{"id":1051,"date":"2019-03-25T08:58:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T12:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2019-03-28T13:13:46","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T17:13:46","slug":"the-future-of-food-trucks-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2019\/the-future-of-food-trucks-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Food Trucks is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Future of Food Trucks is Here<\/h1><\/div><\/div>
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Matt Fuller and Justin Bristol with their VizaVi Solar Food Cart, designed and built for Julia Rhode, who operates it from her home in Vermont.<\/p>\n

Photo: Julia Rhode<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When Justin Bristol \u201917 was a first-year student, he imagined how fun it would be to have a solar-powered food cart where people could charge their phones, socialize, and enjoy smoothies and snacks. A year later he bought a trailer and spent the next year converting it into an eye-catching, mobile venue for selling crepes.<\/p>\n

Today, the company he established with friend Matt Fuller \u201918, SolarCart Co., builds solar-powered food carts that are operated by chefs and other entrepreneurs in a partnership agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kept us going was the thought-provoking qualities of the business,\u201d said Bristol. \u201cWe were interested in making people think about the food they\u2019re eating and the setting it\u2019s served in. Eventually we realized that we were more interested in the process of building the carts than we were in serving food. So now we\u2019re creating a unique setting for chefs and customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bristol describes his carts as \u201ccreatively built, solar-powered, prefab, affordable restaurants.\u201d And the business is taking off.<\/p>\n

\u201cA food cart like this can create just as much volume as a restaurant but in a smaller space,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it can be more creatively designed because we don\u2019t have to be restricted by building permits.\u201d<\/p>\n

After modifying their original design multiple times, Bristol and Fuller came up with a standard design that chefs can personalize based on their menus, themes, and styles. They built one that looks like a tiny house for a client in Vermont, and another\u2014seen selling poke bowls at 911±¬ΑΟ football games last fall\u2014is operated by Jen Wells Fogarty \u201999 and business partner Michelle Frank. And now they\u2019re working with Roaming Hunger, a California food truck-booking service that provides food trucks to corporate clients and major promotional events.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities are starting to get concerned with the noise and pollution that food trucks produce,\u201d Bristol said. \u201cBut ours are quiet and don\u2019t pollute, so we\u2019re optimistic for our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

This spring, Bristol hopes to have a solar cart operating as an outdoor caf\u00e9 in a permanent location somewhere close to the Kingston Campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will have seating cabanas, industrial planters, and an inviting eating experience around green energy and social interaction with good people,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it will still have the flexibility to travel to events. In 10 years, we\u2019ll be franchising them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd McLeish<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Justin Bristol \u201917 was a first-year student, he imagined how fun it would be to have a solar-powered food cart where people could charge their phones, socialize, and enjoy smoothies and snacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2019","architecture-niche"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}