The most popular dish of the newly-founded Bombay Food Truck Company (BFTC) is the New York-style hot dog, which was a real treat to my palate. The founders, Kevin Fernandes from Vakola and Roysten Misquitta from Kalina, looked fairly satisfied as they emptied their minivan after a complete sell-out at Atharva College of Engineering, Malad.
How it all started
It's no surprise that the duo come from a culinary background and therefore, have extensive knowledge of food and where it would work demographically. “For eight years, we worked on the world's largest cruise liner,” said Fernandes, co-founder of BFTC. “Through our travels, we learnt about the culture of food trucks across the world and wanted to implement it here, since the market is relatively untapped,” added Misquitta.
The company is still in its nascent stage, so a lot of trial and error is involved. “While we are serving a lot of dishes, after a few months, we will narrow down the menu to target what people actually want and that will be permanent,” says the duo.
Years of research
All said and done, while it may seem effortless, it took about eight and a half years to conceptualise the entire idea of the food truck. It involved in-depth research on potential places in the city to tap; and stop at places that would generate maximum income. In terms of licensing, Fernandes and Misquitta are ensuring that they do everything legally. “Food trucks, by law, are considered as hawkers. We are desperately trying to remove the 'hawker' tag and because of this, we have gone through each step of licensing.”
With their soft launch in Malad, the duo decided to keep it small. The prime focus of business would be college events, private events like weddings or backyard birthday parties and of course, food festivals.
Target areas
You'd expect that a fun food truck would largely target colleges, but that isn't the case with BFTC. “While we are mainly targeting corporates, the first phase is going to be in Bandra, outside Jogger's Park and Bandra Kurla Complex, which is a commercial hub, but of course, anyone can patronise us,” says Misquitta, who handles the social media marketing and is also a freelance photographer on the side.
The good news is that the entire cleanliness concept is taken care of. Since the food is dry, there is no issue of wet garbage management, since everything is disposable
