One new result of rapidly converging trends is the mobile restaurant or Restaurant 2.0:

Cupcake Stop Truck in NYC

Following the example of digital delivery, and driven by the factors listed below, we will begin to see an increase in physical delivery of services to the customer. 

Even restaurants are being swept up in the sea change swirling around us today.  The mobile restaurant is a new development of our times:

The drivers of this new culinary entrepreneurial development are:

• Twitter – Mobile restaurants can economically broadcast where they are as well as where they will be.  Also narcissistic consumers can tell people they are waiting for a truck to serve them .
• GPS Technology – To help locate restaurants on wheels.
• The Recession – Gives hard hit businesses the spark to innovate new approaches to serve their clients, causes consumers to be thrifty in their choices for “eating out”, and amplifies the high cost of gas to drive to a restaurant.

What’s next?

• Crowdsourcing – the truck can converge on the location most tweeted about.
• iPhone & Mobile Apps – Will show you which restaurant trucks are in your area, sorted by cuisine, location and length of the line.
• Tweeting a Password – For a Free topping or appetizer on special days.
• Selection specialization – Trucks will tweet their “Daily Special”, with different selections on different days (of course influenced by the desires of the twitterverse.)
• Mobile Businesses in a truck – These “businesses in a truck” would offer quick response to a request for their services by travelling to their client while also taking advantage of twitter, GPS and mobile restaurants to schedule their en-route meals

Of course these mobile restaurants would be most well received and most effective in metropolitan areas such as NYC (at least in the beginning.) 

Twitter is sorta like your own radio station, rather than pay for advertising spots on the radio, just tweet your message!

Related Links:

NYC Waffle Truck on Twitter,  Sharing Restaurant Space Saves Energy,

@waffletruck (waffle truck on twitter)

Temporary Spaces and Creative Infill, Things to See in NY – Cupcakes on Wheels,

Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart