Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Lead To Another Food Truck Boom?

With rents rising and the economy cratering just over decade ago, many chefs and restaurants owners took to the streets.

They weren’t protesting, but rather doing the best they could with what they had, making food in trucks, pulling up to street corners or events and selling directly to hungry customers eager to post the latest culinary delight on fledgling social networks.

Now, with the restaurant industry being rocked by the coronavirus pandemic and the public safety regulations that must come with it, there may be another food truck boom.

If so, Ren Budde, Director of Business Development for On The Move, and his crew are ready to support it and work with chefs to make sure their project is viable long-term.

“From 2008 to 2013, there was a huge explosion, and a lot of that was fueled by the inability to find capital to build your brick and mortar. … (It) gave entrepreneurs the opportunity to do their own thing and really come up with some creative menus,” Budde said.

Often, chefs know how to put together those food options, but aren’t sure where to start with their rig. That’s where On The Move, which started as a turnkey truck lease program and has blossomed into a company handling a number of truck and transportation related projects, can come in.

While it may seem easiest to buy something on the used market, Budde cited a study that said more than three-fourths of trucks that started there were out of the market within two years. Too many food truck start-ups don’t realize the regulations required to get in compliance with state and city regulations or buy something not tailored to their own brand of cuisine.

“Anybody that thought they were a welder thought they could build a food truck. There wasn’t a great emphasis on health and safety regulations across the board,” Budde said. “That has changed so much over 10 years. What happened in the middle part of the 2010s is you had the ‘wheat from the chaff’ type of situation where quality food-truck manufacturers like On The Move came up with some designs and really helped the public understand their needs, refine what they were looking for and put them in a truck that suited them and the food they were going to serve.”

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