Food Trucks: A Bubble in Food Service

CEA’s HQ is in Crystal City– an area that is perhaps a square mile at most (here’s a map: http://g.co/maps/tdcfy).  There are roughly six thousand residents and about 60,000 daily employees in Crystal City.  Like any urban setting there are a plethora of restaurant choices.  And yet today there were at least 5 food trucks in Crystal City – District Taco, Doug the Food Dude,  Hot People Food, Big Cheese, and Lemongrass Truck.

Food trucks follow a pretty straight forward pattern, one that often relies on colorfully painted trucks and heavy use of social networking through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. With the explosion of options, new trucks entering the market have sough ever narrowing themes – a likely sign that the explosion has reached bubble-like proportions.

As the Google Insights for Search chart below suggests, the modern food truck phenomenon really began to take hold in 2010 (though food trucks date back well before then). The chart also shows food trucks are highly seasonal – with interest growing throughout the summer and peaking in September.

As we approach the prime months for food trucks, Google searches are on the rise, but remain below where they were last September.  I believe September 2011 will mark the high mark for “food truck” web search and over the next several months we’ll see many more trucks exiting the business and a subsequent rise in this search.