Prestige Food Trucks, a premier central Florida food truck builder reports significant demand for mobile food venders as small to large restaurant chains/franchises consider expanding into mobile catering.

“Over the past two years, many small to large restaurant chains/franchises have shown significant interest in taking their brand/restaurant to the food truck industry,” stated Tracy Stein, CEO and president of Prime Pinnacle, a private investment firm that provides financial capital for Prestige Food Trucks, in a prepared statement.

Stein further stated that the rise in popularity is because restaurant chains/franchises have begun to see the big picture in getting into the food truck business by studying, researching and recognizing the opportunities.

Prime Pinnacle’s research/data have shown that more than 15 percent of the top 200 restaurant chains have a mobile café / food truck presence. These include Cousins Submarines, Inc; Tasti D-Lite Frozen Yogart; Toppers Pizza; Jack in The Box; Sizzler; Red Robin; Chick-fil-A, Star Diner;The Gap; The Habit Burger & Grill; Taco Bell; Applebee’s; Dairy Queen, Subway, Qdoba, California Pizza Kitchen, Carl’s Jr.; In-N-Out Burger, Fatburger; Grandolfo’s New York Delicatessen; Banna-Stow’s Crepes & Coffee; and more.

Stein stated, “Food trucks serve as mobile billboards as well which is very enticing to the franchise/chain owners as they can spend between $50,000 to $200,000 plus per month on advertising alone. With a mobile food truck their visibility increases exponentially.”

Without good food equipments, you won’t survive in a catering truck business. Hence welcome to the Cater Needs. Zarik Menassian, the owner of Cater Needs Inc., has been involved in the catering truck business since 1975. Through all these years Zarik has accumulated vast knowledge in all aspects of the industry from manufacturing, sales, repairs, and financing. Cater Needs is your one stop online and in-store provider for every catering truck needs. Cater Needs has been known for offering the most reasonably priced truck electrical partsand in addition their kitty is full of all the necessary mobile kitchen equipments etc that you require while doing any such business.

Many people may know but those who don’t know, see, a food truck is essentially a restaurant on wheels, having various advantages over a traditional eat-in restaurant. You don’t need to go through all the hassles of setting up your restaurant in the most hotshot place in your city or town; rather simply carry your truck hardware over there and crowd will come to you instead. A food truck can go to where the customers are; where you will get business. Today, there are about 3 million food trucks operating in the U.S., more than 5 million food carts, and an indefinite number of kiosks. Food kiosks are temporary booths or stands used to prepare and sell foods like pretzels, ice cream and hot dogs. The suppleness and ease by which a kiosk can be opened and closed are among the reasons why this concept of selling food via a truck or a moving car has become so popular. The concept of running a fast food shop and dealing with various mobile kitchen equipments may sound a very easy thing for most of you but in reality there are certain factors that needs to be taken care of well to ensure you build a successful business.

CaterNeeds is ever committed in serving the cater truck service industry in the most cost-effective way possible by offering very competitive prices and toll free phone and fax lines. In addition to efficiency and great pricing, Cater Needs will give you the peace of mind to run a catering truck business.

http://foodtruckequipment.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/cater-needs-offering-you-the-best-priced-truck-electrical-parts/

Gorilla Fabrication specializes in building out Custom Food Trucks. Mobile Eateries, Catering Trucks and Beer Trucks. Check out the masterpiece below that was built for Coastal Crust based out of Mt. Pleasant, SC in the Charleston area. Whether you want to outfit your food truck with a full commercial kitchen or you need to add on to an existing food truck, Gorilla Fabrication has you covered. Tons of options that can make your custom food truck dream come to life! We’ll get you on the road in style with all the comforts of your own restaurant. If you are thinking about joining the food truck phenomenon that is sweeping the country, you have found the perfect company to build your custom food truck and mobile eatery. We have recently built trucks for the likes of Jim ‘N Nick’s BBQ and Kickin Chicken. If you’re ready, fill out the quote form here.

http://gorillafabrication.com/commercial-food-trucks/

The whirs and hisses of drills and welding torches carry outside a warehouse tucked away in a Fort Lauderdale office park. Inside, rows of step vans and delivery trucks are being reborn as food trucks.

As mobile eateries have flourished in South Florida in recent years, food truck builders have also shifted into high gear.

These mobile food truck factories — including Concession Nation in Fort Lauderdale, AAA Concession Trucks and Trailers in Davie, and FoodCart USA in Miami — scour the state for new and late-model Chevy, Ford and GMC step vans as well as used flower, fire and delivery trucks (and in one case, a shuttle van from NASA). They add fryers, refrigerators and stainless steel surfaces and turn them into rolling restaurants.

“Everybody wants one,” said Alexander Alvarez, owner of Concession Nation, which completed 126 jobs in 2012, a 34 percent increase from 2011.

The weakened economy and high unemployment of the past few years have helped drive the local food truck boom. As people were laid off or considering job changes, some decided to become their own boss and invest in mobile units. Meanwhile, TV programs such as Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race” and the Cooking Channel’s “Eat Street” were showing contestants making thousands of dollars a day with a customized food truck.

Yes, food truck operators have costs such as gas, food inventory and permits. But these are “less expensive than brick-and-mortar facilities, making it easier to enter the food service business,” said Ron Grimes, manager of environmental health programs at NSF International, a nonprofit that develops standards for equipment used in food service establishments such as food trucks.

“People don’t have to pay rent [with a food truck], and they are not committed to one place,” said Bruce Hicks, owner of AAA Concession Trucks and Trailers, adding that his business doubled to 30 trucks in 2012 from the previous year, from a mix of local and national clients.

He began to shift his business toward food truck building in the past two years after noticing a decline in RV-related jobs.

“I saw that [business] going away. People were in foreclosures and losing their homes,” Hicks said.

These days, he’s getting requests to create food trucks for freestanding businesses such as Popeye’s fast-food chicken and Donna’s Restaurant and Lounge, which has locations throughout Broward County.

He was also hired to outfit an all-white, 8-foot GMC step van for Gozen Yogurt, a self-service frozen yogurt company based in Philadelphia. It will be painted in orange, yellow and blue swirls and have a flat-screen TV, freezer and four self-serve yogurt machines. Once completed later this month, the truck will be ready to dispense sorbet, dulce de leche and caramel-flavored treats at corporate parties and festivals from Jupiter to Miami.

“The real advantage to having a food truck is that you will be able bring the entire frozen yogurt store experience to someone’s home,” said Adam Zell, the Florida partner for Gozen Yogurt.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the ever-growing popularity of food truck fare and events. The National Restaurant Association doesn’t track the number of food trucks in the United States, but the group has found that consumers have been increasingly flocking to mobile eateries.

In a 2012 association survey, 43 percent of adults said they had bought items from a food truck.

The demand for food trucks, Concession Nation’s Alvarez said, comes from a base of customers hungry for “fast-food but better quality. You get a homemade plate served to you in 10 minutes.”

At Concession Nation’s offices and warehouse in Fort Lauderdale, calls pour in from throughout the country. The San Francisco 49ers football team, for example, had the company create a team-themed concession trailer.

And the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach recently hired Concession Nation to build an 18-foot food truck to sell some of the dishes found at the resorts’ restaurants such as Gotham Steak and Scarpetta. The truck will roam the property, complete with three flatscreen monitors showing video of the hotel’s amenities.

“It’s a truck that we are going to use to feature lots of different venues in the resort,” said Thomas Connell, the resort’s executive chef. “We are going to use it for special events, barbecues, LIV [nightclub] after-hours … wherever our customers need it really.”

Costs range per builder, but a used food truck can cost $3,000 to $20,000, depending on the mileage, year, condition and size, which can be 16 or 18 feet long. Fully-loaded new trucks can run as much as $100,000. Generally, vendors find the trucks for the client, but a customer can bring a truck to a contractor and have it outfitted with equipment.

Workers strip the rear (or the box) of the truck, install aluminum walls and diamond-plated flooring. They add stainless-steel counters, refrigerators, sinks and deep fryers, or whatever the client requests. Some owners add LED lights on their roofs and flat screens to promote their menus to potential passers-by.

Concession Nation, which features its work on fastfoodtruck.com, also wraps the exterior of the vehicle to brand the food and services.

“You have a brand-new truck inside and, plus, you have free advertising whenever you hit the road,” said Monica Gonzalez, chief financial officer at Concession Nation. A typical job there lasts about five days.

Craig Larson, owner of Lucille’s Bad to the Bone BBQ in Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, wanted a food truck as a side catering business to bring his culinary fare to office workers daily.

“We realized there was as significant truck scene going on down in [Miami-Dade] but didn’t see a lot of it in Palm Beach,” he said.

So last year he sought the services of Concession Nation, which transformed a 2001 GMC 28-foot-long step van used for flower deliveries in Disney World into Lucille’s on Wheels, a black food truck bedecked with the image of a smiling red-headed woman carrying a tray of food.

“We wanted to do something whimsical, slightly southern, slightly risque. The whole deal with the truck was to have fun,” said Larson, whose mobile unit houses a three-compartment sink, two fryers and a 4-foot grill that makes barbecue chicken nachos and fries slicked in gravy. “It’s a whole rebirth for that truck from what it did originally.”

http://www.southflorida.com/news/fl-food-truck-builders-20130306,0,3231810.story

A mobile concession stand. Credit Vernon schools

A project to employ a mobile concession stand at Rockville High School has received a major financial commitment from the Rockville Bank Foundation.

But it comes with a stipulation.

The foundation’s Grants Committee had pledged $12,000 to the project on a one-third/two-thirds matching agreement, according to a letter from the bank to Michael Purcaro, the school system’s director of business and finance.

That means the high school booster clubs must raise the $24,000 balance. The full $36,000 was requested, but in the letter the foundation said in the current economy, requests far outweigh the funding ability.

Purcaro said this week that it is a generous gift under any circumstances.

A mobile concession stand. Credit Vernon schools

Currently, there is a stationary snack shack that is used at the main field at Rockville High School. It can only be used for events at the stadium.

It is estimated that it would cost $30,000 to $40,000 to bring the shack up to modern food service standards, Purcaro said.  For the same price, a mobile concession stand can be acquired and used for any sporting event at any field, Purcaro said.

It could also be used at non-school venues – like the annual July in the Sky fireworks celebration – for fund-raising purposes,” Purcaro said.

What the inside of the mobile concession stand would resemble. Credit Vernon schools

The mobile concession stand would be equipped with a full commercial kitchen and it could be towed using fleet pickup trucks, Purcaro said.

Several booster clubs have signed onto the project, Purcaro said.

High school representatives will be required to provide the bank with a spreadsheet with contributors’ names and amounts donated.

The stand would feature the Rockville Bank logo, according to the letter.

http://vernon.patch.com/articles/rhs-mobile-concession-stand-project-finds-a-booster-in-rockville-bank#photo-11665232

Schantz Mfg.  “We Know What Makes You Money”

For more than 60 years Schantz Manufacturing has been the industry leader in the custom concession trailer market.   Their founder, Socrates Schantz invented the first retractable wheel concession trailer which increased revenue and profits.

Al’s Diner Interior

Its not enough to just be a builder, they realize that they are building your business… you’re livelihood.  It must work.

With 60 years in the business they have seen just about everything.  That knowledge has helped Schantz  in designing efficient workflows, unique installations and of course, some of the finest quality in the industry.

Quality is the hallmark of Schantz Mfg.  They use the finest materials available and as a custom manufacturer, most of the components are hand made by Schantzs’ skilled craftsmen.  Whether it’s a food truck, concession trailer or a mobile kitchen, their products are built to last a liftetime.

Exterior

Schantz Mfg specialized in all types of mobile food solutions.  If it serves food and its mobile… Schantz has you covered.  Schantz is and has been the industry leader in the carnival/fair markets; building high end concession trailers with flash and function for the midway.  They also specialize in custom food trucks and mobile kitchens for independent operators and several corporate clients as well.   Schantz offers value added products like digital menu boards, video surveillance and Point-Of-Sale systems to monitor your food operations remotely.

Food Truck Interior

At Schantz they do not consider themselves successful unless your business is successful.  They take the time to understand your needs to build you the perfect mobile food solution!  At Schantz, the slogan is “We know what makes you money”!

By Lee Grayson | Demand Media

Concession trailer profits rely on careful planning and accurate financial record keeping. Trailer photo by Schantz Trailer

Concession services offer food and occasionally souvenirs from trailers located near event venues, including small sports stadiums, amusement and community parks, and school sports fields. While government or school districts operate some services, private companies contract with municipalities and schools to operate other concession trailers. Calculating the profit from a trailer involves careful attention to pricing and tracking sales, and also determining the amount of typical expenses for your concessions operation.

Custom built Funnel Cake trailer by Schantz Mfg.

Have you ever attended a fair, outdoor concert or amusement park and noticed all the hungry people lining up at the food concession trailers? And did you think to yourself, “Man, those mobile kitchen operators must be making money hand over fist! I wonder how I could get a piece of that? ”Launching successfully into the mobile food trailer business starts with having a solid business plan and then investing in the concession trailer that fits your plan – not too much trailer, not too little, but just right.

So if you like the sound of being your own boss, hitting the road, and working at fun outdoor events all summer, here is a list of points to consider before investing in your first concession trailer.  Type of Food ServiceWhen buying a new concession trailer, it should be customized specifically for the type of food service you plan to offer: BBQ, fast food, product samples, hot or cold foods, sandwiches, drinks, etc. The vendor will be able to advise you on the trailer best suited to your business plan.

Size of Concession Trailer & mobile food trailers can be as small as hot dog carts or as large as semi trailers, although the average length ranges from 18′ to 24′. The size you choose will depend on the number of people who will work inside it, the number of serving stations, and the amount of equipment needed. Tip: Spend some time researching floor plans either online or at a concession trailer dealership to zero in on the size and layout that’s right for you.

Equipment OptionsOne fridge or two? Big freezer or small? How many stove top burners and deep fryers will you need? BBQ or meat smoker or both? When it comes time to get a price quote for your mobile food trailer, you’ll need to know what options to include so you can negotiate the best deal. (If you’re getting a brand new mobile kitchen, be sure to choose a dealer that can customize it to your specifications. New or Used.?

The question of a new or used concession trailer usually comes down to budget and how much credit your banker is willing to give you. If you need to scrimp, some dealers offer used or reconditioned mobile kitchens. This may be a better option than buying privately since dealership units are checked and refurbished by professionals.

Mobile WarrantyBefore buying your concession trailer, make sure the dealer offers a “nationwide” warranty that goes with you. Remember, your mobile kitchen is going to be on the road and far away from home much of the time. If there’s a problem, it’s good to know you can have it repaired wherever you happen to be.

http://accounting.artcony.com/2012/01/05/how-to-buy-a-concession-trailer/

State fairs have been a celebration of a state’s agricultural bounty and a competition for bragging rights among America’s pie bakers and quilt makers for more than 150 years. Fairs have evolved quite a bit, but food still plays a prominent role, at judges’ tables as well as the multitude of food stands and food trucks spread around the fairgrounds.

Many of the comestibles are similar (and fried) because some purveyors travel fair to fair. There’s often sweet corn (fresh from local harvests), a vareity of eats on a stick and the usual odd bits: Meat man parfaits? Deep-fried Twinkies? There are, of course, iconic items (at least according to fair officials we surveyed) that have been filling bellies for decades.

Illinois State Fair: A Vose corn dog washed down with a lemon shake-up. Aug. 12-21,Springfield; illinoisstatefair.info

Indiana State Fair: A specially seasoned, open-grill cooked Hoosier rib-eye steak sandwich. Aug. 5-21,Indianapolis; indianastatefair.com

Iowa State Fair: Pork but especially the inch-thick grilled loin chop on a stick (its bone). Aug. 11-21,Des Moines; iowastatefair.org

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula State Fair: A pasty, those classic pastry-wrapped meat and vegetable pie. Aug. 15-21, Escanaba; upstatefair.org

Minnesota State Fair: Pronto Pup, like a corn dog but its batter is more pancake than corn, has been served since 1947. But in the land of 10,000 lakes, a walleye on a stick (introduced in 1995) is also worth tracking down. Aug. 25-Sept. 5, St. Paul; mnstatefair.org

Missouri State Fair: Plate-size cinnamon roll. Aug. 11-21, Sedalia; mostatefair.com

Nebraska State Fair: Funnel cakes or corn dogs. Aug. 26-Sept. 5, Grand Island, statefair.org

Ohio State Fair: Chocolate and peanut butter candy buckeye, classic or deep fried. Looks like a nut from Ohio’s state tree, the buckeye. July 27-Aug. 7, Columbus; ohiostatefair.com

Wisconsin State Fair: Cream puffs, the longest continually selling item at the fair. Aug. 4-14, West Allis; wistatefair.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/stew/chi-state-of-fair-food-is-crispy-sugared-20110712,0,3798527.story

The Singapore Take Out food truck - photos by Spice

Look out — your neighborhood food truck may have come all the way from Singapore.

The city-state is so eager to promote its local food abroad that it has a formal program to do so: the Singapore International Culinary Exchange (“Spice” for short). And one of its big initiatives is to take Singaporean food on the road — literally.

For a year beginning in April, a food truck called Singapore Take Out will travel the world, stopping in nine cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Moscow, London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Dubai and Delhi.

“With the spotlight Singapore has been getting from celebrity chefs opening up restaurants in the two new integrated resorts [Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa], it’s high time for Singapore to launch a global initiative,” says Ranita Sandramoorthy, the director of attractions, dining and retail for the Singapore Tourism Board. Spice is funded by the tourism board, International Enterprise Singapore (formerly the trade development board) and Spring Singapore, a government agency dedicated to the city-state’s economic growth.

In spite of its humble venue — the 20-seat mobile restaurant was designed to be quickly dismantled and reassembled with ease — Singapore Take Out won’t dish out just hawker-stall grub. A handful of the city-state’s top chefs and restaurateurs will do the cooking in some spots, including Ignatius Chan of Iggy’s, ranked 28th on the San Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurants Lis, pastry chef Janice Wong, and chefs Ryan Clift and André Chiang. (The truck is easily dismantled and reassembled, but it will spend most of the year in a shipping container traveling from city to city.)

photo by Spice

The Singapore Take Out “truck” will be stationed in high-traffic areas in each city. But if you’re thinking about getting in line, plan ahead. The truck will visit each city for just three days before moving on, and on only one day will it be open to regular locals. The other two days will be for demonstrations to members of the media and buyers from supermarkets and department stores — this is a marketing event, after all.

In fact, the Singapore government is trotting out local brands at the same time. Ms. Sandramoorthy says “this will be a chance to showcase some of our local food manufacturers” to potential buyers overseas. Ya Kun’s kaya (an egg-based coconut jam whose signature green color comes from pandan leaves), TWG’s Singapore Breakfast Tea blend, and YEO’s satay sauce are some of the food items the government will push on its round-the-world truck run.

But the chefs will take part in the shilling as they create innovative ways to use these ingredients, which are foreign to most household pantries outside of Singapore. Willin Low, the chef of Wild Rocket restaurant, for instance, created a laksa pesto with Prima-brand laksa paste. Hey, if people like Korean tacos , maybe they’ll like Singaporean laksa pasta.

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/02/15/around-the-world-by-food-truck/