Retail

Food trucks enhance brick-and-mortar restaurants

by Dan Reed   •   March 16, 2011 3:31 pm

Gourmet food trucks, now a common fixture in DC, have started to come to Silver Spring. With them comes many of the same debates, like whether these food options are taking business from restaurants in actual buildings.

Food trucks in Portland draw more customers to a block. Photo by the author.

Sligo at Silver Spring, Singular worries this is happening in Downtown Silver Spring. Is this a valid concern? Maybe not.

Food trucks are a way to fill retail gaps, figuratively and literally. Successful food trucks are ones that offer something that brick-and-mortar restaurants currently don't. They're also ways to draw hungry customers to areas of downtown Silver Spring that haven't finished developing, which could help the restaurants already there.

Right now, Ellsworth Drive between Fenton and Georgia is the only block in Silver Spring that has shops and restaurants lining it uninterrupted from end to end and on both sides. If I'm an office worker looking for a place to eat lunch, where will I go first? Probably the block where I have as many choices as possible.

I might go to Potbelly today, but tomorrow I'll want to try something new an d go to Chick-Fil-A, and so on. As a result, all of the restaurants benefit from the presence of other restaurants.

Photo by the author.

Meanwhile, popular restaurants like Jackie's have trouble drawing customers because they're too far away from other stores or restaurants for people to drop by on a whim.

Sligo worries that Skew Works, the new restaurant on Wayne Avenue, could lose business to a food truck that's started parking outside. But there's only one other restaurant on that entire block! Skew Works isn't losing customers to the food truck. They're losing customers to streets with more dining choices.

Restaurants want to draw more customers. We want to create more street activity in downtown Silver Spring. Food trucks seem like a way to kill two birds with one stone.

They're a relatively new addition to Silver Spring, and it's likely that they'll move around until finding locations that work well for them and for customers. But I don't think they'll hurt existing businesses.

With thousands of people living, working and passing through the area each day, there's no shortage of hungry people looking for places to eat. They just need to know where to find them.

A planner and architect by training, Dan Reed is interested in suburban retrofits. Dan works for the Friends of White Flint, writes his own blog, Just Up the Pike, and serves as the Land Use Chair for the Action Committee for Transit. Dan lives in Silver Spring.