks that currently exist in Allegheny County.  This article from the Post-Gazette explains the issues well, especially the "can't stay parked more than 30 minutes" part.

However, there may be a fissure forming in the dam holding back food trucks.  In August, the Pittsburgh Taco Truck (not the most imaginative name) will be rolling around the city and the surrounding environs selling a wide variety of tacos, including vegetarian options, and an interesting grilled cheese type of item called a planchado.

On their website, the Taco Truck folks mention some of the other food trucks in the City and highlight 5, including 3 of them that don't move anywhere.  That's not a true food truck; that's a restaurant that has the ability to move in an emergency.  Portland has 5 food trucks on one block (if not more), probably.

Regardless, it is great to see a mobile food truck on the scene.  Selling tacos is probably one of the easier, less labor-intensive ones to start with and tacos have mass appeal.  I know I will be following their progress and picking something up as soon as they come on the scene.

Hey, Dad! The Food Truck is here!

While I was watching Food Truck Race 2 on Food Network tonight (salivating...eventually I had to raid the fridge), I was again frustrated by the lack of food trucks in Pittsburgh thanks to the red tape that you have to cut through to have a food truck.

Apparently you can't park for more than 1 hour in Pittsburgh and sell food, which kind of inhibits business. Normal, forward-thinking people would understand this, but Pittsburgh at times needs dragged out of the 1980's, let alone the year 2011.

Anywho, my revelation that I had was "Do you need to be downtown to have a successful food truck?" Could you use social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and the like to announce that you were going to set up in a big industrial park like an RIDC in the suburbs? Could you go to a construction site in the suburbs?

Or even better...could you drive around a neighborhood during the day, like the ice cream man from your childhood, and sell tacos to adults?

So as I'm typing this, the final part of Food Truck Race for this week in Memphis is on...it's the elimination ceremony. Tyler Florence announces that 1 of the teams cheated by adding $2700 of their own money to the cashbox without selling the corresponding food. It's the Korilla BBQ truck, my personal favorite truck and a front-runner to win it all. They had to slink off totally embarassed and they never even gave their side of the story...I guess nothing needed to be said.

The sad part is that they didn't even need to cheat. They weren't the lowest grossing team for this city. Kind of a sad end to a great team.

The Great American Food Truck Race

Over the past 6 weeks, I became addicted to the Food Network's Great American Food Truck Race. The concept was stunningly simple. Get 7 food trucks (mobile food stands the size of a FedEx truck) and have them travel to different cities selling their foods. The truck that sold the least amount of food in that city was gone.

The starting trucks were a pudding/wings truck (Nana Queens), Cajun truck (Ragin' Cajun), Crepes truck (Crepes Bonaparte), French gourmet food truck (Spencer on the Go), a pressed sandwich truck (Austin Daily Press), a burger truck (Grill Em All), and a Vietnamese hoagie truck (Nom Nom).

Some twists and challenges aside, the competition came down tonight to Grill Em All and the nigh-unstoppable Nom Nom. Nom Nom used social media and print media to give themselves advance notice at every city. They partnered with unique, cutting edge businesses and seemed to always find the hot spots.

The Grill Em All truck was nearly bounced out of the competition twice, needing to win a challenge to stay in. The next to last show they beat the Frenchies by $37 (sold literally at the last minute to a hunger customer who ordered 5 burgers).

And the winner was....Grill Em All.

The last show was in New York City and the idea was cool. The two trucks had to sell $500 of product in each of the first 4 boroughs of NYC (Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn) and then sell $1000 in Manhattan....then race to the roof of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan.

Grill Em All was just better than Nom Nom in this episode. They had lines of people waiting for them to open shop. Also, the Noms were not as optimistic as they had been. Their leader, Misa, was actually depressed right off the bat. They just faded under the pressure.

Pittsburgh has very few well-known food trucks. The most famous is The Goodie Truck that sells desserts. These ladies use Twitter and Facebook to their advantage as well. Perhaps the next frontier for Pittsburgh is to catch up to California with the mobile food truck craze.

I smell a business opportunity....