Tag Archives: Food truck

Food trucks transform to help restaurants recover from the COVID-19 economic losses

Posted on by

The limits that the COVID-19 pandemic has put on our lifestyles have been grim, yes. But keeping up with the designs coming out as a direct result of the 2020 pandemic has helped pass the time. Has it been a year already? Arguably, the industry in need of the most innovative designs is the restaurant industry. Some eye-catching designs have certainly risen to the top and been put to the test. Jungsoo Lee’s design, a modular reinterpretation of the food truck, incorporates a removable seating area for guests to enjoy their favorite restaurant’s food with the full “dine-in” experience they’ve come to cherish. The design could offer some peace of mind or inspiration for restaurant workers across the globe in need of some financial movement.

The crux of Lee’s design hinges on the pressure of restaurant owners paying rent on a monthly basis. With fewer diners, many restaurant-owners are finding themselves without the means to fund their dining spaces at the end of the month, and most are signed into year-long leases – an off-menu recipe for disaster. Lee figured that by designing a physical and transportable space for people to safely dine and for chefs to safely cook, then instead of signing into a year-long contract, food business owners could rent modular food trucks by the day and also provide safe, on-site dine-in services for guests.

Each truck in Lee’s design comes in two modules: the top part of the truck is meant for cooking and the bottom quarter of the truck detaches and forms the seating area. As designed right now, Lee incorporates foldable support pillars on the bottom of the electric truck design so that once the seating module is pulled out, the kitchen can stand even and elevated on rolling posts. Food trucks are a reasonable solution to the problems that restaurant owners face in the age of COVID-19 and, if you live in a city, chances are you’ve probably already seen a lot more of them dotting the streets in the past couple of months.

While food trucks are a smart option for some cities, the seating module might not be ideal for every city as presently designed. In warmer temperatures and more moderate climates, outdoor dining has been the most popular adjustment made during the age of COVID-19, but for colder cities like Chicago or London, outdoor dining isn’t so convenient. With heated tables and outdoor cabins being among some of the winning designs for restaurant owners facing financial trouble with fewer diners, the need for warmth in colder cities is still a top priority. In the same vein, by transitioning restaurant owner’s brick-and-mortar locations into on-the-road mobile food services with exposed seating areas, the uncertainty of a city’s ever-changing weather comes into play and chefs will have to cut the area space of their previous kitchen by a substantial amount. Thankfully, however, like the weather, the design of today is ever-changing and constantly evolving.

Designer: Jungsoo Lee

This folding partition works as tables to transform your food truck dining experience!

Posted on by

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, food trucks are staples in cities across the globe. Whether you’re attending a smorgasbord or just grabbing a bite on your lunch break, food trucks are known for providing customers with quick and tasty meals, but not so much for dining space. When eating out at a food truck, searching for a spot to eat your meal is usually expected. However, Grutergi, an adjustable, folding partition that can transform into a dining area, attaches to food trucks so that customers can eat their food while it’s still hot. Jeongho Oh designed Grutergi to make the food truck and market experience cleaner and more convenient.

Grutergi allows food truck customers to enjoy their meals right away with its paneled fence that folds down to meet your height. The double-sided partition allows for dining space on one side and garbage disposal on the other as Jeongho Oh also designed Grutergi in order to combat the messy aspect of food truck dining. Whether you’re stumbling your way towards a food truck after leaving the bars, or you’re running a tight work schedule and can’t waste any more time, tidiness is usually compromised for the sake of enjoying your meal. After finishing your meal, it can be a long time before finding garbage to dispose of the takeout containers. By attaching trash bins to Grutergi, customers will be able to enjoy their food while also upholding the truck’s cleanliness. The multiple folding lines on Grutergi make it easy to bend the partition to your preferred height (find us a dining table that can do the same!) or keep it standing to create a divider – the possibilities are endless.

In many cities, food trucks are sometimes even more popular than dine-ins thanks to their speedy, fresh preparation, and their accessibility. Even with their ever-growing popularity, food trucks are known for their convenience and not so much for their dining areas. But sometimes finding a spot to eat your food peacefully can sometimes take longer than eating your actual food. Thankfully, Grutergi can do that work for you.

Designer: Jeongho Oh

This article was sent to us using the ‘Submit A Design’ feature.

We encourage designers/students/studios to send in their projects to be featured on Yanko Design!

Self-driving restaurant-on-wheels brings food trucks into the future

Posted on by

What if your restaurant came to you instead of you going to it?

Meet the Streat, a conceptual food-truck designed to adapt to these incredibly trying times. More than 60% of restaurants are estimated to close in USA alone because of the pandemic. This lockdown has exposed one of the most blatant realities of running a restaurant – renting commercial spaces is incredibly expensive, and restaurants, as popular as they may be, aren’t a very profitable business. Cut the cash flow for as little as even a week and the restaurant begins experiencing serious financial problems. Most of these places have been locked down since March.

However, it costs nearly 1/5th the amount to run a food-truck. You don’t worry about rent, location, or occupancy. The food truck can go where it experiences the highest demand, and can serve as many customers as possible while instituting a safe, social distancing policy. The Streat builds on that idea with an autonomous, pre-fab food-truck that can be customized based on the restaurant running within it, and can be rented out for a very nominal sum of money. The Streat operates on a low-risk, low maintenance model, and is designed to be autonomously driven (so you don’t need to employ a driver or worry about driving around the city yourself).

The Streat comes outfitted with a fully functional kitchen on the inside, big enough for as many as 3-4 cooks. The modular kitchen counter allows you to customize it based on the appliance you need, choosing between fryers, ovens, grills, hobs, and even fridges and deep-freezers for storing produce. A semi-transparent clad sits on top of the truck, illuminating it with sun-light to reduce energy consumption, while allowing patrons outside to see their food be prepared. Set your truck up with an online food-ordering system and you prevent the need for people lining up outside the truck. Moreover, the truck can even travel directly to deliver food to people, eliminating the need for delivery agents… and basically operating quite like a takeaway restaurant, but without the risk of one.

Designer: Lee Sungwook

Autonomous Food Trucks of the Future

Posted on by

culinary_coach_2

This far-out food truck concept is a fresh take on everyone’s favorite mobile culinary craze! It’s all about autonomy and designed around Pizza Huts’ conceptual UI. Customers can actually enter the food trucks and witness their food being prepared robotically in a safe, sanitary enclosure. To create their perfect pizza, they use a gestural interface to literally swipe ingredients on to their creation with help from an on-board “barista” who guides them through the process. When they’re finished, out pops a piping hot pie!

Designers: Cody Moore, Jordan Jones, Yulin Liu, Aditi Vyas, Tom Rouine & Fernando Zeledon

culinary_coach_1

culinary_coach_3

culinary_coach_4

culinary_coach_5

culinary_coach_6

culinary_coach_7

culinary_coach_8

culinary_coach_9

culinary_coach_10

Warm Weather Means Food Truck Treats

Posted on by

Food truck parks are an internationally growing trend as consumers discover the chance to try unique foods on the go.While some cities, like Atlanta, may have run into a few bumps while starting up,...