Food Truck City: Behind the explosion in Sydney’s food truck dining scene
Driven by a wave of popularity, food trucks are tapping into local communities and popping up in spots from business carparks to some of Sydney’s major arterial roads and they are leaving a huge impact on our dining scene.
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Sydney is riding the wave of the food truck renaissance thanks to a social media boom, with TikTok fuelling our hunger for more.
Once the staple of community fairs and music festivals, a growing number of Sydney families and social media entrepreneurs have made a killing by tapping into the needs of their local community, with Western Sydney reaping the benefits.
While mum and pop businesses make up most of the suburban food trucks, it’s no secret that those willing to put themselves on the TikTok stage are in a league of their own.
When Ali Chebbani was 19 and just before the lockdowns in 2020, the accounting student was looking for ways to make some extra cash while interning.
A former McDonald’s employee and forever a burger lover, he decided to sell his signature smash burgers from his family driveway in Western Sydney.
“We had done a few pop-ups until eventually Covid hit and we all know how that went with the lockdowns … one thing that did work out was the NSW government relaxing laws to allow food vendors to trade from home,” he says.
“So after finishing my internship at 5pm, I set everything up in my driveway and sold burgers from there.”
That night the teen sold 50 burgers to hungry locals, but little did he know it was the beginning of his new career.
“I was posting a burger recipe every day as a challenge, and then both the business and the TikTok page just blew up and went crazy viral, so within two months we ended up doing around 300 burgers a night,” he says.
Now 23, Chebbani has graduated from his accounting degree but has left corporate life behind, splitting his time between growing his more than 1.1 million followers on TikTok and growing his burgeoning burger empire.
With a permanent food truck in Roselands, often with lines stretching down the street, Chebbani isn’t worried about giving away the
secret to his smash burger success. In fact, he has grown his brand by posting in-depth recipes for all his burgers on TikTok, and even his own burger smasher for sale.
While Covid opened the doors for the food truck boom, it’s TikTok that has really put food trucks on the Sydney foodie map.
Easter show sensation Firepop has turned its popular pop-ups into a bricks and mortar store, and market favourite Lobster House has secured its own CBD site thanks in part to viral success.
The influence of TikTok food bloggers can make or break an emerging food truck, and no-one knows that more than Issac Martin.
Better known by his account Issac Eatsalot, Martin reviews Sydney food spots for his more than 71,000 TikTok followers and 213,000 Instagram followers.
He has seen a lot of food trucks come and go in Sydney, but says the ones which break through have high quality food to back up their online success.
“Sydney loves FOMO, we just want anything we think we are missing out on so if you see a group of people, you see a TikTok, people will gravitate towards that,” he says.
“We’re all goldfish in Sydney with a six-second memory … a trend moves to the next new food truck or the next food trend or the next, you know, Tik Tok video from Places in Sydney or Sydney Food Boy or whoever’s posted it and it’s gone viral. And all of your customers that came for a couple of weeks because you were the trendy thing are now going to the next new trendy thing.
“Things in Sydney and things in Sydney hospitality move so fast that even if you love that first trend, you often don’t have time to come back to it when you’re chasing the next new trend.”
Starting a restaurant in 2023 comes with a minefield of overheads – rising rents, staff and produce, that’s if you can even find a property.
John O’Kane never thought he would be known as the “Schnitzel King” – after all, he was making a decent living working in technical services for a sports and racing company.
O’Kane’s wife Candice was pregnant with their fourth child, son Hugh, in 2012 when she began having cravings for one thing – schnitties.
Discovering all takeaway restaurants would close around 9pm, O’Kane got cooking.
He soon discovered that he had a gift, a higher calling to serve up golden tasty schnitzels to the hungry masses.
That 2012 idea took a few years of planning, which came together when O’Kane bought an old 1994 Isuzu NPR 200 catering van in 2016.
“I would encourage anyone to do it, you don’t have to have a food background, I didn’t and it’s a really fun job,” he says.
One of the biggest positive points for O’Kane is the time he gets to spend with his family. The flexibility means he can spend more time with his children, who regularly help out in the truck.
Spending as many precious moments with his kids as possible is especially important after the family suffered one of the worst tragedies imaginable – the loss of their daughter.
“We do a lot with Bear Cottage because we sadly had a daughter who passed away who went through there just before we had our son,” O’Kane says.
“So we go there for the Christmas parties and superhero parties, we do lots with the truck.”
Family was a huge motivator for Samantha and Jarrod Starr when they decided to leave their jobs in hospitality and horticulture and purchased the Big Papa’s Food Truck in 2020.
When the ad came up on Facebook, the husband and wife and parents of three saw the opportunity to ride the growing food-truck trend, and spend more time with the kids.
“We can take time off when we need it, we homeschool our kids and we can be available for them, and we switch who looks after the kids on certain nights,” Samantha said.
“The kids love it – they get burgers all the time.”
The successful burger truck was already an established business, and has grown its audience with tasty and on-trend vegetarian options.
The key to the food truck’s success has by far been a loyal and hungry customer base in Western Sydney.
The family trades in business carparks and at events around the Campbelltown area, where local families are repeat customers and changing trends and fickle city audiences are less of a threat.
“We set up at a tyre place and on his lot they will close by 5pm, and we take over at 5.30pm,” Samantha said. “The owner said since having the food truck his car tyre sales increased dramatically.”
“I dislike social media, I’m just not very good at it so we let our food do the talking.”
While the bougie food trucks and pop-ups at music festivals and inner city breweries are seeing success, breaking into certain council areas can prove difficult and Sydney’s major arterial roads, such as the Princes Highway, are some of the most thriving venues for foodies.
“Food trucks are very reliant on council co-operation and council approval for the area they are operating in, and notoriously for a long time the eastern suburbs has been difficult for food trucks to operate in because bricks and mortar businesses whinge about food trucks coming in and taking sales,” TikTok foodie Martin says.
“It’s similar with the city, anything around the harbour or the inner city suburbs … it’s like an exclusive sort of club to be in.
“If you are single, living in the city your life can be erratic …. In the western suburbs there aren’t as many new openings or events, so you are more likely to go back to your tried and true option more often.”
Covid, flexibility and social media are all driving the food truck boom, but there’s one phrase on everyone’s lips at the moment – cost of living.
The promise of little to no rent, little to no staff and the freedom to move is more important now than ever as the cost-of-living crisis bites, but it also has established operators struggling to turn a profit despite their popularity.
O’Kane put his prices up earlier this year but after noticing a drop in customers, the Schnitzel King had to turn tack and drop prices back below $20.
“I’d rather take less profit and still stay in business in the current economic climate,” he says.
The food truckie has seen shops come and go from his regular Tuesday spot, in Potter St, Waterloo, with many sitting empty.
The Starr family are also grappling with the question of prices at their Big Papa’s truck.
“We had to put our prices up, possibly not enough, but it’s finding the balancing act. If we put it up to give ourselves a healthy profit, will it be too high for our customers?” Samantha says.
“When the fries shortage was happening we had to pay twice as much and just ride it out … we know what it’s like for families, we work hard for our dollar and we don’t put out bad quality food.”
Martin has visited more food trucks and eaten more burgers than most of us ever will. He sees Sydney’s food-truck future following Melbourne or Los Angeles, where groups of food trucks can congregate and become a meeting place for big groups of people, rather than lone operators.
“During Covid, food trucks started to realise there’s power in numbers so if you do a pop-up somewhere you’re better off with a couple of food trucks where you can get a group of six friends and they can all say ‘I’ll get the tacos, I’ll get the burger’,” he says.
Martin sees the biggest change in food trucks and pop-ups being the price disparity, with TikTok creating a market for the high end and extreme.
“The biggest difference is price point … the thought of paying $150 for something handed to me from a truck and then you’re standing on the street kerb eating it, it’s just obscure, but there’s a market for it,” he says.
One area embracing the food truck revolution is Georges River Council, where food trucks and mobile food stalls have been a priority at local events.
A spokeswoman says food trucks have grown in popularity in recent years and the council receives a huge volume of applications.
Interest peaked in the 2021-22 financial year with 56 food trucks approved in the area, which has reduced to 33 in the last financial year.
In City of Sydney 33 food trucks have permits to operate in the area.
“We support food trucks as they provide
a valuable service at approved events and popular locations with their mobile operations and diversity of offerings,” a council spokesman says.
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