The Creation of a Food Truck

Food on the Roll

This is the location of the first Konfusedise food truck at 15400 RR 620 Austin, TX 78717. They plan to open more in the comming years. food trucks in the near future.

Courtesy of Konfusedise

How food trucks start out and grow

By Seth Martin

The making and serving of food has been a key job all throughout human history, and the competition has never been more prevalent. Many people know they are great cooks and just need the opportunity to take their shot as a professional chef. For a lot of people, that shining opportunity comes in the form of a food truck.

A food truck is a mobile restaurant on wheels that’s manned by 1 to 2 people serving food out of an oversized window. Over the past years these restaurants on wheels have become more and more

popular, even though the multiple waves of COVID-19. Food trucks come in all shapes and sizes serving all kinds of food and are the jumping off point for many restaurants all over the country, but what goes into starting one?

Matias Roy is the coowner of a food truck business named Plucky’s based in Lago Vista, Texas. Plucky’s has been expanding since its founding in 2020 and is now coming to Austin, Texas. Roy said that the biggest key to starting a food truck was the location you put your food truck.

“Let’s say you set up a barbecue in an area?” Roy said hypothetically. “You’ve got to know what’s the nearest location to that area, how far are they from a different location, and if you put your food truck there, or whatever you want to do, is it beneficial to you? We decided to hit Lago Vista at one point. I figured that it would be a good spot to start up a food truck. Basically, identify what you’re selling, and how close your competition is when you plan on where to put your food truck.”

Tyler Boss is the general manager of Tinnies Barbeque, a successful food truck chain based in Austin. He shares his findings on the most important focus in operating a food truck, getting the best ingredients around.

“We do have a largescale supplier. It’s called ‘Ruffino meats,” Boss said. “We’re fortunate because we’re still small enough to where we can still go out and shop, and handpick a lot of our meat. We’ll go to Costco, HEB, really we will scour all over the city, hand selecting our meat. We do everything over the top. And so that just goes all the way down to picking our meat as well.”

Boss also discussed the importance of planning the space that will be used by each piece of equipment.

“It’s kind of a juggle,” Boss said “That is one of the downfalls of a food trailer is there’s just not a lot of space. We’ve got a commercial smoker in there that can smoke up to 500 pounds at one time. So that itself takes up a quarter of

“you have to know how to maRket youRselF, and most oF all you have to have a good woRk ethic” - danyell mulleR

Plucky’s teriyaki wings are a signature dish of the up and coming food truck. Courtesy of Plucky’s

our trailer. So working around that is also another challenge.”

Danyell Muller is the wife of Robin who is a co-owner of Konfusedise, an Indian food truck that focuses on Indian fried bread. Konfusedise opened recently in 2021 and Muller was happy to share the key points she had found. “[the] main thing is Just the attitude oF wanting to come into woRk smiling, engaging with the customeRs.” - matias Roy

Plucky’s teriyaki wings are a signature dish of the up and coming food truck. Courtesy of Plucky’s

“Well, you definitely have to have a really good menu content,” Muller said, “You have to know how to market yourself, and most of all you have to have a good work ethic, because it’s a lot of hard work. I think people think food trucks are easy, but they’re not. It’s a lot of work and a lot of operation.”

Marketing yourself was one of the big points for Roy’s business. He said the best way to do that was through social media like Facebook and Instagram.

“We post daily videos of our food. Whether they’re starting football games that day, who will post about football games. So social media is good with that. It’s like that with Instagram and Facebook. And with Instagram another way to use it as well is identifying what kind of area you’re in,” Roy said.

Identifying the location you’re set up in is a big part of knowing how to market yourself most effectively. The most important thing to figure out is why people come to that part of the city.

“For example, you would want to find out if the location you set up at has an AirBnB,” Roy said. “If it has that, or something similar like a popular hotel you would want to get in touch with them and ask if there was any way to let clients know about your food truck. This could be anything from setting up a way for clients to get an email about your truck to buying an ad space in a hotel brochure.”

The final key in having a successful food truck business is knowing what kind of employees you’d want to hire. For Roy, it’s all about attitude and adaptability.

“I focus on attitude because I can teach

anybody. I can teach anybody as long as you’re willing to show up on time,” Roy said, “[The] main thing is just the attitude of wanting to come into work smiling, engaging with the customers. It’s just making sure that they’re very upbeat and wanting to learn. I like employees to be adaptable too because there might be times I want you as a cashier, it might be tough, but I need you here. So I need you to be adaptable, on time, energetic, and enthusiastic.”

Roy also said that having previous experience in restaurants wasn’t something he looked for. In fact he would prefer to hire people without that experience.

”I don’t really push too hard to make sure you have restaurant experience because, me personally, I’d rather see somebody who doesn’t have experience because they don’t have those bad habits that they learned before,” Roy said.

Through the use of these business practices a lot of food trucks have become successful enough to move onto the next phase of a restaurant. While the goal for many food trucks, including all of the ones interviewed for this story, is to eventually turn into a brick and mortar location, Roy advises against jumping at the opportunity as soon as it represents itself, especially during COVID-19.

“Nobody’s really eating inside restaurants, everyone’s kind of nervous with COVID going around, and pickup is going up” Roy said, “The goal is to eventually get out of the food truck and go into a brick and mortar to what we had. Where people just come in and get wings and a little dining area, nothing too crazy, but it’s not smart to do that right now.” According to IBIS world, over the past five years the food truck industry has grown more than 6% each year. With those food trucks come all sorts of new flavors and textures to enjoy, or try your own hand at. So whether you’re an aspiring chef or just someone who loves food, you can

“we do eveRything oveR the toP. and so that Just goes all the way down to Picking ouR meat as well.” -tyleR boss

always find something new in the business of food trucks.