Why food trucks are there, or they aren't.

Beginning in May of 2014, after food service was discontinued, I thought it would be a fine idea to shift Bank Street Brewhouse to a destination tap room mode by working with food trucks. It quickly became evident that New Albany had none. Two years later, this hasn't changed.

This article provides several potential reasons why, but the gist of it to me is that if a food truck exists to go where the consumers are, we have too few places where the consumers are. We don't have a large urban employer. Downtown already is served by bricks and mortar ... and we're not the most technologically proficient metro neighborhood.

It's not a bad/good equation. It simply isn't, yet.

Why Food Trucks Locate Where They Do: Five big takeaways from a unique new study, by Richard Florida and Aria Bendix (City Lab)

But what do food trucks actually mean for urban economies? What impact do they have on local restaurants, food industries, and our choices as consumers?

Here are the bullet points.

• 1. Twitter is a big factor in food truck location.
• 2. The connection between food trucks and digital technology is greater in big, dense cities.
• 3. When it comes to location, variety matters a lot.
• 4. Food truck location is spiky.
• 5. Food trucks cause households to spend more money on eating out.