Careers on the Move: Food Trucks, Pop-ups and More

The number of trucks serving restaurant-quality food is quickly growing in cities across North America. Yesterday, ICE’s Career Services team devoted one of their regular career development seminars and alumni panels to the topic. The theme for the evening was Careers on the Move: Food Trucks, Pop-Ups and More.

ICE alumni panelists Annmarie and Joe Glaser (Pastry ’06, Pastry ’07) of La Bella Torte, Thomas Mosera (Culinary/Management ’05) of Cupcake Stop and Sara Pepitone (Culinary ’96) of Beach Street Sandwiches shared their experiences opening and operating their own food truck businesses and shared the advantages (and pitfalls!) of these types of start-ups versus traditional brick-and-mortar operations. ICE Director of Career Services Maureen Drum Fagin moderated the panel, guiding the discussion through the unique challenges of operating a restaurant on wheels and how to be successful in this non-traditional business model.

Pepitone emphasized that owning a food truck amounts to owning a mobile restaurant taking good care of the truck was imperative. Glaser joked, “If could put a bathroom on my truck, I would live in it.” As a former plumber, Glaser has the advantage of being mechanically inclined and ready to crawl under his truck if he needs to fix it. Mosera talked about his weekly mechanical checklist as a preventive measure to avoid breaking down and slowing down business by having the truck in for repairs.

The discussion was illuminating for any ICE students considering taking what they've learned in school out on the road by opening their own food trucks.