Lunchtime hunt for a food truck using social media

On Tuesday, before my 2 pm class, I was thinking about what to eat for lunch. I decided to get something from a food truck and see how long it would take. It was a frustrating but satisfying adventure, even though it took around 40 minutes. I’ll share some problems when using social media to look for food truck information.

If I’m looking for restaurants nearby, Yelp is always the first thing that comes to mind, but when I think of a food truck, it’s more of an encounter by chance. A food truck, a mobile kitchen, can roam the streets and move anywhere. Each has its own schedule. This means a food truck needs to constantly engage with customers, such as by posting updates of their menu and locations on Facebook or Twitter, providing coupons or discounts, or hosting special events. The Technology Policy Institute, a think tank, finds that trucks with a Facebook page and website, trucks that send around two tweets a day, or trucks that receive many reviews are more likely to stay in business.

So on a cold winter Tuesday at noon, I started my hunt by looking for food trucks near the Boston Common on Yelp. I found an interesting mobile kitchen nearby. It’s not exactly a food truck, but a trike that serves coffee. The Coffee Trike, “a self-contained mobile, fine coffee tricycle,” has been rolling around since 2012 according to its website. However, the website only says that the trike is at “Dewey Square from morning to afternoon every Tuesday and Thursday until the end of August 2017.” Its social media neither posts very often nor updates its day-to-day location. I didn’t even know if this cool trike still existed. Customers on Yelp posted photos of the trike on the street opposite AMC Boston Common 19, in front of the green line stop Government Center, and in front of the Sephora Studio on Newbury Street. The trike seems to be everywhere, but not near AMC. I called the phone number on the website, but nobody answered, so I walked toward Park Street and continued my search.

I passed by Chipotle, Dig Inn, Sweet Greens, and Chicken and Rice Guy. Long lines of people waited inside these restaurants. I started seeing more people carrying take-out containers or paper bags. It got so cold that I wanted to ask passers-by if they got their food in any food trucks nearby.

A food truck in  Manhattan, New York.

This is one problem with food trucks. For college students (or other people who don’t work around the area) food trucks are not our top options when we’re hungry. We don’t like to stand and wait, even though it’s fast. We don’t think the menu has diverse enough options, and we can’t tell if the food is good from a truck with a window half open. We see a food truck as a second choice when we want a snack, but it’s not a place we go when we want a real meal. However, if social media or apps could easily show the stories, food, and locations of food trucks around people, they might make a try instead of grabbing snacks at vending machines or ordering pizza for parties or events.

I lost hope, pulled out Yelp again, and searched “food trucks near me.” Because the location is not updated on Yelp, I have to click into each truck’s website and look for their locations on Tuesday. I found a truck called Oath Pizza, but its website doesn’t even show a day-by-day schedule. At this point, every huge cart I saw grabbed my attention. When I saw one in a distance start to move with traffic, my heart broke as I realized it was a real truck. I had spent 30 minutes (and I’m not patient) but an email saying classes were canceled due to the weather gave me more time and courage to keep wandering.

Soon after, at 12:40 pm, I finally saw a food truck. Plainly white with some green print, this food truck didn’t catch my attention with such an ordinary design. Taco Party was its name. I looked for it on Yelp but couldn’t find it. However, this truck has a website that clearly lists its schedule. Unlike a big corporation like Chicken and Rice Guy, Taco Party is a small vegan food truck that only serves 4 types of tacos. Most customers are business-type people who work in the financial district.

“It works better if you go to Dewey Square. There're usually 6 to 8 trucks there,” Patt Thomas, the worker, told me.

My food truck hunt ended with this sweet potato taco in my hand (It actually tastes good). Probably the best part of a food truck is its serendipity, but without an app that promotes these trucks, who gets to try this delicious street food? If food apps like Yelp could have a section that listed all the food trucks’ location each day, it would be easier for people to find those trucks and have more options for lunch.