Whether you’re unfamiliar with local food trucks or already a fan, a brand new website will help you find out who’s offering what where.
Just launched by Go Fish! food truck owner Missy Carr, the site (www.mocofoodtrucks.com) provides a list of much of Montgomery County’s mobile food fleet, with links to each truck’s website. It also carries a live Twitter feed with all the food trucks’ tweets in one place, allowing prospective lunch goers to find out in real time where the vehicles are parked—without having to have a Twitter account of their own. In addition, there’s a calendar listing the regular stops of local trucks, plus a roster of e-mail contacts for those looking to hire meals on wheels for an event, like a school or pool party.
“It seemed like there’s been a need for one place for consumers to go to find out about [Montgomery County] food trucks,” says Carr. “The biggest hurdle has been the awareness of us—and specifically where we are. This makes it simple.”
Currently, the site provides information about 12 trucks, but Carr said more are likely to join up. The list may grow even longer if trucks that currently operate in the District are shooed out and head for friendlier roadways, such as in Montgomery County. Restrictive rules proposed by the city administration are currently pending.
While restaurants and other businesses in suburban hubs like downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring haven’t always been cordial to mobile kitchens, the county is working with food truck owners, developers, real estate companies and chambers of commerce to identify food truck-friendly sites.
“The county is trying to be pro-active,” says Dan Hoffman, chief innovation officer for the county. “We’ve seen other jurisdictions grapple with the popularity of food trucks. We don’t want to be caught flat footed. We want to embrace food trucks as a viable entrepreneurial path for families.”
Hoffman said his office is seeking sites where trucks won’t block fire lanes or traffic, won’t compete directly with brick-and-mortar operations, and will be successful. Those locations would include office buildings, industrial parks and residential areas with a lot of people but few restaurants. High schools with open campus lunch policies are another possibility, Hoffman said.
There’s a working list of sites right now; Hoffman said he’s shooting to identify about two dozen locations that would accommodate 40 or 50 trucks. “One thing we want to avoid is creating big stretches of trucks,” he said. “We’re looking at small clusters of two or three trucks.”
By August, the county hopes to post the site locations on its data portal; the next step will be creating a reservation system for the spots, and mobile applications for the public to find them.
While MoCo food truck operators are already frequenting spots where lunch goers have few alternatives, Hoffman says there are “a lot of spaces they don’t know about. We’re a big county.”
