In 2012, Waffle Love opened up the first food truck in Utah and paved the way for others to follow. Now there are over 250 food trucks serving the stomachs of Utah County. To get a flavor of the innovative food trend, we surveyed owners of four food trucks — Scott Pixler of Art City Donuts, Ryan and Nancey Johnson of Good Grindz Food Truck, Dave Dinsbach of The Mouse Trap and Fernando Felix of Jurassic Street Tacos.
A popular menu item is…
“Our Half-Half Katsu. It’s a Panko-crusted, tenderized chicken breast that’s deep-fried, sliced, and then doused in our house curry sauce and katsu sauce, half of each. It’s our staple, besides Teriyaki Chicken and Kalua Pork. On a busy day, we’ll serve 250 plates in 2.5 hours or 100 plates per hour.” -Good Grindz Food Truck
“Our Nicolas Cage sandwich is fun and different and really popular — sweet pulled pork with a brown sugar glaze, sharp cheddar and fresh Granny Smith apples. People ask why it’s called the Nicolas Cage and our response is because ‘it will be gone in 60 seconds’ or because ‘it’s a National Treasure’ or because much like a Nicolas Cage movie ‘you won’t know if it will be good or not.’” -The Mouse Trap
“Our Strawberries and Cream and our Cinnabomb. We generally will sell between 35 and 45 servings of those everyday we go out.” -Art City Donuts
“Our brand taco (Jurassic taco) is the most popular. We sell about 160 orders per day on a normal day. On a busy day it’s over 300 orders.” -Jurassic Street Tacos
We’re proud of…
“We’ve been operating for five years, and have been a mom-and-pop/family run food truck. The income from our food truck has supported our family of six in Utah. We’re opening our first brick and mortar spot in the Provo Towne Centre in April, alongside Clark’s Malasadas, so our truck will be based out of Provo.” -Good Grindz Food Truck
“We are slowly working towards a permanent location! We want to take our time and not rush into something, but one of our main focuses is to get a permanent location built.” -The Mouse Trap
“In 2016 we started selling outside of my house in Orem every Saturday. We totally enjoyed it.” –Jurassic Street Tacos
Day to day looks like…
“We operate almost everyday during the summer, and about three times per week during winter months. We’ll do private events almost once per week in the summer, but maybe once a month during winter.” -Good Grindz Food Truck
“We aren’t open every day. In the warmer summer months we try to get out and do more public events, but we also like to focus on catering. We normally do more private events than public events.” -The Mouse Trap
“Our truck is open three to five days a week. The more we get into summer we our working at least five days. We will do four to five private events during the month.” -Art City Donuts
Best month for food trucks is…
“May is busy for us with end of the school year events and business employees start venturing outside to buy lunch more often.” -Good Grindz Food Truck
“Best time for food trucks is when it’s warmer and not rainy or snowy. May through October.” -The Mouse Trap
“July.” -Art City Donuts
“We have a few good months, but June, July and August are the very good ones.” -Jurassic Street Tacos
To get the dish on the local food truck scene, see page 22 of our May/June 2018 issue where we created a food truck timeline and interviewed Brandon Clark, owner of Kitchen Eighty-Eight and Clark Kesler, owner of Fiore Pizza. Copies can be ordered here.