Food truck craze hits Georgetown student, but not campus

Foodies everywhere are rejoicing at the latest culinary trend sweeping the nation: food trucks.  And unlike the personal espresso maker or the “foam on food” trend, this one is cheap. These trucks are not the traditional roach coaches that serve construction workers greasy burgers with a side of Twinkies, but rather adventurous, relatively low-risk ventures in unconventional cuisine that bring high quality but inexpensive food to anyone willing to wait for it.

Most college students are willing to do almost anything for cheap food, quality be damned (Qdoba Monday, anyone?) and some food trucks are capitalizing on this.  UCLA has started contracting food trucks to provide a tasty, affordable alternative to dining halls. And with a cadre of trendy food trucks already roaming  Washington, D.C., Georgetown should follow UCLA’s lead.

Of course, food truck fare  is limited in scope because of their size, but what they lack in variety they make up for in flavor. Since they cannot offer a Cheesecake Factory-sized menu, the trucks typically specialize in one specific type of food. Drive around the business district of Los Angeles at lunchtime and you will find trucks selling grilled macaroni and cheese sandwiches, French toast sticks, or French fries topped in marinated steak with jack cheese and poblano chiles. In D.C., trucks range from pizza to cupcakes to Mexican-Korean fusion. The Big Cheese offers a goat cheese sandwich; fries with truffle kethcup are a specialty at The Fry Captain, and Pleasant Pops boasts cantaloup lemonade. There are over 30 trucks in D.C., and most tweet their daily locations, though most never come that close to Georgetown.

For only eight dollars at the D.C. based TaKorean truck, you can get a balgogi steak taco, chicken taco, and a caramelized tofu taco, easily enough food for two meals. By comparison, if you’re on a 75-block plan at Leo’s, that mediocre stir-fry you had for lunch cost $11.36. Even on the best of days at Leo’s, when they splurge for ground beef at the burrito bar, that burrito is still not worth the price.  The one expensive ingredient at Leo’s, the guacamole, is kept guarded like the Sorcerer’s Stone, and even then you would probably have to eat the entire tub of guacamole to get your money’s worth. Anything Leo’s can make, these trucks make better and at a more affordable price.

The University has more to gain from embracing this trend than just popularity. Associated Students UCLA has negotiated with the trucks to receive a percentage of all truck sales in exchange for the right to park in the center of campus. And I will reiterate, college students love cheap food.  When the Nom Nom Truck, a Vietnamese fusion truck, first parked on UCLA’s campus, it sold nearly twice as much as during a normal lunchtime stop, even running out of its signature menu item. When the Sweetflow truck pulls up to the Lau steps on a warm day, students swarm. Since the bottom of Lau steps is public property, Georgetown does not stand to gain anything from this, but if they worked with Sweetgreen, they could schedule times for the truck to come onto campus, giving the trucks better publicity and Georgetown more control.  The University could always use a new source of income, not to mention the boost in popularity that would come along with this change in dining options.

I appreciate Leo’s for its convenience and the social interaction it encourages. It serves as a hub on campus and is the place where you inevitably run into friends you have not seen in a while or people you might not ever want to run into again after last weekend.  Unfortunately, its main purpose is to serve food, and I find the food to be the least interesting thing in Leo’s. I don’t believe that students should have to settle for bland flavors for the sake of convenience or a sense of community. If Georgetown contracted food trucks to come to campus, students could get a fast, high-quality meal. And because the lines are sure to be long, no one would miss out on the social interaction offered by Leo’s.