Mobile Dining and Drink Culture

Mobile food service has deep roots, from nineteenth-century chuckwagons invented by Texas rancher Charles Goodnight in 1866 to feed cattle drovers, through twentieth-century ice-cream and lunch trucks. The modern gourmet food truck boom, however, is generally traced to the Kogi BBQ truck, launched in Los Angeles in 2008 by chef Roy Choi, which served Korean-Mexican fusion tacos and used Twitter to announce its shifting locations to a growing following in real time. Kogi’s success, combining inventive fusion cooking, social media marketing, and lower overhead costs than a fixed restaurant, inspired a wave of chef-driven food trucks across American cities and, eventually, worldwide.