The end is nigh and food trucks are old news, at least that is the claim by Sharon Olson, executive director of the research firm Culinary Visions, in a scheduled 2013 food trend research report to be released on Tuesday. Culinary Visions panel, which surveyed more than 3,000 consumers nationally and interviewed dozens of food experts to provide the data for the report.

Chefs increasingly will take their cooking talents to oddball locations in 2013 from kiosks to empty storefronts to farmers’ fields, predicts Olson. “Food trucks aren’t news anymore,” says Olson, “so these are new ways of delivering the dining experience”.

The End Is Nigh?

While we agree with the premise that chefs will always be looking to expand the platforms in which they provide food to the masses, we completely disagree with Ms. Olsen’s assumption that the end is nigh and that food trucks are on their way out. Through the continual research we conduct here at Mobile Cuisine, we “know” that the Food Truck Revolution (4 years in the making) is alive and well. Not only is the mobile food industry strong, it’s still growing.

Enterprising culinary entrepreneurs have been increasing the size of the industry by leaps and bounds. Our internal research shows that  at minimum there are approximately 1 to 2 dozen new food trucks hitting the streets in the United States every week for the last year. This growth isn’t just happening in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, Washington DC and San Francisco, but also in cities like Fort Wayne, IN and Anchorage, AK.

Across the country, city councils are working out ways to allow food trucks to navigate in their communities, while some may have stricter legislation than other municipalities, they are still finding ways for food truck owners to operate.

Since the mobile food industry started it’s exponential national growth pattern in 2010, there have always been detractors and those who feel that food trucks are a short lived fad. Well, to continue to counter this argument  we are here to say, the food truck industry is here to stay, no matter what “the experts” think.