MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – One local man is hoping to change the way food trucks do business.

Many food truck vendors do most of their prep work at a different location. One guy wants to change that by offering a central location where they could do everything.

Matt Chapman loves food trucks and the food they make, so he’s starting a business called Food Truck Hub. It’s basically a one-stop-shop for food trucks.

“The Food Truck Hub would have six independent cooking spaces; each one will have a convection oven, a cook top and some additional item,” Chapman said. “Our goal is to have enough room for 12 food trucks to work out of at the same time.”

Chapman came up with the idea after taking classes at the Kindred Kitchen in North Minneapolis.

“There’s just not enough commercial kitchen space here in town,” Chapman said.

It’s tight in the food trucks, and all of the prep work is done inside them.

Cody Allen with The Twisted Sister House of Hunger said that when you work inside one, you’re always bumping into other people.

“It’s a lot of fun, it’s a lot of work; but it is a very compact space. So to have a commercial kitchen to do a majority of the prep is awesome,” Allen said.

The Food Truck Hub would also have heated underground parking for the trucks–so they wouldn’t have to be winterized.
“If we had an indoor spot–we could go year round,” Allen said.

The Food Truck Hub is using the website Kickstarter to get seed money to finance the business.

“Traditional funding is hard to find nowadays,” Chapman said.

His goal is to raise $20,000 dollars by March 3.

“We’re a little shy of 10 percent of the way there,” Chapman said.

He hopes to open the business in the spring. He’s looking at several locations in Minneapolis.

You can learn more about the project and help Chapman finance it at Kickerstarter.

Sonya Goins, Producer
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