Komodo’s Storefront Makes Me a Reluctant Fan
It seems that these days more and more food trucks are getting into the brick and mortar business. It might appear to be a prestige or legitimacy thing to some, and I’m sure there are food trucks chefs who always saw a restaurant as their end goal. But at its core, having a storefront is one of the best financial moves a food truck owner can make. For one thing it gives your fans a static location to enjoy your food (a necessity for running any kind of retail establishment), but more than that it gives you a home base for your operations that actually generates revenue. It doesn’t guarantee success, and I wouldn’t recommend opening a restaurant to anybody. But if your concept is good, having a brick and mortar business spreads the overhead of your truck out and gives you a better chance of being profitable over all.
What many people don’t realize is that food trucks don’t really operate rent free. In addition to the cost of running the trucks themselves, they also have to pay rent at a commissary or commercial kitchen to do all the prep work (and in some cases, a lot of the cooking.) Having a self sustaining brick and mortar restaurant to utilize for prep is a great way to place less of a profit burden on your truck, and it’s part of the reason that it is far more economical for a restaurant to launch a food truck spin off, then it is for a food truck to launch on its own.
And that’s the main reason why you’re seeing so many food trucks going brick and mortar these days. Flying Pig has plans to open 3 restaurants, Coolhaus is opening a shop in Culver City this summer, and Komodo recently opened a storefront on Pico and Robertson- which I went to check out the other day.
Posted at 11:45 am, April 7th, 2011 under Food Truck, Komodo, Mid-City/Miracle Mile.
