Anatomy of a Food Truck, University of California, Riverside

Once the red tape for the truck was cleared, the department decided on a concept and what type of equipment the truck would require.

"We landed on Mexican early on for several reasons," Plascencia says. "First, the food truck was going to temporarily be taking the place of a taco stand that was closed due to consstruction. However, the bigger discussion was about, 'do we want a static menu or something we can change?' We decided to go with Mexican and see how that concept did for a while, but we wanted to make sure that if the concept got tired we had the ability to change things up without having to reinvest money in equipment. We wanted to have equipment in there that would be flexible."