Food truck nation growing strong in North Texas
The Easy Slider food truck, nearly two years old, has been around the block a few times.
Owners Miley Holmes and Caroline Perini met while working at the House of Blues and spent about six months planning their concept before hitting the streets of Dallas in December 2011. The truck sells hamburgers — from the Classic Cheese to the Nutty Pig with peanut butter.
“We were very interested in the food truck scene and saw it starting to grow in Dallas,” Perini said. “We did our research. We ate at trucks, and we worked on the menu and concept. We knew it wasn’t going to be a hobby. It was going to be a full-time thing.”
Things were going so well, that they eventually added a second truck, and they remain bullish on the Dallas-Fort Worth scene.
“The second truck was not in the business plan,” notes Perini, but adds, “There was a window we didn’t want to miss.”
Three years after the first rolling eateries hit the streets in Dallas-Fort Worth, Holmes’ and Perini’s decision to quickly add that second truck to their fleet is an indicator, according to experts, of just how quickly the food trucks industry is becoming a permanent part of the restaurant scene.
While some of the first trucks are long gone, cities like Dallas and Fort Worth are issuing more permits each year with experts saying it’s no longer a fledgling trend but a fast-growing industry with growth potential still on the horizon.
“I think Dallas is a long way from saturation,” said Jim Knifong, a chef/culinary instructor at the Art Institute of Dallas, whose students include some who work on existing trucks and envision revving up their own mobile kitchens someday.
Nationally, food trucks generate about $650 million in sales annually, according to a recent study from the National League of Cities. The industry is on pace to quadruple its revenue stream over the next five years to approximately $2.7 billion, the association said.
Typical food truck revenue ranges from $100,000 to $800,000 in sales per year, according to Technomics.
Blogger Stephanie Hawkes of DFWfoodtruckfoodie.com is convinced the industry can grow even more: “There are still not enough trucks to go around,” she said. “I get two to three calls a week from event organizers looking for trucks.”
Technomic, a Chicago-based food industry consultant, said awareness of food trucks continues to grow, and consumers don’t see the phenomenon as a fad.
“The new generation of millennials look at the food trucks as someone to share an identity with — a business that has a cool back story versus the older generation that saw them as roach coaches that showed up at factories,” said Darren Tristano, Technomic’s executive vice president.
Meet the players
The food truck phenomenon first surfaced in smaller cities like Austin and Portland, Ore. It wasn’t until the concept hit Los Angeles in 2008 with Kogi BBQ, a Korean taco concept, that it really exploded onto the national scene.
By 2010, food trucks had worked their way to Dallas-Fort Worth. DFWFoodTruckFoodie.com lists about 50 DFW trucks that have closed since Hawkes began the blog in July 2011. The failure rate appears high, although no one seems to know how high.
The failures don’t appear to be much of a deterrent. New entrants roll onto the scene regularly.
Take Chris de la Croix-Vaubois and Lad Williamson, fraternity brothers from Clemson University. The two launched Woké two months ago. Williamson discovered the fast-casual Asian concept while studying abroad in Belgium.
De la Croix-Vaubois, of Highland Park, said the pair bought the Woké master franchise in the U.S. with plans to open brick-and-mortar stores soon. They started the food truck to build awareness before opening stores, he said.
The Taste of Cuba, which won the deep-fried food contest at the State Fair of Texas with its deep-fried Cuban roll, already had a strong following from a six-year presence at the fair when it rolled out its truck one year ago, said owner Isaac Rousso.
He said Taste of Cuba sunk $135,000 — far more than the industry average of about $85,000 to $95,000 — into a high-volume truck to serve large crowds and catered events. They hope to open their first brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2014.
“We have a unique advantage over a lot of other trucks in that the state fair population knows us and loves us,” Rousso said.
To be sure, the truck was drawing one of the largest crowds at the Oct. 25-26 Texas Food Truckin’ Fest in Arlington, sponsored by Experience Arlington and the Texas Rangers. The festival attracted 37 trucks and about 4,000 visitors, said co-organizer Decima Cooper.
Signs of success
Opening a permanent location is one outward sign of a food truck’s success, said Tom Pryor, a small business consultant and owner of ICMS, which specializes in one-page business plans.
Pryor worked with So-Cal Tacos’ owner Scott Wooley, which recently opened a restaurant in Grapevine.
“He’s an example of what can and will happen to the more successful truck owners,” Pryor said.
Besides having a great concept and good service, successful owners also have to put in the time, said Joe Patrick, who said his “Eat Jo Dawgs” food truck was one of the first five gourmet food trucks to hit the streets of Dallas-Fort Worth in late 2010. Long hours are the norm, he said.
Only his truck and one other of that original group of five remain in business, he said. If trucks have the gumption, there’s still plenty of room for them to be successful here, Patrick said.
That means understanding all the costs, said Audra Denny, co-owner of Pompeii DFW, an Italian food truck that’s been open about a year.
“A lot of trucks don’t make it a year; if you make it a year, you are a veteran,” Denny said.
Costs include city permits, insurance, commissary fees, vehicle registration fees, food costs, equipment, gas and truck maintenance. The cost of a truck and its customization is by far the biggest investment.
That’s where Cameron Davies, president of San Antonio-based Cruisin’ Kitchens, comes in. He been customizing food trucks for more than three years and estimates that 60 percent of the trucks his company is building are for the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Davies said the average cost to buy a used truck and convert it into a food truck runs about $85,000 to $90,000 with some companies spending as much as $250,000.
“It’s crazy,” Davies said. “It’s at least doubled each year, the number of trucks we’ve built. It’s the hottest thing in America.”
Pompeii’s Denny kept her startup costs to a minimum by leasing her truck. Food trucks leases generally range from about $1,500 to $3,000 and commissary costs in Dallas run more than $800 a month. City permits range from $75 to more than $800, and trucks usually obtain several to allow them mobility.
Denny said her first few months — she opened during the off-season — were challenging.
“There was one point last winter where I had to go to Coinstar and clean out my own personal piggybank to get $65 to buy product. We are not at that point today, thank goodness,” she said.
A ‘modern’day chuck wagon’
Banks typically don’t lend to food trucks so most owners must self-finance.
The Art Institute’s Knifong said he’s advised students to do their homework but said he believes the food truck concept can help them to break into the food industry for much lower overhead than what it takes to open a brick-and-mortar store.
“You’ve got to manage your money,” Knifong said. “You have lower overhead but you’ve still got to manage costs.”
Blogger Richard Myrick, editor in chief of the Chicago-based blog Mobile Cuisine, said Dallas has “jumped into the national scene” over the past couple of years and is a city to watch as the industry grows. “You have conducive weather for eating outdoors for most of the year, plenty of culinary entrepreneurs, and a city willing to work with the owners without strict legislation that makes it difficult to operate.”
Easy Slider’s Holmes and Perini said food trucks are still considered fairly new in DFW so it’s hard to predict how the industry will mature over the next few years. But they are convinced it will still be around, and in a significant way.
“I don’t think food trucks are going to go away,” Perini said. “The food truck is a modern-day chuck-wagon and they’ll always be in demand in some way or another.”