The food: Fresh spring roll

Where to find it: Little Green Cyclo Food Truck, Off The Grid food trucks, Fort Mason, San Francisco, California

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Welcome to another edition of #FoodEntrepreneur Friday, where I serve up an order of international food with a side of insight for entrepreneurs.

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When you’re first beginning your (food) entrepreneurial venture, it’s always smart to play to your strengths and focus, focus, focus.

Most entrepreneurs I know (myself included) can fall prey to the “shiny object” syndrome—where there’s a world of opportunities and ideas that they and their businesses could pursue. However, trying to tackle too many initiatives at once can stretch small, startup ventures too thin. This can kill companies before they even begin.

Therefore, it’s essential to focus on one product or service that can launch your (food) business out of the starting gates.

A successful example of focused food businesses are food trucks. As a Nomaders Local Hero, I like to bring San Francisco food travelers to “Off the Grid.” Every Friday at SF’s Fort Mason Center, dozens of food trucks park and transform a once-vacant parking lot into a food-lover’s mecca called “Off the Grid.” Each of the food trucks focuses on a certain international cuisine or even just a dish. For example, you’ve got Vietnamese food from Little Green Cyclo (pictured above), Indian from Curry Up Now, Filipino-Mexican fusion from Señor Sisig, or Chinese from The Chairman truck. And then you can pretty much guess what dishes you’ll get from these hyper-focused food trucks: The Taco Guys, Ultra Crepes, The Creme Brulee Cart, Bacon Bacon and Frozen Kuhsterd.

Food trucks are all the rage in California’s culinary culture and beyond. In fact, while sampling the delicate flavors of Nepalese momos (or turkey dumplings) from Bini’s Kitchen, I met British food enthusiasts who ventured across the Atlantic to try California’s food trucks. They love how each food truck places so much focus and energy into perfecting their handful of menu items. The Brits had spent over 100 USD sampling all of the different tapa-sized bites a guest could purchase at “Off the Grid”; that’s a lot of food for the reasonably-priced food trucks. And these food trucks often have other food enthusiasts lined up in long queues waiting for their specialty food items, as well.

The Brits and I agree: the reason why food trucks are such successful startup ventures, is because they create a product (or food) that’s not only unique to their food truck, but super-focused and delicious too.

So, if you’re starting off your food business, then use the hyper-focused food trucks as a model. And you might have people lining up for your gotta-eat-it dish as well.

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A map of San Francisco Fort Mason Center’s “Off the Grid” food trucks for the day.

Nepalese Turkey Dumplings (or momos) by Bini’s Kitchen

One of the guys at “The Taco Guys” food truck chopping cabbage