The National Restaurant Association (NRA) recently expressed that restaurants in their mature stage or widely known restaurants should consider making a food truck. According to their research 59 percent of the subjects the NRA surveyed said they would visit a food truck if it was one of their favorite restaurants. After researching why many haven’t conformed to the idea of a food truck, one thing the food truck doesn’t offer is the atmosphere that you get when you walk into a brick and mortar restaurant.

When you walk into a restaurant it is comforting to know that you are being seated or that you have your own area to sit down a relax while you enjoy your meal, versus looking up at someone encased in a metal contraption that hands you your food and you walk away into the vast emptiness of the parking lot. The idea sheds light on convenience and how fast paced our society is, but the idea can lead to better sales because the restaurant can constantly change location! The idea is fantastic, but instead of customers socializing and enjoying a sit-down atmosphere, they are constantly on the move.

Regardless of the impact these mobile restaurants may have, the trend is growing very rapidly in the Northeast and in the West. The restaurants have such an opportunity to be volatile and make the most of their surroundings at the cheapest cost. If the Northeast doesn’t work during a certain season it can go south and try its sales down there. For one, the cost for a mobile restaurant to relocate is very inexpensive and for the food truck to add a better sign or any new investment is cheaper than a brick and mortar restaurant moving because their foot traffic has depleted due to various reasons.

The food truck trend is such a simple but truly amazing idea, and some of the most brilliant business plans come from the most simple ideas, like the Vita Coco craze for coconut juice. Moreover, the mobile restaurants are at their beginning stages of being so much more than they are now. Later on in the future, we might expect to see fold out chairs and tables that could seat a handful of customers and even a traveling band. There might even be five star mobile restaurants that offer music playing outside them getting consumers energized to buy some food. Soon the day will come when you walk outside your apartment and smell seared steak with lemon peppered shrimp, and it will be the 18 wheeler parked a block from your house.

Norman Elias, MenuDrive

Posted in Mobile Marketing, Restaurant Industry News, Restaurant Industry Trends, Trends