There’s a basic recipe behind the rolling success of food trucks in California: hard times, hot food and a generous sprinkling of wireless technology.
Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant has always been a high-risk, high-overhead venture. It became even more so as tough times and tight money followed the economic downturn. But with the low overhead and limited capital needed to operate a food truck, budding restaurateurs took a second look at mobile food operations. The recent booming success of food trucks is the latest prime example of how entrepreneurs and small businesses are using reliable wireless connectivity and the ever-growing menu of wireless gadgets to innovate and compete with their larger rivals. If you want a taste of the haute mobile cuisine scene, just hop in your car. You can’t miss it.
For decades the image of food trucks hadn’t evolved much from their lunch wagon days. But that image has been eclipsed by a wave of serious food purveyors on wheels. Their offerings range from brand name fast food to lobster rolls and sophisticated ethnic entrees. They are having a significant impact on the industry, too, appealing to California’s dedicated foodies and people who just want a restaurant-quality meal without the reservation and the restaurant prices.
To continue prospering, though, food truckers will remain heavily dependent on wireless connectivity to manage and promote their businesses.
Food-truck darling Kogi got a foothold in the industry when it convinced Southern California food bloggers to post about Kogi’s Korean barbecue tacos. Like many food trucks do today, Kogi then began using Twitter to direct fans to the locations of arriving trucks. Thanks to Twitter and California’s buzzing online community, a social media-fueled “Kogi Kulture” that includes over 36,000 followers led to Newsweek proclaiming Kogi to be “America’s first viral eatery.”
While wireless access has helped countless mobile food purveyors build their restaurant brands, it has also been essential to the operating efficiency of food trucks. With the help of wireless service, newer technology like Square turns smartphones and tablets into credit card processors. Mobile apps like Intuit can manage computerized ordering, inventory and bookkeeping functions. For food trucks managing long lines during workday lunch breaks, customers can preorder and pay via apps like Yorder and PayDragon.
While we all revel in how convenient and cool the food-truck trend has become, it’s easy to forget what’s necessary to make all these wireless transactions happen. Wireless signals travel on airwaves known as spectrum, which is allocated by the government for different uses, such as wireless, television, and GPS signals.
The amount of wireless data traveling the airwaves is exploding thanks to everything we can do on smart phones and tablets. Spectrum dedicated to wireless traffic is finite so the federal government is working to free up more spectrum to keep our mobile devices working, which will help keep businesses like the food truck industry humming along.
So long as there’s reliable wireless service, innovations like the food truck movement will keep driving forward. Mobile technology has been the impetus for innovation, efficiency gains and opportunity across all industries and sectors, especially for the little guys. That’s why it is important for the federal government to do what it can to free up more spectrum. Small businesses, like food trucks, and the economy as a whole, depend on it.
