Earlier this month, bad weather rained out The Star’s Food Truck Friday, a gathering of Kansas City food trucks in the newspaper’s parking lot at 18th and McGee.

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/13/4233518/the-stars-food-truck-friday-rescheduled.html

Truckily in April launched its public beta with an aim to link food trucks with consumers.

For the fortunate few who can smell the delicious waft of food trucks miles away, you can stop reading. For everyone else, read on to find out about Truckily, your taste buds’ new best friend.

The Kansas City startup’s app—available nationwide—helps foodies find and interact with local food trucks, which have the opportunity to use the app as a location-based marketing tool that can automate social media, send push alerts to app users and create virtual punch cards.

Last month, co-founders Derek Kean (right) and Matthew Berkland launched the public beta for mobile and stationary vendors, working to onboard several in Kansas City, including CoffeeCakeKC, Indios Carbonsitos and TheFunnelCakeTruck, Kean said in an email.

“The big point we reiterated during our private tests and discussions was the idea of a ‘Big Red Button’ that would automate your marketing—both before arriving and once arriving at a new location,” Kean said in a blog post. “Well, we delivered on the functionality, but sadly the button was changed to light blue.”

Truckily is available for free on iOS devices and an Android version will be available soon, Kean said. Food truck owners can sign up for the app’s marketing tools at the registration page.

http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2013/05/truckily-serves-up-food-truck-finder-for-foodies-marketing-tools-for-trucks

Facebook: 3 Girls Cupcakes
Liberty has joined the food-truck movement.

People of Liberty, the food trucks are coming. The Liberty City Council approved a two-year mobile-vending pilot program earlier this month that allows for vehicles and trailers to set up in a designated area or private parking lots downtown.

Food trucks will need to apply for a two-year license, which costs $50, and have the proper insurance and health permits. They had previously been prohibited from operating in the city. 3 Girls Cupcakes  owner Simonie Wilson, who worked with the city to create the program, has been selling her cupcake creations in Liberty this month.

“Well, I’ve been waiting three years and the city of Liberty has always been very supportive, but it’s been ironic that my Liberty-based business hasn’t been able to do business in Liberty,” says Wilson, who has sold to businesses or residents, but not been able to vend to customers on the sidewalk. “I’m glad that now the sales tax that was going to the KC-side of 35 can now go to my own town with the new vending spots.”

3 Girls Cupcake

As part of the program, spaces have been marked off downtown in the Central Business District. Vendors will be allowed to park on Leonard Street between Kansas and Mill streets (near Liberty Square). Food trucks will also be allowed to park in private parking lots between 7 a.m. and midnight Thursday, Friday and Saturday with the written permission of the lot’s owner.

3 Girls Cupcakes will be in Liberty tomorrow on Leonard Street from 10 to 10:45 a.m. The program will be evaluated after two years, and at that point the city may consider a permanent resolution.

http://www.pitch.com/FastPitch/archives/2013/04/18/liberty-to-allow-food-trucks-under-new-two-year-pilot-program

Photo of Banh Mi sandwich which will be featured inside the Pigwich, a new food truck from Local Pig, a butcher shop at 2618 Guinotte Avenue in the East Bottoms. It cost $7.

Owner Alex Pope says Pigwich will peddle sandwiches made with Farm to Market bread and all-natural Local Pig meats — which are hormone, steroid and antibiotic free — in the lot behind the butcher shop at 2618 Guinotte Ave. in the East Bottoms.

Pope says he’s planning a grand opening for March 23.

Pigwich will have courtyard seating for 40 people and will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily. The menu includes burgers, cheesesteaks, vegetarian falafel and banh mi sandwiches stuffed with Thai meatballs, pickled vegetables and coconut.

Daily specials include Cuban sandwiches on Monday, meatloaf patty melts on Friday, and Reuben sandwiches made with pastrami and sauerkraut on Sunday.

Photo of Pigwich, the new food truck outside Local Pig, a butcher shop at 2618 Guinotte Avenue in the East Bottoms. Store owner Alex Pope poses for a photo inside his new food truck.

Since Local Pig opened a little over a year ago, it has become a destination for discerning carnivores. The butcher shop’s whole hog butchering courses were recently featured in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

And the shop’s made-from-scratch sausages are hot menu items at an impressive list of local restaurants that includes Haus, Port Fonda, Cafe Provence and the Westside Local.

Kansas City’s food-truck scene has wheeled onto the national landscape. Roaming Hunger, a food-truck locator, launched in KC Wednesday. The site, which allows eaters to find the current locations of trucks as well as book them for catering or events (Roaming Hunger derives its revenue from bookings), represents the fulfillment of a pledge that founder Ross Resnick made to lead developer John Morgan Martin as he built the site in 2009.

“I made a promise to John, who is from Kansas City, that we could eventually make it out there,” Resnick says. “We look for cities where there is a collection of 25 to 30 food vendors. It just took a little longer than I expected.”

Roaming Hunger, which is based in Los Angeles, now has dedicated food pages for 33 cities. And each has its own food-truck culture.

“Sweets are doing pretty well in Kansas City,” Resnick says. “I’d expect more barbecue trucks. But there’s a nice diverse group. Coffeecake [Fat City wrote about Coffeecake KC last April] is really unique. I haven’t seen that in any other city.”

In addition to the 25 carts listed on Roaming Hunger, Kansas City also has its own food-truck app.Truckily, a locally built app still in development from Derek Kean and Matthew Berkland, is expected to launch this spring.

“With the upcoming spring and summer weather, we are looking forward to busier schedules from our local favorite food trucks, and our app will be in full swing to help everyone in KC follow along,” Kean says. “This year is a great year for food trucks, and we hope to help locals find and eat more great food, saving both eaters and food-truck owners loads of time with our app’s automated marketing features.”

During a phone interview from Los Angeles, Resnick said he was aware of Truckily, but believed the app was more of a marketing tool for vendors rather than a direct competitor. And as he sees its, anything that helps foster food-cart culture in a city is helpful.

“Truckily looks like a really nice way for vendors to manage their profiles and get the word out,” Resnick says. “From our perspective, the more people paying attention to food trucks, the better.”

And if Roaming Hunger’s past launches are any indication, the food-truck scene in Kansas City could be poised to go into hyperdrive.

“As people learn about the food-truck scene, then more people become comfortable launching trucks,” Resnick says. “That’s what happened after we launched in Houston. Things started to really heat up. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in Kansas City.”

http://www.pitch.com/fatcity/archives/2013/02/21/roaming-hungers-food-truck-locator-is-rolling-in-kc

This is a screen shot from the Truckily food truck-locator map.

A new app is about to roll into Kansas City to help users identify where their favorite food trucks are camped out for the day.

Truckily, launched by locals Derek Keanand Matthew Berkland, is expected to be released for the iPhone in the next two weeks.

Food trucks will pay a monthly fee to use the service. They will update the location-based app with their daily schedules and locations, which users then can find by seeing which trucks are nearby. The trucks will be able to update their social media accounts from the app as well, which the creators hope will save them time and increase their customer base.

“That’s what we wanted to do, to draw people into the businesses, create lead generation,” Kean said. “If they change locations, that’s really important for them to make money. … What we really want to get out of this is to help these guys out.”

Kean said more than 50 trucks are signed up to use the app when it launches, including ones in Kansas City, Wichita and Arkansas. A couple of outliers signed up in Paris. The hope is to roll out the service to food trucks nationwide.

The idea for the app spawned from a trip to San Francisco, where both Kean and Berkland were looking for local food trucks but couldn’t find any. They prepared the app in a business accelerator in Arkansas.

Kean said they’re the only locals working on the app, but they have national competition.

Roaming Hunger, a national food truck app, has announced plans to add Kansas City to its system on Wednesday. The app and website will track trucks such as 3 Girls Cupcake Bakery, Magical Meatball Tour and Coffee Cake KC.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2013/02/15/kansas-city-food-truck-locator-app.html

BY JILL WENDHOLT SILVA | The Kansas City Star

Mark Drouin operates the Cajun Cabin food truck, which can often be found serving up Cajun food on Hospital Hill photo courtesty of TAMMY LJUNGBLAD

Transplanted New Orleanians are Mark Drouin’s toughest critics.

Drouin is owner of Cajun Cabin

(cajuncabin.org, and on Facebook and Twitter), and you can find his brick-red truck parked at Hospital Hill over the lunch hour, roughly 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., several days a week, depending on weather.

Drouin was born and raised in the Crescent City and returned shortly after Hurricane Katrina to work for Central City Missions, a nonprofit serving low-income residents living a mile from the Superdome.

photo courtesy of TAMMY LJUNGBLAD

To aid with the ministry’s fundraising efforts, he bought a concession trailer and started making “big pot” meals to serve at events.

After he moved to Kansas City in 2009, he became homesick for the food he grew up with. He thought about event catering but wound up buying a food truck instead.

On a chilly February afternoon, zydeco music wafts from the order window. Drouin wears an apron with an alligator on it, and his menu includes such bayou standards as jambalaya, shrimp creole, shrimp chowder and gumbo.

If you’re still undecided, go for the “Jumbo,” his term for gumbo and jambalaya in the same cup.

When the weather is warmer, Drouin cranks up his sno ball machine. That’s New Orleans-speak for snow cones.

“There is just a tremendous market for Cajun food in Kansas City,” he says.

It takes a lot to get a food truck rolling.

Consider this your primer on how to launch your own food truck. Chef Venus Van Horn, who shares the kitchen and wheel of the Magical Meatball Tour with partner Ceaser Reyes, has agreed to share what’s she learned over the past year.

On Monday, she talked about her first kitchen job after two decades of working in telecommunications and on Tuesday, she confessed her love for a bloody steak.

1.Estimate how much it will cost—then double it — That was the hardest lesson for us to learn. When we started this project we completely underestimated how much it would cost. The other truck operators I’ve talked to have had the same experience. We naively started this thinking it would be a little money down and a lot of money coming in. it hasn’t quite worked that way. There are lots of hidden costs in running an operation like this. Truck maintenance, commissary rental, insurance, licensing fees—not to mention the product loss in the event of something you can’t control such as a stretch of bad weather—all add up in a hurry.

2. Utilize Social Media. A large part of our success is directly due to sites like Twitter and Facebook. Neither Ceasar nor I are experts in this but we are learning and are amazed at how important it is to our business. We’ve had customers drive across the city to find us because they saw an update on Twitter. And in that vein don’t cut corners on your product, service or the customers’ experience, because social media supporters are not shy about posting their experiences and the word spreads like wildfire over the internet.

3. Get to know your health department inspector and your city’s codes. We were told this early on and it was invaluable. The regulations of food trucks are very strict and you don’t want to pull up to an inspection and discover that you put in the wrong type of sink, or that your ventilation system is inadequate. We asked a lot of questions, read all the codes and called our inspector before we installed anything. Plumbing and electricity need to be done by a professional.

4. Find your niche. You may be the most skilled baker in the city, but ask yourself, does the city really need another cupcake truck? Research restaurant industry trends and projections. Keep your menu small. We like to think of our truck as more than just a mobile food truck—we want to offer our customers an experience. Gourmet food trucks are a relatively new concept in Kansas City. Be creative and imagine ways to get customers to step out of their comfort zones and eat at your truck

5. Take care of your health.Food trucks are not a part-time business. They are physically and mentally demanding. You are on your feet 12-14 hours some days, in cramped quarters on non-level surfaces. There is heavy lifting, deep cleaning, and exposure to anyone who comes by with a cold or flu. The mental stresses of being the accountant, mechanic, chef, operations manager, and business owner can be taxing. It’s so important to eat healthy, get enough rest and get enough play. It’s hard to do, but so necessary, because as the owner of a food truck, you can’t afford to not be on top of your game.

http://www.pitch.com/fatcity/archives/2011/09/30/chef-venus-van-horn-part-three-five-tips-for-launching-your-own-food-truck

The Magical Meatball Tour is ready to roll.

Some chefs cook by intuition. Venus Van Horn, the chef and co-owner of the Magical Meatball Tour, cooks by Google.

“I’ll go to the City Market or an Asian market. I’ll find something I’ve never seen before, some odd vegetable. And then Google is my best friend. I wouldn’t have been as wonderful a chef if not for Google. After that, I know I like to eat, so I’m going to make it good,” Van Horn says.

Yesterday, chef Van Horn talked about starting out as a personal chef and tomorrow, she’ll have five tips on how to launch your own food truck.

What’s your favorite ingredient? It’s seasonal. Right now, I’m into pumpkin, especially in ravioli. My sage has gone crazy in my herb garden so we’ve been frying sage. It’s like chips, it’s so good.

What was your best recent food find? Recently, I’ve become very fond of Pomegranate Molasses. You can purchase it in grocery stores but it’s easy to make your own. I’ve been playing with it a lot lately It’s great in both sweet and savory dishes. I hope to have a Pomegranate Meatball on our winter menu.

What’s your favorite local ingredient? It’s Zim’s Hot Sauce. We use it in in our bleu balls. It’s a wonderful product. It’s not just a hot sauce. It was created for chefs to use and incorporate in dishes. It’s a little bit smokey, a little bit spicy. Zim’s and Tank 7.

What’s one food you hate? I had a really bad experience with some very chewy octopus recently. After about 20 minutes of chewing, it was not going to go away. So right now, I’m scared off it.

What’s one food you love? I’m a beef eater. Give me a good steak, very bloody, and I’ll eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I like butter on it. I crave steak like people crave chocolate. If I haven’t had a piece of steak in a week, I feel like a crazed vampire. I have low iron, so I need Guinness and steak.

What’s your guilty pleasure? I have so many. [Laughs] It’s mashed potatoes. When I have a really bad day and nobody’s home, I’ll make a big pot of mashed potatoes, sit down on the couch in front of the TV and eat them out of the pot. I make mine with cream cheese, sour cream and garlic, and if I don’t eat them all, I’m having them the next day.

What’s always in your kitchen? Cream. I always have cream. I will go through the large container of cream in two or three days. I use it in my coffee and just about every dish I make. It adds a little something, probably fat. Whether I’m making a simple bechamel sauce for our pumpkin sage balls or our queso, I’ll use cream.

Besides your own place, where do you like to eat out? I love go out to eat. That’s one thing I don’t feel bad about spending money on. I usually just get whatever the server recommends. I recently started going back to Jasper’s and I was very impressed with their menu. You can taste the history, there is history in every bite. You walk into this little strip mall and you’re transported. It’s a wonderful experience. The food truck that I love is Indios Carbonsitos. I know much work goes into that food and I love his pulled pork and brisket.

Where do you like to go for cocktails? I’m kind of a beer snob. The last four or five years I have discovered a taste for beer. I love Tank 7, I could drink that every night. I wish I was a wine connoisseur; but my palate isn’t very refined when it comes to wine. Maybe that’s because I never met a wine I don’t like.

What do you think is next for food trucks in the city?When we were talking to the city inspector, he said they’re getting new food trucks every week. The market is going to get oversaturated. People think it’s an easy moneymaker, but it’s not. I’m excited about the competition because I think that the cream will rise to the top. I say bring it on. [Laughs]. There will be no more roach coaches.

Is is a challenge to overcome the perception of food trucks as roach coaches? The Health Department is really aware of food trucks. I think inspections were harder in the truck than in brick and mortar restaurants. You have to have a commissary, so it’s the same regulations, if not more strict, than a restaurant. It’s kind of neat because the bar is set so low that when people get a good product, they tell their friends.

I look at food trucks in Austin, [Texas], where people specialize in one thing so you know they’re doing it well. And it might not be something you can get at a sit down restaurant. Some of the best food I’ve had has come from trucks. I appreciate that we got in early enough that we’re considered part of the originals. There’s a real camaraderie, but we’re still competitive. To be a food truck owner, you’ve got to have the gypsy spirit. We’re all gypsies. We want nothing more than to be in a truck and feed people. But we’re good gypsies, we’re not scamming people. We’re just jovial.

Now that you’re licensed, will you be hitting up certain neighborhoods? I tell people to check our Facebook and Twitter. We’ve been very blessed in that the truck has sold itself. We’ve been really busy with private events, that’s pretty much what’s kept us rolling.

What’s one book that every chef should read?The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook by Paula Wolfert. The book is beautiful and the recipes are delicious. I’m a true believer in the Zen of cooking. Taking your time, appreciating the flavor of every ingredient and these recipes are some of my favorites. It’s not everyday cooking unless you lead a true life of leisure, but if you want to fall in love with cooking again then I would highly recommend this book.

Who’s got the best barbecue in town and what are you ordering? Oklahoma Joe’s. I usually get the barbecue beef sandwich. I’m not really a fry person. The best sides are Smokestack beans and cheesey corn. If I could have Oklahoma Joe’s beef with those sides, if you could make that happen, that would be amazing.

A chef is only as good as…his level of commitment. I know good chefs that are burnt out and just throw product together. I know young chefs, who are still passionate about making good food. I’m not concerned about titles. I just want to see who has the passion.

http://www.pitch.com/fatcity/archives/2011/09/29/chef-venus-van-horn-part-two-pomegranate-molasses-and-a-bloody-steak

Venus Van Horn is leading the food-truck charge.

Kansas City may some day look back on a round of buyouts at Sprint in 2005 as one of the key moments in the culinary development of the city. Venus Van Horn, a 20-year veteran of the telecommunications industry, came into work every day and sat in a cubicle just three rows over from Craig Adcock, the chef behind Belly Up BBQ and Jude’s Rum Cakes. And six years ago, Van Horn decided it was time to turn her passion for cooking into a career.

“I’m an early riser and I was usually at Sprint by 5:30 a.m. When the buyout notice came, I was probably the first in the whole company to respond,” Van Horn says.

The co-owner of the Magical Meatball Tour, a food truck that began rolling earlier this year, had her first paying gig at the age of 8. Her second cousin asked her to cater a dinner party, which left Van Horn flipping through her Betty Crocker cookbook to design a menu.

“I’ve been cooking since I was 8 years old. Partly because I’m a picky eater and partly because my mom was a creative cook, but her palate wasn’t as refined as her creativity,” Van Horn says.

Growing up in south Kansas City, her paternal grandmother, Florine Crosby, taught her the art of slow cooking. Her family of farmers taught her respect for what it takes to grow food and care for livestock. And it was a middle-school home-economics teacher who taught her that presentation matters as much as what you make.

“She told me, ‘When you start to smell it, you know it’s done.’ And ever since then, I’ve been a chef by nose,” Van Horn says.

She might have only been a home cook — a great home cook — the kind that makes your favorite meal and keeps a circle of friends together through dinner parties. After high school, Van Horn married and had three boys. Those were the years of pork roasts and homemade apple pies, the crusts pressed down by fork tines in the same way her grandmother made them.

When her kids went to school, she began working in the telecommunications industry. She started in a call center at AT&T before being promoted into workforce management with T-Mobile and Sprint.

“It was 55 hours a week of sitting in a cubicle. I hated it. I wasn’t making people smile,” Van Horn says.

As a kid, Van Horn always thought she would be a minister. But when it came time for what she calls her “midlife transition,” she wondered if she couldn’t reach people through food. After taking the buyout offer at Sprint, she took classes and obtained a license from the United States Personal Chef Association. She envisioned bringing the personal-chef concept to middle-income families, making sure they were eating right just as she had cooked from scratch for her own family. The reality was that her clients were wealthy families who paid well but with whom she didn’t have a lot of interaction.

“I just got the security code to a house. For a year and a half, I didn’t really see anyone,” Van Horn says.

She was working at a trade show when Succotash owner Beth Barden came to talk to her about a potential client. Van Horn mentioned to Barden that being a personal chef wasn’t fulfilling. Barden needed an operations manager for the new restaurant that she’d opened in the Dutch Hill neighborhood. Van Horn fit the bill and was delighted for the chance to work in the service industry despite her lack of experience.

“My feet hurt. My back hurt. I lost 40 pounds. My bank account was bad, and I thought, Oh my God, this is where I want to be,” Van Horn says.

She started as the catering manager but ended up spending most of her time on the line alongside a chef there, Ceaser Reyes. And while both loved cooking, they didn’t love watching their bank accounts dwindle on a cook’s salary.

“We had the same ideas about food and we both dreamed of owning a restaurant,” Van Horn says.

They would look at restaurant properties the way young couples dream of buying their first home. But it was a truck in the alley behind Christopher Elbow’s chocolate shop that ultimately had the right price tag. So for $900, the Magical Meatball Tour was launched.

Van Horn discovered that meatballs were trending on both coasts, and the duo hit upon a quirky carnival theme for their rolling kitchen. A campaign on Kickstarter, the micro-lending site, raised $10,190 in April. Friends pitched in, helping to rewire and paint the truck. Their meatball barker, Mat “Slimm” Atkins provides his services for free because he’s attempting to overcome a fear of public speaking. And last month, the Magical Meatball Tour got its license from the city.

“The support from the community has been overwhelming. We didn’t have a dime to our names. We still don’t. [Laughs.] But the smiles that the truck generates has made it all worthwhile,” Van Horn says.

http://www.pitch.com/fatcity/archives/2011/09/28/chef-venus-van-horn-part-one