The Great Food Truck Race season 5 premiers this Sunday, Aug. 17 at 9|8c. Once again hosting the program is Celebrity Chef Tyler Florence. He has eight brand-new food truck teams for this season’s high-stakes culinary road trip.

Like the last two seasons, none of the teams are current food truck operators and hitting the streets as rookies. The one team that can show that they have food skills, a fresh concept, entrepreneurial spirit, and make it to the end will win their own food truck business and $50,000 in seed money.

This season the food truck competitors with take a new route across the country:

  • Santa Barbara and Venice Beach, CA
  • Tucson, AZ
  • Austin, TX
  • Oklahoma City, OK
  • St. Louis, MO
  • Mobile, AL
  • Tampa, Naples and Key West, FL

Each team’s cooking — and selling — skills will be put to the test in various challenges that will uniquely differ from city to city. On the first day, each team will be provided with a vehicle for the duration of the race, but only the grand-prize winner will get to keep their truck. These rookies will soon learn that operating a food truck is a lot harder than it looks.

The Great Food Truck Race season 5 teams are (with Twitter accounts):

Beach Cruiser (Venice, CA)
Chatty Chicken (Chattanooga)
Gourmet Graduates (Providence)
Let There Be Bacon (Cleveland)
Lone Star Chuck Wagon (Houston)
Madres Mexican Meals (Norwalk, CA)
Middle Feast (Los Angeles)
Military Moms (Fort Drum, NY)

Join us during the show on Twitter as we live chat @FoodTruckChat or use #FoodTruckChat. If you happen to miss an episode, we will be recapping each one the following week. Although we quite a bit about this season and which trucks bow out each week, we won’t be giving away any teasers.

Good luck to all of the contestants, and…START YOUR ENGINES!!!