The entire world knows Gordan Ramsay, an international chef and owner of Michelin-starred restaurants all around the globe. He is the world’s most renowned culinary expert who has fine-dining restaurants in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Singapore. The iconic personality in the global culinary industry was not always a chef. He started small, and it was due to his efforts and hard work, he came to the top. Other international culinary stars that started from ground zero include Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal, Nigella Lawson, and Jean Christophe Novelli.

These top chefs that built their careers from scratch serve as the perfect form of inspiration for aspiring chefs and culinary enthusiasts. Many people dream about pursuing their career as chefs, but they are forced to suppress their interests because “becoming a chef” seems like a farsighted idea and something unachievable. The cost to set up even a small-scale eatery can serve as a demotivator. Even if one has that big amount saved up, the fear of failure weighs them down and becomes an obstacle in their path.

However, to become a top-chef, one does not have to start big. An individual can take small steps and then reach their culinary goals. Everybody has to start somewhere. Before one can go big, trying out it at a small scale is a genius approach. One of the trendiest and the most effective ways to lay the grounds for a professional restaurant setup is to start with a small experiment using a mobile food truck. The concept of food trucks is gaining popularity around the globe. It allows people to test their culinary ideas before they invest extensive monetary and non-monetary efforts. It is better to test, rather than to let the efforts go to waste. There is one New York-based company, New York Food Truck Association (NYFTA), that is helping aspiring individuals try their luck with their own culinary setup. The company supports local mobile food vending businesses in New York’s metropolitan area by connecting them with catering opportunities, branded marketing promotions, and mobile kitchen rentals.

New York Food Truck Association – NYFTA, founded by Ben Goldberg, hosts annual food fests across all five boroughs of New York City. The organization encourages new food startups to promote their business by bringing their food trucks to these food festivals. It is a great opportunity for all passionate individuals, including culinary school students.

There is no surprise there; setting up a proper restaurant requires a huge monetary investment along with extensive physical and mental efforts. Anyone who wishes to start their own food business must definitely give it a go, but going big at the initial stage is not the wisest option. It is where the concept of using food trucks for promotion and marketing comes into picture. The benefits of bringing a food truck into use are not something the culinary world can overlook. The concept is gaining a firm ground in the industry due to the innumerable benefits it brings to culinary enthusiasts. An organization like NYFTA opens doors to the best opportunities for passionate culinarians and bestows upon them a chance to establish a stable food business.

One of the biggest challenges for newly born restaurants is to attract customers. It is a phase that determines whether a restaurant or eatery will succeed or not. A benefit that food trucks bring is that they allow the chefs to take their food to the customers. The most prominent advantage of remote restaurants is that if the customers don’t find it, it can find the customers. One can take their business to a crowded location or to a place where there is a

 

high population of target customers. A food truck allows a potential restaurant owner to introduce their food to a wide customer base and collect feedback from diverse customers.

New York Food Truck Association works with some of the biggest brands from around the world and high profile celebrities to use food trucks for branded promotions. The Association fully customized traditional box trucks to vintage vehicles to create fully immersive experiences for brands and their customers. Promotions with brands like Adidas and Twitter can help aspiring chefs add experience working with major brands in ways they never could in a conventional kitchen setting.

A mistake that leads to a food startup’s failure is the wrong choice of location. Before setting up a restaurant, it is crucial to carry out a thorough analysis of the location. By using a food truck as a promotional marketing tool, people can experiment with the location. It helps in the analysis as to where their food is most likely to attract a broad customer base. Almost 80% of food businesses shut down within five years, and one of the major reasons is poor location choice. By renting a food truck from the New York Food Truck Association – NYFTA, potential food business owners can carry out a thorough location analysis.

Bringing the concept of food trucks into use can help people in the food business analyze whether their business has a chance to succeed or not. Moreover, opening a full-fledged restaurant is not possible for many chefs, and food trucks are a cost-effective way to turn the passion for food into a small-scale business.

Founded by Ben Goldberg in 2016, the New York Food Truck Association – NYFTA, is a company that provides rental food trucks to promote local mobile food vending businesses. The company, for the past three years, has been hosting annual food fests. These food festivals provide a platform for small-scale food businesses to expand their customer base by attracting new customers. In the year 2019, NYFTA hosted the special one-day NYC Food Truck Fest in collaboration with National Food Truck Association. Currently, NYFTA has more than thirty members operating across all boroughs of New York City. The cuisines these members are serving include Lobster Rolls, Korean BBQ, Waffles, Mac n Cheese, and Dim Sums. The organization also provides food trucks for corporate events, weddings, and other large-scale events.