With events canceled, KC food trucks get creative to find business in new places

When the coronavirus pandemic began, the Taste of Brazil food truck was faced with a problem that threatened many other businesses like it: events were canceling left and right, and a large portion of the truck’s business was dropping off.

Cristian Maciel, co-owner of the Taste of Brazil restaurant and the one in charge of its food truck, said the truck had events booked every weekend until next March. But with the pandemic looming, all the festivals and events the truck planned to attend were canceled.

“At that point, I basically came back home,” Maciel said. “For a whole week I was like, ‘oh my god, what am I going to do with my life now?’ because I didn’t have any income at all. “

But out of the ashes of the canceled events came a new idea for the food truck.

“My wife and I, because she owns a food truck called the Hungry Hatch, sat at home and said, ‘Wait, how about we go to people’s houses now? How about going to neighborhoods?’” Maciel said.

So the truck began going to different neighborhoods during dinner hours. With his wife’s help, Maciel set up online order websites three to five days in advance of each stop.

Taste of Brazil isn’t the only food truck to venture into new territory during the pandemic.

To offset its canceled events, the Crave of KC Food Truck has not only started meeting customers in their own neighborhoods, but also was hired by a car dealership to station its two trucks at two locations.

“Basically, we were out serving their employees four days a week, so that really helped,” Chris Ireland, who owns the truck with her husband, said. “Otherwise, we would have kind of been in a jam.”

Ireland said the truck was very fortunate to be hired by the dealership, but the business is still feeling the effects of canceled events.

“We have lost a lot of those regular lunch stops and big events at different businesses,” Ireland said. “So that does hurt, because those were places where you make a lot of money.”

Another food truck to lose business due to canceled events is KC Cajun, owned by Esra England.

“We lost 100% of our events in mid-February all the way to September,” England said. “That was about 40% of our business, so that was a big, big issue that I think all trucks were dealing with. We’re slowly getting back out now.”

To mitigate this loss of business, England has turned to delivery services.

“We’ve been using third party delivery services like Doordash, Uber Eats and Grubhub in order to survive over the last two to three months,” he said. “So (the pandemic) has basically had us do a change in our business model to start focusing more on deliveries.”

Before the pandemic, KC Cajun had plans to expand to a restaurant. But now the plans have been postponed as the truck focuses on “surviving,” England said.

Similarly, the Taste of Brazil Food Truck had to delay plans for its investments and upgrades.

“We put everything on hold because the goal right now is just to survive throughout this whole thing,” Maciel said.

As the pandemic presses on and events continue to be canceled, the future for food trucks is uncertain.

“Everything is kind of at a standstill,” Ireland said. “We just kind of have to play it day by day or week by week to see.”