Food Trends: Custom Built Tiny House Cafe's on The Rise
There are some tiny houses beginning to make big changes in the way people view starting a restaurant. But if you haven't been paying close attention, you may have missed it. The tiny house movement has been gaining steam post the-Great Recession that left many Americans out of work. This event resulted in lost homes for tens of thousands of famalies and let many to question the traditional knowledge of buying a home to invest and gain in value over the long term. If you've never seen a "tiny house" before the concept is simple. The shelter has of the [...]
Four Food Trucks Featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
The long running television show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives started out by traveling across the United States featuring hole in the wall restaurants serving up, usually funky and always delicious foods. Since the start of the show back in 2006, the bleached-blonde Food Network Star, Guy Fiere, has been the host through 24 seasons of the franchise with no signs of stopping any time soon. As time has passed, not just restaurants, but food trucks have started to be featured in many episodes. This is a testament to food trucks truly becoming more mainstream and viewed as a destination for [...]
The Top 5 Custom BBQ Smoker Trailer Videos on YouTube
At M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks we've had the privilege of working with over 100 custom builds for BBQ smoker trucks and trailers over our past 15 years in business. Whenever we complete a project for a customer, we like to record a video to document what the build process was like and allow folks like you to get a tour of our finished products. This post represents some of our favorite videos recorded over the past few years in no particular order. As you'll see in the footage below, we've had a wide-range of custom requests for BBQ smoker [...]
How to Make it In The Food Truck Business Podcast
The owner of a "Food truck" poses on November 9, 2012 in Paris. AFP PHOTO BERTRAND GUAY (Photo credit should read BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/Getty Images) The popular NPR radio program and podcast Planet Money recently re-published their episode titled "How to Make it in the Food Truck Business" last week. This episode spotlights how a reported thousands of food trucks and cart owners compete for the stomach share of workers and tourists that walk the side-walks of New York City. Now the New York City mobile food market, or Manhattan more specifically, is probably unlike any other in the [...]
TremendousQUE Custom BBQ Smoker Video Tour
Bob Pierson, who is usually the star of our videos, is out on vacation this week. But we had to get a video made of the TremendousQUE custom BBQ smoker before it headed off on it's journey to operate around Tampa, Florida. This video features Wade who is ex-military and with the blessing of his wife got his start cooking in local barbecue competitions and started to have some success. After about a year of researching BBQ smokers, he decided to go with M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks for his custom build based on the experiences of our past customers. [...]
Less Vendors = Happier Food Business Owners
There's a really interesting new blog series happening on the website FromAway.com right now on the topic of food vendors, vendor relationships, and time management. To get you up-to-speed, Malcolm Bedell owner of the food trailer 'Wich, Please is sharing his lessons learned after his first 12 months transitioning from an employee working a desk job to being the CEO of his very own food business. It's a riveting read that takes readers along on the critical first year in business. You can get caught up on this series of posts below. Although Bedell's lessons in the past year have [...]
How to Start a Food Truck in Mobile, Alabama
We know that starting a food truck business can be quite challenging. The most important thing, information, might not always be readily available even with the presence of the Internet which is why we go out of our way to connect with people who have already established themselves in the food truck arena to get sound advice and tips. Not too long ago, we were able to connect with Jason of Smokin’ Gringos. He operates his food truck in Mobile, Alabama. He has already established his business as the go to place for anybody who is craving for the perfect [...]
Three Tools to Help Find Food Trucks Nearby
One of the challenges of eating at your favorite food truck can be to simply figuring out when and where they'll be serving up your favorite faire next. Due to the varying schedule of food trucks it can be tough for the operator to keep their schedule up to date, even for the most organized of operators. Fortunately, there are a variety of tools and resources that have come out over the past couple of years whose goal it is to help you track these roaming restaurants. We'll highlight some of the most options in today's post. Roaming Hunger If [...]
H Van Concession Truck From France Build Out
At M&R Specialty Trailers and Trucks we've had the previlage of being able to build so many custom vehicles during our 15+ years in business. Here is another example of a truly unique build we had the opportunity to build a customer based in France. In the video is a vintage H Van truck, originally manufactured in France and shipped to us in Florida to complete the custom manufacturing and conversion to a concession vehicle. This video featuring Bob Pierson, co-owner of M&R, is being shot in a slightly different format than one's we've previously produced for you on the [...]
Registering for an Employer Identification Number with Your Concession Venture
In the early stages of conceiving a business, you may not have decided upon the final name of your business or even fully grasp your business structure. We do, however, want to make you aware of the process of registering your business. You will need to register for your local city/county, state, and with the Federal IRS. Registering for an Employer Identification Number You will need to start with the IRS, by registering for an Employer Identification Number or EIN. This process is extremely simple and there is a lot of documentation out there on the internet about how to [...]