Trendy and Indiana are two words you don't typically see together in the same sentence, but when Indiana finally sinks its teeth into a trend it spreads like wild fire. Food trucks are a perfect example of this. More than 20 food trucks have popped up all over Indianapolis since 2010 featuring Indian cuisine, cupcakes and even Southern style cajun. Bryan Monroe, owner of Indy food truck Der Pretzel Wagen, says that he first discovered food trucks seven years ago in Austin, Texas, and wondered when they would surface on Indiana's streets.
Indianapolis food truck owners are quick to admit that Indiana is a slow moving state when it comes to catching onto trends, but are gladly relishing in the role they get to play in this new Midwestern "foodie craze."
Kate McKibben from Mabel on the Move thinks that Indiana was slow to catch onto food trucks due to the saturation of chain restaurants all over Midwestern cities. However, she's excited to see Hoosiers start to think differently about the way they eat.
"I think Indianapolis is getting more and more sophisticated and that people are starting to care more about the quality of the food they eat," she says. "They want to get away from the large chains and try something different. I think having something homemade out of a food truck is more of a treat than going to a restaurant."
Being slow isn't always a bad thing according to Linda Gilkerson, co-owner of Indy's Kitchen, a shared-use kitchen rented out by several of Indy's food trucks to prepare food.
"There's a lot of things that happen on the coasts that never make it here, because they never really make it there," she says. "So I think that we are kind of able to learn from their mistakes."
Monroe admits that trial and error has played a huge roll in the success of Der Pretzel Wagen. But starting a food truck is lot harder than most think according to Teresa Johnson, owner of the Mac Genie food truck.
"We thought we had an idea of how difficult it would be, and it ended up being so much harder," Monroe says. "I think there is this idea that you can throw some cooking equipment into a truck and put it into drive, but that's definitely not the case."
After filling out paperwork that can take months to complete, food truck owners must build their truck, choose a product, find locations and cook masses of food that can also fit into a 12-by-16 foot space. With large pieces of cooking equipment and three to five people jammed into a tiny clearing amid the chaos, there's not much leg room.
Food truck owners send out an early morning tweet of where they are going to be that day and from that moment it's game on.
Cooks spend hours preparing the food at a local shared-use kitchen. Once everything is ready, the trucks are locked and loaded as they search for a place to park and serve local customers eager to jump on the food truck bandwagon.
This is only round one; food trucks like West Coast Tacos will often serve a lunch shift from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then prepare more tasty creations for the dinner shift from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. And at the end of the day, someone still has to return to the kitchen and clean out the truck to get it ready for the next day's wild ride.
According to McKibben, the work provides certain payoffs.
"I love seeing how happy our food makes people because they know they are getting high quality food that also makes them feel good," she says. "Seeing their happiness makes all the hard work worth it."
There's nothing like enjoying a home cooked meal made from scratch by your mom. The smells, the flavors and the hours spent preparing it all come together to make memorable meals that not only taste good, but make you feel good too.
Now imagine being able to enjoy home cooked meals just like your mom makes but on the go, and you have Mabel on the Move's food truck concept. If that's not enough, everything is made from scratch with organic ingredients. The tasty menu features a plethora of organic ice creams, salads, soups and more.
For Kate McKibben, starting a food truck was a little easier in some ways. With her youngest children off to college, McKibben found herself with a lot of free time and no one to cook for. McKibben watched the rising food truck trend on the coasts and knew she wanted to be a part of it some day.
When McKibben heard that a chef from New York City was selling a '60s inspired food truck known for tasty organic treats, she immediately purchased Mabel on the Move and opened it to the streets of Indy in March 2011.
For McKibben it was more than just a desire to be a part of the food truck culture, it was a passion for helping others make healthier food choices.
"People don't eat high quality food; they tend to eat a large quantity of bad food," she says. "A lot of the health problems that everyone has come from what they're eating, so I really wanted to provide a way to get healthy food on the go."
McKibben says she wants Mabel on the Move to feel like going home to your mother's house for lunch, just maybe a little healthier. She has four children of her own, and after she saw the improvements that organic foods made on her family's health, she was excited to give other people that opportunity.
"Even if it's only one little thing I can do, I wanted to expose people to that idea as an option so they could see how much better they feel after organic food," she says.
However, McKibben says the long weekend shifts are a lot more difficult than she expected.
"It's like going camping and having to feed hundreds of people. You have to think of everything you might need."
McKibben admits that sometimes she makes it harder on herself due to her perfectionist personality. She can take up to three days to prepare for events due to her determination to find as many local and organic ingredients as possible.
She least expected the easiest part to be advertising.
"You have to be on Facebook and Twitter. It's huge for this business. That's how I get out where I will be and I what I will be serving. It's the only advertising I've done," she says. "People may think you make a lot of money in a food truck, but we don't. So if we had to pay to get the word out, then we really couldn't do this at all."
Tami Maslyk is quite the sensation in the Village of West Clay in Carmel, Ind. When her famous Neighborhood Pizza truck is spotted, kids flock from all over the neighborhood to get their favorite homemade pizza and candy from the woman they know as "the pizza lady."
"Sometimes, I think they just want me for my candy," she says jokingly.
Maslyk has even reached celebrity status with the local Devoe family's five children.
"Their mother told me that I'm more popular than the president of the United States in their house," she recalls laughing hysterically. "Every time the Devoe kids see me, they come racing towards me and give me big hugs. I love all the kids in the neighborhood, but they have a special place in my heart."
Maslyk's journey to this level of success has not been easy. It has taken courage, heartache and a workaholic mentality to make Neighborhood Pizza what it is today.
Maslyk came to Carmel 10 years ago fresh off a divorce, with her 5-year-old daughter. She says it was her darkest hour and that it took a lot of strength to get through everything.
One year prior to the divorce, Maslyk and her ex-husband started the Neighborhood Pizza truck in Valparaiso, Ind., where it became a huge success. Maslyk bought the business from her ex-husband and brought it with her to Carmel to start a new life.
This newly single mother had no doubt that her food truck would become a success. She says it was unlike anything people had ever heard of at the time.
So Maslyk pulled herself up by her bootstraps and began making a name for herself. She became known all around her neighborhood for her 16-foot, decked out "restaurant on wheels."
Maslyk isn't joking when she calls it a restaurant. Her food truck has two ovens, four sinks, and even hot and cold running water, to name a few of the luxurious features.
But her flavorful homemade pizzas are even more impressive than her jumbo-sized truck painted with flames.
"I still to this day don't know of a pizza truck like mine where we make the pizzas from scratch inside the truck and deliver them to you fresh out of the oven," she says.
Maslyk has been known to pull triple duty inside her truck. She drives, takes money and makes the pizzas all by herself sometimes.
A self-described workaholicc, Maslyk only gives herself one day off a week. While she says it leaves her exhausted, being able to support her daughter by herself is worth all of the hard work.
"My daughter is the one that keeps me going. I'm a single mom, so everything I do is centered on her, she says. "She comes first no matter what, this truck comes second."
At 47, Maslyk says she has no plans of resting anytime soon. After 10 years she is looking forward to franchising with two more trucks and seeing where that takes her.
"Maybe one day I'll sell it to someone who I think would really do it right." Maslyk says. "But for now, I don't plan on stopping until I get my daughter through college."
It all started when Arnold Park, originally from Korea, met Indianapolis native John Ban at a Los Angeles taco truck. The two started up a conversation that would quickly change the next chapter of their lives. Park shared his desire with Ban to start a taco truck in Korea, but Ban had the Hoosier state on the brain and persuaded Park to come to Indianapolis.
Shortly after, West Coast Tacos drove into Indy in March of 2010 and food truck buzz started humming around Indiana. Despite the buzz, Park likes to think his idea was actually quite simple and straightforward.
"Everyone's always like, 'that is such a brilliant idea.' But, I'm thinking, 'well, all I did was put a taco truck where there was no other taco trucks,'" he says while chuckling to himself.
According to Park, it's essential that food trucks set themselves apart from others if they want to stick around.
"You have to be unique because a lot of people don't understand that a lot of food trucks have failed," he says. "Everyone in Indy has mostly grown up on hot dogs and sandwiches. But just because you open a truck that sells hot dogs and sandwiches doesn't mean you are going to make money.
"We are unique because we are the first to fuse Korean and Mexican food together."
However, this unique blend of Korean barbequed meat with authentic Mexican shells, cilantro and onions has taken the Indy crowd a little getting used to.
Park says one of his funniest memories since opening the truck was the crowd reaction at the Indianapolis 500.
Park says that people were pretty upset at first.
"We had so many people who were asking, 'Why isn't there lettuce, cheese and sour cream on my taco?' A lot of people were upset when they got the food, but when they tried it, they ended up really enjoying it," he says. "Everyday is funny because someone new comes up who has never seen tacos like this before."
This mouth-watering combination of Korean and Mexican styles has now catapulted West Coast Tacos into the spotlight as one of the most well-known food trucks in Indiana. In only two short years, West Coast Tacos has expanded into four trucks and is hoping to set up shop in Bloomington and Lafayette in the near future.
"I think the most rewarding part of this whole experience is the exposure we've brought to Indy," Park says. "This year's Super Bowl was the first to ever have food trucks, so that's pretty cool."
And it doesn't look like West Coast Tacos rise in popularity is going to stop anytime soon. After Super Bowl XLVI, their Twitter followers jumped from 9,800 to 15,000 in a matter of days. With no intentions of slowing down, Park says he's looking forward to the possibility of one day having West Coast Tacos shops across the state.
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