Some food truck trackers like TruxMap Lite offer features like the ability to share photos of your favorite flavor finds.
Life can be rough for a foodie on the go. Great food usually comes with a whole host of not-so-great extras: Long waits, high prices, and extremely busy locations are all marks of a high-class dining experience. All too often it’s impossible to find the kind of food you’re after while still staying on schedule and within budget.
As today’s urban gourmands are discovering, however, hope is not lost. The upscale food truck has not only become a staple of modern professional living, but food truck tracking is a growing hobby for adventurous foodies and late-night snackers with a high standards. Prized for relative frugality, ultimate convenience, and tasty selections, food trucks bring the best of a city’s cuisine right to your doorstep — or least to a nearby parking lot. All that remains is tracking down the right truck to satisfy your craving. Check out some of these top food truck trackers for the iPhone and before you know it you’ll be joining the hungry masses in the hunt for mobile munchies.
Food Truck Trackers for iPhone
Eat St. includes a small social component within the larger framework of street food vendor tracking. Not only can you search for vendors by proximity to your current location, but this app’s review structure makes it easy to rate your favorite picks and increase their popularity with other Eat St. users. Your favorite vendors will appreciate it! Eat St. also integrates with Twitter, so any local food trucks that update the social network as they move will now be providing updates directly to your phone or tablet.
yorder
Yorder takes the classic food truck locator software one step further by allowing users to place live orders via their mobile device. The app’s simple and straightforward ordering portal means that you won’t have to wrestle with a complicated signup procedure each time you want to order from a different vendor. Yorder also promises integration with sporting event and convention ordering, allowing you to put in a food order, pick it up, and return to your seat without missing out on any of the action.
TruxMap Lite Food Truck Map
TruxMap Lite may win the prize for being the most comprehensive of all the food truck trackers; with 21 cities listed in its truck database, you have a good chance of finding your hometown listed. TruxMap Lite provides map-driven tracking along with menus and reviews for popular trucks. Users can send a location request to individual trucks as well, in case the roving Pad Thai merchant has slipped on an errant lime and forgotten in the ensuing chaos to update his whereabouts for a while. TruxMap is also one of the few lunch truck locators that has an iPad version.
Untable
Untable bills itself as the link between food trucks and their customers. The app is split into two parts: a food truck portal that truck owners can use to contact their customers on social media and update the truck’s location, and a client-side list of food truck updates. Not only can users track the gourmet trucks by name or proximity, but they can even view a list of updated daily specials right through Untable itself. If your community includes active Untable trucks, this is a fantastic app! As an all-in-one food truck tracker, the information you need to make a tasty decision will be right at your finger tips.
Food Trucker
Recently updated, Food Trucker covers lunch trucks, gourmet carts and any other mobile eatery with a Twitter in nine major metropolitan areas. With constantly updated information, foodies in Austin, Boston, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. can find a food truck traveling through their neighborhood just about any time day or night. Of course, if you don’t live in a big town, you might starve.
Regional Apps for Tracking Food Trucks
Food Truck Tracker by BurgerBeast
The all-business name of Food Truck Tracker is dead-on accurate. Built for the Miami metropolitan area with more updates promised, Food Truck Tracker enables users to track their favorite trucks around the city on an interactive Google-powered map. Once customers narrow down the truck that sounds like a likely fit for lunch, they can save it as a favorite and even review the menu from the comfort of the office. Check back frequently for updates to see if Food Truck Tracker is coming to your town next!
Road Stoves GPS
Road Stoves combines precision-GPS tracking with carefully monitored Twitter feeds to track the mobile food trucks of Los Angeles County. If you’re in L.A., simply fire up the app and Road Stoves will use your current location to find the closest caterer on wheels and offer directions to get you there fast.
Cart Compass PDX
Portland residents have no reason to be hungry with access to Cart Compass PDX list of more than 200 food carts and lunch trucks. This app has many social features including user reviews and ratings, current specials and menus as well as links to Facebook, Twitter for the different trucks.
Whether you’re seeking out a quick snack or a delicious meal, having knowledge of local food trucks puts many more options on the table, both figuratively and literally. Encourage your favorite truck vendors to use the app that works best for you, and help them grow their business in your community!