On The Go LA is proud to continue its mission to help local food entrepreneurs in the greater Los Angeles area realize their dreams by lowering the barriers to entry and providing access to generational wealth. Our service of providing chefs, pop-ups, and catering companies the opportunity to formalize their business and grow their customer base through full-service, short-term food truck rentals has brought a tremendous impact on the local food economy, contributing to the rebirth of this industry and combatting any remnants of COVID-19's financial burden.

Since we first began our work to help the local food industry in March 2020, we have been able to help around 80 local food businesses in Los Angeles. Yet, we are excited to take the next step and not only help our local economy survive but expand our impact by providing more access and making Los Angeles a better place to CREATE for minority chefs.

Program Progress

Since On The Go LA was awarded the LA2050 grant in August 2020, we have focused on streamlining the roles and responsibilities of our small team of five, ensuring we are providing the best experience to our local chefs that enables them to secure financial security through what they do best – serving great food in various parts of Los Angeles. For one, we have hired an Operations Manager to ensure our food trucks are being properly cleaned and prepared on time so our clients can pick them up in the mornings without facing any logistical issues. From an administrative standpoint, we have hired an Executive Assistant to ensure a high-level of customer service, including answering any questions about our services and maintaining the growth that we have experienced since August 2020.

Not only have we managed to streamline the logistical and administrative components of our company, but we have also begun to implement further technology to enhance our services for our local food businesses. We have revamped our company's website (see image below) by introducing an online booking system that provides increased clarity of our trucks' availability and will make the addition of our third truck in the coming months a lot smoother. We firmly believe the booking system we recently implemented is one of many technological developments that will help On The Go LA continue to push the envelope within the food truck industry and make the process as easy as possible for our clients.

Challenges and Lessons

Given that On The Go LA is less than two years old and we're a small team, we have learned that even short-term and smaller goals accomplished are an absolute win. Considering we are in a capital-intensive industry, we recognize that patience and persistence are the two critical values in maintaining our goal of scaling while aiding our food partners in achieving their long-term growth objectives. Solidifying our company's foundation with our operations and administrative roles has given us an opportunity to establish relationships with relevant organizations to impact our local community more profoundly and focus on more long-term growth within Los Angeles. As we look towards the next six months of our partnership with LA2050 and bringing on additional members to grow our company, we are confident in being able to provide more measurable metrics to back our impact.

What's Next For On The Go LA

With the start of 2022, we are excited to announce a series of organizational updates that will largely contribute to our ultimate goal of revitalizing the food truck industry and re-igniting our local economy.

First, in large part due to the momentum we experienced in 2021 and the financial opportunity that was presented to us by LA2050, we will be launching our third truck in late June 2022 and our fourth in early 2023. The need for short-term food truck rentals is growing by the month and we are hoping to capitalize on this expected surge to strengthen our presence in the Los Angeles market and beyond.

While we are preparing to launch our third food truck, we are also looking to develop technology to enhance our services for our local food businesses. Specifically, we are focusing on the first version of our online recommendation engine that will use data that we accumulate to provide our clients a more tailored experience with the best locations to park the food truck for the day based on their type of food, their price point, and other factors. Achieving this goal will help us generate more demand and increase our client's life cycle given that typical minority-owned small businesses cannot afford to select unsuccessful parking stops.

Lastly, we are super excited to explore a pilot program that will help transition our clients that are ready for their own food truck. This has been a goal for us for a while, but we are now in a position to develop the program structure and put the resources in place to make sure that the clients are 100% ready to take the next big leap in their business journey!