Ooh, I’ve got it! Food tardises!
You would only need 1. Being bigger on the inside would allow for much larger kitchens/pantry. And being able to travel in time and space could allow you to be at every point in space and time whenver you felt like it.
But then again, if you had a Tardis, why would you need to sell food?
A friend of mine has a food truck. He makes most of his money doing catering jobs, he’s bringing his kitchen with him. He can handle venues that don’t have a kitchen, a lot of them are outdoor events. He makes good money from carnivals and fairs, and when not occupied otherwise does lunch on a busy road through town. He lost his job working for a food supplier a couple of years ago and he tells me he does just as well working the truck full time, and I think he his since he rents a kitchen at a local church to do his prep work. Part of his success is his flexibility, he’ll serve food at a number of local private clubs and senior centers offering foods of their choice.
Also, one of the oldest food trucks ever is the Haven Brothers Diner, still operating in Providence RI last I checked.
Roach coaches have been around for eons. I don’t see that ever changing.
The food trucks are a by-product of real estate prices. The cost of a brick & mortar joint is just too high these days. So people are resorting to food trucks to establish a clientele to support them until they have a big enough base to afford the cost of a real stationary restaurant.
Yep, that’s pretty much what I was thinking. Here in town, Heim’s Barbecue just moved from a trailer to a normal restaurant. It was about a year of them selling out by noon* 3 days a week before they built up enough to go with a regular restaurant. Nowadays, they often have food to sell until 6pm.
*I went three times, waiting in line for hours each time, before I eventually arrived early enough to have their bacon burnt ends. Yes, totally worth it.
There have been Food Trucks for decades. I think they began in the 50s. Where I grew up they were called Pie Carts. FOr a while they were being shut down, they weren’t maintained very well and hygiene was a factor, as well as traffic issues (wheeled and footed) upsetting the neighbours, but them coming back licensed and well maintained is a good thing. I don’t anticipate them going away just yet, though any trend has waves of popularity.
I recall one in my hometown in the 70s, when I was a child. During summer, at least, it was pretty much permanently parked on the little bridge where the Headless Horseman chased Ichabod Crane. Mainly hot dogs, but some other things too. Wish I could remember the proprietor’s name. Nice guy.
In my experience, fads don’t last decades. I’ve done a lot of contract work over that time, and a number of times there have been food trucks that came by daily, at morning or lunch hours. (Oddly enough, the breakfast runs seemed to be more popular; probably a bunch of people rushing to wake up from last night’s hangover and make it to work on time that were skipping breakfast.)
Not only have they lasted too long already to be a fad, but there are practical considerations in their favor beyond just trendiness, and those factors will continue to work in their favor.
EDIT: Now, just what kind of food they serve, that’s certainly subject to fads.
Lots of 'em in the San Fernando Valley. They would gather a block from my house every Friday. 4 years later, I am told they still do. Both sides of the street would be nothing but trucks. The sidewalks filled with customers, musicians, vendors and the occasional pick pocket.
Lots of the trucks also have brick and mortar restaurants. Sometimes the trucks came first, sometime the restaurants.
Roach coaches, though, are distinguished from food trucks in that food trucks have kitchens and prepare hot foot on site. Roach coaches are more like mobile vending machines. Coffee machines dispense coffee, ice chests contain cold drinks, and everything else is already pre-made and just kept hot.
Roach coaches are quite popular on military bases, and they’re still quite popular here in SE Michigan at job sites – not just construction; there are hundreds of little job shops where workers need breakfast and lunch.
Michigan has cold weather a good part of the year, and so it’s no wonder we don’t have “food trucks” and “food truck culture” like California has. Except, apparently, maybe we do now (I’d been gone five years). Apparently they show up at “Eastern Market,” which is a hybrid tourist-resident green market in Detroit city. I have no idea what they’ll do in the winter, though.
Their long term success or failure, though, will depend on whether they can continue to keep customers. That’s obvious, of course, but the potential issue I see is that currently food trucks are mostly for hipsters and the trendy, i.e., in that they attract fans via social media who think that it’s simply “cool” to go to that truck if it arrives. So, yeah, “fad.” To become an institution, they will have to replicate B&M locations. Non-hipster consumers want reliability and predictability. If I want a chicken shawarma pita wrap at 2:55 pm tomorrow, I like to know that Al Bourdoni’s is always in the same place and has fixed hours that will accommodate my wants. Knowing that your mobile shawarma truck will be at a certain location tomorrow at 5:00 pm doesn’t help me in the least.
Even the movie “Chef,” which celebrates the food truck and social media and hipsterdom, has the protagonist migrate back to a B&M location at the end, as if this were the desired state all along, i.e., a food truck is only a temporary stepping stone is the apparent message.