FoodTruckr Heroes: The Great Food Truck Race

Today’s FoodTruckr Hero isn’t a food truck—but everyone involved is a powerful part of the community that we all know and love. Meet “The Great Food Truck Race!”

We bet that most of you have caught at least an episode or two of the popular Food Network show (that is, if you aren’t storing the entire season on your DVR so that you can review the lessons again and again). And even if you haven’t seen the show, you’ve probably checked out some of the interviews we’ve done with past contestants, including Mike from Tikka Tikka Taco, Jessica and Liza from Bowled and Beautiful, and Ilene from Boardwalk Breakfast Empire.

See, we’ve been big fans of this amazing show for a long time—not only because it’s entertaining, informative, and captivating (and because we love host Tyler Florence!), but also because of what a major impact it’s made on the food truck industry.

Here are our top three favorite things about “The Great Food Truck Race:”

1. The Show Has Brought Awareness to the Food Truck Industry

The show premiered in 2010 when food trucks were just starting to gain popularity across the country. As the industry has expanded, “The Great Food Truck Race” has brought more attention to food trucks and all they have to offer. People who are familiar with the show but perhaps haven’t seen a food truck in real life get to see that these entrepreneurs aren’t just serving food from a van on the side of the road—they’re cooking up gourmet meals and creative culinary delights.

2. Viewers Get A Small Taste of the Food Truck Lifestyle

In addition to seeing what food trucks have to offer, viewers also get to see how hard food truck owners work. Though some of the challenges that contestants on the show face are not necessarily the same types of hurdles that food truck owners would be likely to face in real life, they do mimic the same types of unexpected surprises and problems that come up every day out on the road. Whether a viewer of the show is simply a food truck fan or is someone who is dreaming of opening his or her own truck, “The Great Food Truck Race” offers a pretty realistic look at what people who own food trucks have to go through to follow their dreams.

3. Real People Get Real Chances to Pursue Their Passion

Finally, the coolest thing about “The Great Food Truck Race” is that the show provides real people with the opportunity to truly follow their dreams. Though only the ultimate winner gets the prize money and the keys to the truck in the end, all of the other contestants still leave the show having had the chance to run and operate a real food truck, if only for a few weeks. Many of the show’s contestants who didn’t win the final prize have still gone on to open their own trucks, including our friends Bowled and Beautiful and Philly’s Finest Sambonis and popular teams from earlier seasons like Korilla BBQ and Devilicious.

Even though the final episode of Season 5 of “The Great Food Truck Race” just premiered a couple nights ago, we’re already waiting on the edges of our seats for the debut of Season 6. As long as there are passionate food truck dreamers who want to follow the path of culinary freedom, we’ll keep watching—and we’ll also keep supporting this fantastic show that’s brought tons of new fans to FoodTruckrs around the country.

image by Karen Horton

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