Food Truck Trends

Phil: But there's no shortage as it relates to food trucks. We're seeing food trucks continue to rise in importance.

Phil: And a new study just came out that looked at 500 food trucks from Shane company. They went to Google trends to get this data. 500 food trucks and 1500 plus menu items over the past year to find the most popular food truck order and cuisine by state and nationwide. Here in California, the Al pastor tacos is the favorite. I've never seen that before in my life. In New Jersey, where I come from, the Western pork roll, never seen that. In New York pork and chive dumplings. I've sort of seen that sometimes. In your neck of the woods in Tennessee roasted cauliflower tacos. The list goes on and on, and I think we're getting carried away with some of these food truck trends being a little too upscale. Whatever happened to like a hot dog cart?

Sally: Well, you make a good point. And when we look at these statistics on, you know, what the number one selling foods are, overall tacos sell better than anything nationwide, from food trucks ,is what we're reading. And what I think is so interesting is that based on your state's popular cuisine, let's say you're in Alaska and Alaska produces a lot of salmon. You know, they take a taco, put salmon on it. Here in Nashville, Tennessee, they'll put hot chicken on a taco because that's one of our big popular local cuisines. So, you know, these food trucks are really fun, I think for people to get out and try all kinds of different street foods. And, I don't know. Do you think the supermarkets should be paying attention to those trends?

Phil: Oh, absolutely. And again, before we get to the supermarkets, when we look at tacos and food trucks, I think it's not because people really love tacos. I think that tacos are really easy to make in a food truck. You know, you've got the tortilla you've got, whether it's chicken or pork or whatever else you plop it on, you put on shredded lettuce, it's easy, it's quick to make. And that's one of the reasons and it's high profit. But to your point of supermarkets, I think that supermarkets have long ignored some of the trends that we see coming out of food trucks and it's to their detriment. I mean, a lot of supermarkets still, you know, are selling meatloaf in those black plastic plates in the prepared food section, and they need to be a little bit more adventurous.

Sally: I agree. And it is a great, great thing to get out and try if you have food trucks in your neighborhood to check out some of these interesting cuisines.