🔒Hot wheels: Maine food trucks are growing in numbers, varieties

Strawberry shortcake and “sweetabaga” sweet potato and rutabaga waffles are menu staples at the Pink Waffle, Roux Kehoe’s new mobile eatery. It debuted in early May with stops outside a Portland brewery and a Scarborough fitness studio.

“The weekend was a huge success,” he says. “I sold out about an hour earlier than expected at the brewery … and got great feedback about the waffles.”

Kehoe, a new member of Portland’s Fork Food Lab shared commercial kitchen and culinary-business incubator, says he served about 70 customers his first weekend out. While focusing on greater Portland initially, he eventually plans to take his Durham-based trailer to Brunswick and Lewiston-Auburn — one of the pluses of running a business that can travel anywhere. His wagon is a former Fryeburg Fair concession vehicle he bought secondhand for around $30,000 and molded into a wheeled waffle business on a mission to “stop hunger at the sidewalk.”

“I have always been a big fan of waffles, and I like the freedom that a mobile food establishment allows you,” says Kehoe, who spent some time in Belgium — a country known for its waffles — during a backpacking European honeymoon. 

As for the name of the business and its Instagram identity, he says, “I was trying to think of something fun, and I love the color pink.”

Welcome to the wild and wacky world of food businesses on wheels, a segment that took off in Maine — and elsewhere — during the pandemic when traditional restaurants were closed to in-person dining or forced out of business entirely. That’s opened up opportunities for newcomers like Kehoe hungry to start a business at a fraction of the cost — and hassle — of a bricks-and-mortar setup as well as new revenue streams for existing businesses. Even old-guard establishments like DiMillo’s in Portland are entering the fray, with plans to roll out its own truck by late May with a crew of five employees. While every business is different, they tend to have catchy names, a heavy social media presence and creative cuisine — a far cry from the old cattle-trail chuckwagons that by some accounts were the country’s first food trucks.

Today’s boom looks here to stay even as traditional eateries open back up and remote working keeps people out of downtown offices. All across Maine, a host of new food businesses on wheels are sprouting up faster than you can say “food trucks” or “FoodTrux,” the name of a Portland-based locator app founded in 2020 with big plans of its own as the industry grows and live events come back.

“There’s absolutely demand right now to have more trucks, and I don’t foresee the demand going down any time soon,” says FoodTrux founder and CEO Matt Noone. “The scene is going to continue to explode.”

Based on his research into business registrations, Noone estimates there are more than 200,000 food trucks nationwide, not including the growing number of hotdog, dessert and coffee carts — and predicts the number in Maine to double within as many years from around 100 today. Eventually, he expects Portland to designate specific areas as food truck parks as this part of the country slowly catches up to western cities like San Francisco and Denver.

“The Portland scene is never going to be able to support the numbers that some of the bigger West Coast cities have, but I can see Maine having 200 trucks in the next couple of years,” he says. “I think it’s sustainable.”

Portland’s appeal

As Maine’s biggest city and foodie capital, Portland is a big draw for mobile food businesses, with 26 current licenses and 27 applications pending as of late April, according to city spokeswoman Jessica Grondin.

She says Portland is on track to issue more than 100 new licenses for mobile food businesses in 2021 or about double the yearly average for the last five years; she notes that the numbers represent only places that serve food to eat but not retailers serving packaged foods. During the pandemic, a number of trucks have introduced online advance ordering and pickup.

The cost of getting a license in Portland, not including a night vending permit, is $546 for a food truck and $322 for a mobile cart or ice-cream truck plus an application fee required to be renewed annually. That comes on top of the $50,000 to $70,000 needed to start a food truck business.

But whether it’s a food truck, a food trailer or a mobile cart, it’s all cheaper than starting a physical restaurant, which can easily cost $250,000 to $300,000.

Why so many food trucks now?

SCORE Maine Assistant Director Nancy Strojny, who mentors entrepreneurs, boils it down to these factors: “Portland is currently an underserved market, the low barrier to entry, and in a post-COVID world, street food is a safe, easy alternative to brick and mortar. Food trucks and mobile carts help build a community.”

At the same time, she notes that some aspiring food-truck owners are under the misconception that starting out is easy and takes little time.

“In fact,” she says, “it is a 24/7 enterprise during the season and there are so many moving parts. Yes, it requires limited overhead versus a restaurant, but as a first-time operator, it is a steep learning curve. You learn as you go.”

That’s certainly the case for eight new Fork Food Lab members with mobile food businesses from Vietnamese sandwich truck Vy Banh Mi to a coffee pushcart set to start in mid-June, according to Fork’s general manager, Corinne Tompkins.

She says that while the majority of owners are seasoned professionals looking to add a revenue stream with a mobile business, some are brand new including two farms. To accommodate the growing number of mobile food businesses using Fork as a base, the nonprofit-owned facility recently introduced a reservation system for 15-minute bookings so that no more than four trucks or trailers can dock there at any one time.

“I think it will be an effective change,” Tompkins says, “and allow us to bring in a lot more revenue.” Speaking more generally about membership trends amid Fork Food Lab’s own transformation to ecommerce during the pandemic, Executive Director Bill Seretta says, “We’ve seen a significant increase in demand for our services from many more food trucks. That’s made it interesting for us.”

He points to several Fork Food Lab alumni who have gone on to open traditional restaurants while Tompkins says there’s also a strong financial incentive to keep a truck business going.

Statewide scene

The food truck scene goes well beyond Portland and extends statewide, with 526 mobile businesses currently registered with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, according to spokeswoman Jackie Farwell.

In Auburn, married couple Randy and Deborah Smith own a poutine restaurant called Pinky D’s inside Side by Each Brewing and a food truck of the same name specializing in the Canadian dish of French fries with cheese curds and gravy. They started in food trucks 10 years ago in Portland when there were just a handful, and are about to roll out a new truck called L/A Taco — as in Lewiston-Auburn and Los Angeles.

That’s where they did their research in December, eating at taco shops in East L.A. to truly understand traditional street tacos, which they plan to serve, and the vibes around street-food culture. 

Undeterred by the growing field of food-truck rivals, Randy Smith says, “Our goal as an organization is always to get better and keep moving forward.”

They’re expanding after being forced to shift gears during COVID with their existing truck, when they lost business at live events that had been cancelled but picked up several new customers as they also aim to do with their taco venture.

“We’re all excited to do it because it’s different,” says Randy Smith. “It might be better or it might be worse [than Pinky D’s], but it’s going to be fun.”

Meanwhile in Bar Harbor, Alexis Walls and Amanda Smith recently put their food truck on pause to open a small eatery on Main Street with the same name, Melt, and similar menu of mainly sandwich melts. But the truck won’t be in hibernation forever.

“Ultimately,” Walls says, “we’d love to see the bricks and mortar in place and also a food truck.”