The journey of food trucks through history 

Have you ever eaten from a food truck? After all, they can now be found in every corner of the world and are quite popular. In India, they serve everything starting from momos and chicken wings to pav bhaji. Ever wondered, who came up with the idea of trucks standing at roadsides and feeding people without pulling on their pockets? Today, let us trace the backstory of food trucks. 

Food carts of the ancient times 
Ancient Rome had food carts all around. Back then, they were meant to serve meals through the day to daily wagers at pocket-friendly prices. Historians believe that the food trucks we know today evolved out of these food carts, as people around the world started to realise that mobile kitchens were a necessity to keep the working class from going hungry.  

Chuckwagon: The earliest food truck 
Do you know what a chuckwagon is? Well, it refers to a wagon (covered four-wheeled ride usually used to carry around goods or people or both) equipped with food and cooking appliances, often used to prepare meals when stationed at a ranch, in a lumber camp or during a cattle drive. Now, in the 1890s, these vehicles sold perishable food to both cowboys and loggers while travelling around the USA. They would sell beans, roasted meat, curries, coffee, biscuits and drinking water. Some even had an extra equipment such as wood to build emergency fires and a place where barbers and dentists worked from.  

With the turn of the century, these chuckwagons started catering food to university students, selling favourites such as hot dogs, barbecues and sausages. In fact, such food trucks were often seen docked outside famous universities such as Yale, Princeton and Harvard among others.  

Wienermobile: Serving the needy 
In 1936, an American meat and cold cut producer, Oscar Meyers, popular for their hot dogs, bologna, bacon, ham and other products, decided to foray into the food truck business. With this in mind, they first built the Wienermobile, a motor vehicle shaped like a hot dog on a bun. At first, the goal was to promote their own ventures across the USA. But soon, with the onset of the Second World War and food shortages across the country, they started serving free food at schools, orphanages, old age homes, hospitals and public parades. Needless to say, their popularity soared in no time. The idea was simple: If one was hungry, the Wienermobile had them covered.  

Soon, by the 1950s, ice cream trucks were starting to become mainstream when they toured around the nation calling out to children and adults with their playful tunes, thus making the idea of food trucks all the more viable. 

Meet the modern-day food truck 
Fast forward to the 1970s Los Angeles. A Mexican food peddler named Raul Martinez decided to change the food map of the city. He was often unimpressed to find that LA only catered to the wealthy class. So, he bought an old ice cream van and converted it into a taco corner. He even named it King Taco and stationed the food truck near the East LA Bar and sold tacos for half a dollar each. In the first hour itself, he surprised everyone and earned 70 dollars. Within a few months, his business had flourished so much that there were three King Taco trucks doing business in the city alone, and even a few in other cities across California.  

Inspired by Martinez, many food vendors across the country started venturing into the food truck business. For instance, the 1979 Grease truck docked near the Rutgers University sold fat sandwiches. They were nothing but rolls stuffed with two cheeseburgers, some fries, lettuce, and tomato sauce.  

Roy Choi’s Korean BBQ truck 
By 2008, food trucks had spread all across the USA and even abroad, They had become quite a sensation. However, the real food truck revolution took place when Kogi BBQ, a food truck launched by famous Korean-American chef Roy Choi kicked off. Guess what it sold? The hot and spicy, and finger-licking Korean BBQ. Where? Starting with LA and spreading across the entire West Coast. To compete with it, New York opened its Rickshaw Dumpling Bar and was serving lip-smacking dumplings that created quite a stir on the East Coast. Since then, food trucks have only risen in popularity and never looked back!