Hits And Misses At The First-Ever DFW Food Truck Festival

When we first reported that the DFW Food Truck Festival would park itself in the lot of the Sigel's up on Greenville Avenue, we had no idea it would be such a thing. More than 2,000 people gathered in 108-degree weather on Saturday night to eat from just nine trucks. (To get an idea of the kind of crazy this looks like, stop by SideDish and City of Ate, both of which sent photogs out to capture the madness.)

"At most events that these guys work, they are the sideshow to the circus," event organizer and Sigel's wine guru Jasper Russo told Eater Dallas this morning. "Here they were the circus."

Sadly, though many reports of the fest have been enthusiastic and positive, a few Eater Dallas tweeting tipsters (twipsters?) let us know that after swinging by to see the fuss, they left because of long lines and lost orders.

"Walked in and walked out...great showing, needed a bigger lot too space out. Ended up at twisted root instead...," tweeted @jamesblynn. "Drove up@7:30. Saw 1000s. Spoke w/some leaving. Warned of 30min lines. selling out of popular items. Ended up at Kubys," tweeted @jimrossman. "Lots of things out of their control, but something IN their control- better line organization was absolutely needed," tweeted @robotgas, and "glad there's a mrkt for FT evnt but poorly organized & many left bc orders lost (not just me at BFPs). Ended up @MothDallas :)," tweeted @robynfolmar.

Russo's going to host a "debriefing" with the truckers this week to go over "what we can do different for the next event." He liked Ruthie's Rolling Cafe's technique of asking folks to fill out orders on a menu pad in line to speed up the ordering. He also says most trucks set sales records and sold out of food. "One of the reasons we did it was we saw how much there was a buzz for the food trucks," says Russo. But did they anticipate 2,000 attendees? "I don't think we were quite that optimistic."

As for the kinks, Russo says to "remember most of these folks have only been running their trucks for a few months, so they are still new to this." Even though the truckers would be "ready to go again tomorrow," Russo says he's going to wait until the weather cools off some before organizing another festival.

· Treats In The Heat: DFW Food Truck Festival [SideDish]
· Food Truck Festival Survived, Thrived, In The Heat [City of Ate]
· All Food Trucks Coverage on Eater Dallas [-EDFW-]

Nammi Truck. [Photo: NammiTruck/Official]