Bringing Brands to the Streets with Food Truck Promotor Ben Goldberg

Founder and President of Food Truck Promotions, Ben Goldberg set out to create a company that supported both food truck owners and brands around the world.

 

After studying marketing and graduating from NYU, Goldberg launched The Frying Dutchman, a Belgian Frite food truck in New York City. While building his business, he began to understand the struggles that food truck owners face in trying supplement their street sales through private event bookings. Since launching Food Truck Promotions in 2016, Goldberg has kept his focus on “bringing brands to the streets” with custom branded vehicles. We asked Goldberg to tell us more about this trend.

 

 

Talk to us about your Food Truck Promo Company: Food Truck Promotions.

Food Truck Promotions is an experiential marketing agency that will Bring Your Brand to the Streets™ with custom branded vehicles. Services include experiential vehicles, branded food trucks, event marketing, mobile pop-up shops, mobile showrooms, and mobile tours. With offices in LA, NYC, Chicago, and Miami, Food Truck Promotions operates nationwide to create one-of-a-kind experiences for some of the world’s leading brands across verticals ranging from fashion to technology.

 

What inspired you to start Food Truck Promotions?

We were inspired to start Food Truck Promotions by seeing the need for a company that could provide a premium mobile experiential experience. We have been in the mobile Food and Beverage (F&B) space for years and pride ourselves on being able to take a client’s vision and turn it into reality, all while navigating the complex landscape permits and certifications that are required to produce a mobile brand activation.

 

 

Tell us about some of the hot Food Truck trends and why do you think food trucks have become such a powerful tool?

Branded food trucks have been growing in popularity for the past few years. Traditional digital marketing is a powerful tool, but as more brands inundate users’ inboxes and social media accounts, consumers have begun to filter out these digital ads and have increased the importance of Out Of Home (OOH) experiential marketing activations, such as food truck promotions. The pandemic has sped this trend up since consumers were tired of being in doors and hungry for any real-world experience where they can interact with their favorite brands. These activations produce much stronger brand loyalty than digital marketing, so brands are trying to stand out in a crowded field and these mobile activations help them accomplish this. Some of the creative trends we have been seeing include fashion brands launching their latest collections, by using branded food trucks and beverage carts to maximize the experience for customers/prospects, as well as food and beverage sampling from branded food trucks.

 

Talk to us about some of the creative programs and events with Food Trucks that spirits and beverage companies are doing?

Right now, it’s all about creativity in the industry and finding unique ways to promote the brand (especially with the rise in social media platforms and content development). We are seeing a lot of demand in our industry in the festival space lately, ranging from music festivals to seasonal food and wine events. For example, we saw brands like Aperol capitalize on their “Aperol Spritz” bar cart trucks for outdoor events, such as the Sea Hear Now music festival. We are also seeing “mobile” bars put together at everything from hotels (unique pop-up programming in collaboration with spirits brands) to “instagrammable” wedding after parties. The non-alcoholic activations continue to grow for us, as well. A lot of our Food Truck Promotion events involve handing out beverages even though the brand is not a beverage brand. For example: we’ve handed out branded beverages during a Chanel activation and have also served coffee in branded food trucks and carts for MCM, Rag & Bone and Dior. We’ve also worked with Nespresso for a multi-city marketing campaign, as well as Califia, Coca-Cola and Ralph’s Coffee (tied to Ralph Lauren).

 

What have been some of the greatest successes for your companies re: most successful events/trucks?

A majority of our clients are corporate brands, and they want to promote these brands or new product launches through the trucks. We recently saw great success with Gopuff, Instagram, and Daily Harvest.

 

Where do you see the food truck trend headed? 

Food trucks as an experiential marketing tool have grown tremendously over the last few years and we will continue to see more and more growth in this industry for years to come. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us a lot about safety, and the way we are able to tell a brand story through outdoor/contactless programming has been one of the saviors for brands looking for unique ways to market their brands or products. It’s all about the experience for the consumer. I think we are going to see a lot of pop-up experiences continue to take center stage no matter the industry the brand ties to.