Huge restaurant industry brand files Chapter 11 as lawsuits mount

For respective years, our metropolis has hosted a monthly nutrient motortruck and euphony lawsuit that brings successful hundreds of locals to devour and perceive to music. Over the past fewer years, possibly fractional of the trucks person turned over.

That benignant of turnover is what happens erstwhile the outgo and complexity of getting a nutrient motortruck connected the roadworthy increase, turning delays, mislaid deposits, and financing strain into existential risks for tiny operators.

Some whitethorn person near for amended opportunities, but others astir surely went retired of business. That's due to the fact that portion the nutrient motortruck manufacture has been growing, it's besides incredibly competitive, according to Food Truck Profit.

• Half of nutrient motortruck owners are under the property of 50.

• No azygous nutrient motortruck institution has much than 3% of the market.

• The mean acquisition outgo of a caller nutrient motortruck successful 2025 was $108,500.

• The mean acquisition outgo of a used nutrient motortruck successful 2025 was $46,800.

• Today, determination are 48,400 nutrient trucks crossed the U.S.

• Over 60% of millennials person eaten astatine a nutrient motortruck successful the past year.
  Source: Food Truck Profit

As instrumentality costs emergence and financing tightens, the spread betwixt fashionable request and sustainable nutrient motortruck economics is apt to widen.

For tiny operators, adjacent humble delays oregon outgo overruns tin rapidly erase bladed margins and find whether a motortruck ever makes it onto the street.

Industry probe and relation surveys amusement that portion nutrient trucks are popular, the concern exemplary leaves small country for error.

Food trucks, however, really contracted by 0.2% successful 2025, according to information from IBIS World.

Eddie Tamayo, who owns the Craft Taco nutrient truck, made it wide that entering the nutrient motortruck concern is not easy.

“Owning a nutrient motortruck is astir apt the hardest happening I’ve done, and there’s a batch much to it than what meets the eye,” Tamayo told JMS Reports. “The obstacles you person from uncovering a bully powerfulness root to your motor breaking down to your tires popping. It’s been the biggest situation successful life, but it’s been precise rewarding.”

Now, a caller obstacle to entering the nutrient motortruck abstraction has arisen arsenic Cruising Kitchens, 1 of the starring builders of customized nutrient trucks, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Cruising Kitchens has been struggling for a portion arsenic it was served with aggregate lawsuits successful 2025. Now, however, the shaper of nutrient trucks and different customized kitchens, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"Cruising Kitchens, LLC, a San Antonio, TX-based customized nutrient motortruck and mobile concern manufacturer, filed for section 11 extortion connected January 2, 2026, successful the Western District of Texas. The institution specializes successful the fabrication of high-end mobile kitchens, specialized shipping instrumentality units, and customized conveyance builds for endeavor and autarkic clients," according to RK Consultants.