Thinking about starting a food truck business? Are you looking to stay local or is your food truck business plan open to anywhere in the United States? Recently we were wondering where a fledgling food truck would have the best chances of success.

To begin the discussion we thought to list the cities with the most food trucks, but quickly rethought heading down this path. Due to the fact that cities such as Los Angeles, Portland, Austin and Washington DC have so many well built brands based on just about any cuisine you could think of, a new food truck owner may struggle in building brand recognition.

Not only that but peeling off loyal customers to the long established mobile food businesses may also give a new vendor a more difficult road to travel.

We began the process of determining what cities in the US would be the best location to join the mobile food industry, by developing a formula based on a number factors such as:

  • City population
  • City growth predictions
  • Population demographics (age and income)
  • Weather
  • Current size of the local food truck industry
  • Licensing costs
  • Freedom to operate under existing food truck laws
  • Acceptance of small business entrepreneurs by local politicians
  • Strength of Food Truck Organization

We found that these 20 cities are the best cities to start a food truck in 2014:

Top 10

  1. San Antonio, TX

  2. Tampa, FL

  3. Raleigh, NC

  4. Albuquerque, NM

  5. Indianapolis, IN

  6. Nashville, TN

  7. Lexington, KY

  8. Charleston, SC

  9. Louisville, KY

  10. Sacramento, CA

Find the rest of our list on the next page…