Costco Connection - July 2012

Food truck fare
Roasted
Tomatillo
Salsa
Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Peel and wash tomatillos. Peel red onion, and cut into quarters. Wash and stem jalapeños. Combine tomatillos, onion, jalapeños and garlic, and spread out in a small roasting pan. Drizzle with oil. Roast in the oven for about 30 minutes; you want to see a little char or browning on the tops of the tomatillos and jalapeños. The garlic should feel soft and be brown in spots. Cool.

Place mixture, cilantro and salt in a food processor. Process while slowly adding about ¾ cup of water, to achieve your preferred salsa consistency. You may need to do this in two batches if there is too much for one batch.

Enjoy with tortilla chips, over tacos or with your favorite burrito. Makes 8 to 9 cups.

Ingredients:

6 to 8 tomatillos

1 red onion

2 jalapeño (or serrano) peppers (add 1 more if you like it spicier)

4 garlic cloves ¼ cup vegetable oil

1 bunch of cilantro Salt to taste

“It’s about good food
[and] … positive mojo,
which is difficult to find on
an empty stomach.”
—Brian Reed, Mojo Tago
Columbus, OH
Mojo Tago

Find out more

Boston Food Truck Alliance: Mobile Cuisine: mobile-cuisine.com

National Association for the Specialty Food Trade:

specialtyfood.com

National Restaurant Association: restaurant.org

NYC Food Truck Association: nycfoodtrucks.org

Oregon Street Food Association: orsfa.org

Philly (Philadelphia) Mobile Food Association:

facebook.com/phillymfa

Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association:

socalmfva.com

(Washington) D.C. Food Truck Association:

dcfoodtrucks.org The Food Truck Handbook by David Weber (Wiley, 2012)

28 The Costco Connection JULY 2012

Experience suggested, not required

Many food truck owners don’t have any culinary training, and they’ve learned well on the fly. However, some professional cooking, hospitality or food-service experience can make it easier to open a food truck business, says SoCalMFVA’s Geller.

“You also need to have a really wide set of business skills,” says NYCFTA’s Weber. “It’s not just about having a great recipe and a cool-look-ing truck.” In addition to coping with intense hours (often 12 to 14 hours a day to prep food, serve, clean and move the truck), food truck owners need to know how to acquire licenses and permits for every city or county they serve, buy the best-quality ingredients at CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27

good prices (Costco is a key supplier for many of them) and manage part-time staffers. It doesn’t hurt to also have a few mechanical skills, in case the truck or its equipment breaks down.

Other skills successful food truck-ers cultivate:

 Intimate familiarity with health department rules. Food trucks are now held to the same stringent sanitation and food-safety codes as any restaurant. And in many cities, each truck’s food must be prepared and stored in a city-approved commercial kitchen or commissary. Owners must also sanitize and park trucks in a commissary lot each night.

 People skills. “Customers are buying directly from you, the chef. It helps a lot if they like you and you know them by name,” says Kyriakides.

 Long-term plans. Most food truck owners won’t make a killing with a single truck, says Geller. They look ahead to packaging their food, opening a restaurant, expanding their truck fleet or moving into catering.

 Marketing savvy—particularly via social media. Marination Mobile, for instance, shares funny customer stories on Facebook and has given T-shirts to customers who went into labor and had babies after eating at their truck. Two Pitas in a Pod is known for its humorous Twitter feed—which often has nothing to do with the food. “Marketing online is about having conversations and connections with your customers, not just about hawking your product,” says Kyriakides.

 Weather hardiness. Food truck-
ers are exposed to the elements all the
time. They know to dress in layers, in
both winter and summer. They also
know that bad weather can decrease
their sales by 50 percent or more, so
they plan for rainy days—literally.

Driving the future

Food trucks have proved to be so successful in recent years that companies with established brick-and-mortar locations are adding mobile units, too. Birmingham, Alabama, Costco member Jan Marie Moon decided a truck would be the perfect expansion vehicle for her small but busy bakery. Her popular Dream-cakes truck (http://dreamcakes- bakery.com) now sells just cupcakes daily at various locations, including a busy local mall. “It’s like a pastry case on wheels,” she says.

Moon is in good company. National chains such as Jack in the Box, Applebee’s, Chick-fil-A, Carl’s Jr., California Pizza Kitchen and Dairy Queen have also rolled out food trucks in select locations.

Are small businesses worried that
big-name trucks will be too much
competition? “Not really,” says Weber.
“The more common and accepted
food trucks become, the better that is
for all of our businesses.”
Geller agrees. Plus, more food
trucks mean more options for hungry
customers. “In the past, if you worked
in an area that only had a couple of
lunch restaurants, you were stuck,” he
says. “But now that food trucks are
rolling in, you have the chance to eat
something different and amazing
every single day.” C