Food truck folly | M6 | 66 minutes

During the last year an American concept has been taking over the streets of Paris: Food Trucks. Mobile trucks that sell hamburgers, tarts, tacos or Asian food on the sidewalk. The craze is so huge (there are an estimated forty food trucks in the Paris area) that demands for site permits are piling up at the Paris city hall, which is trying to avoid an invasion of food trucks and refusing to provide more sites. So, to get around the law and remain in Paris, these traveling cooks are finding schemes to unearth private proprietors willing to accommodate them: night clubs or barges along the Seine ready to rent out a corner of their parking lot. Other food truck owners prefer to move into the suburbs where the city halls appear to be greeting them with open arms. However, for the business to be profitable you need to find strategic sites, places with a large circulation of customers, like outside a major enterprise, for example. How do these young, itinerant entrepreneurs manage to build up a loyal customer base, what methods do they use to secure the best site and in order to get people talking about them how do they manage to stand out from the competition? How are they perceived by fixed-location restaurateurs who don’t look kindly upon their arrival, as is the case in Toulon where the manager of a McDonalds has declared war on a truck that has set up right opposite his business.