Kevin Rios owns a grocery store, a moving company and Tacos Los Costeños, a taco truck parked at the intersection of Cedar and Gettysburg.
About a year ago, he set his sights on developing something new: an application dedicated to connecting food trucks, food creators and anyone who gets hungry.
“We’re all growing here,” Rios said. “It’s not just for vendors, it’s not just for creators, it’s not just for customers. Everybody wins.”
The app, Foodtruck Finder, is now in closed beta, and expects to open to the public in about a month’s time.
Rios has had the idea for creating a food truck app, where he’d combine features from Google, Yelp, Instagram and DoorDash into one place, for about five years now. In the Foodtruck Finder app, people will not only be able to tell where their favorite food trucks are, they’ll be able to see any foodie events coming up, order from those trucks for pick-up, leave reviews on both a food truck and specific dishes they make.
“You go to a restaurant and it’s 3.5 stars,” Rios said. “Why? Was it the food, the service?”
Users can ask the app to choose a new food truck for them to try, either at random or within a specific set of parameters, like distance, cuisine, health considerations (like diet) and cost.
“You’re never going to be bored with this app,” Rios said.
All of those functions are going to be supported by the app’s own AI chatbot, Migo, which riffs off the Spanish word for friend. Additionally, Rios is creating a section of the app dedicated to helping food truck owners and food content creators connect, something he hasn’t seen done anywhere else.
“There’s all these problems, but nobody has the solutions,” Rios said. “Now I have solutions.”
He’s also looking to the future. While there’s no delivery component to the app yet, Rios wants to add one where instead of going through a third party, like UberEats or DoorDash, food truck owners can deliver their own food, keeping a larger cut of their own sales.
Rios was able to start working on Foodtruck Finder when AI came into the picture. By using AI, he was able to both speed up the development process and reduce the amount of overhead he needed to bring the app to market.
“Instead of taking 2-5 years to develop an app, I cut it down to one year,” Rios said. “It makes this app possible.”
For the first six months after launch, the app won’t have a subscription fee for vendors, who will be able to create profiles and upload their menus. During that time, the app will still charge a 6% commission fee, as well as a service charge, to help support development and upkeep of the app.
Rios is from the Fresno area. He attended Fresno City College, where he learned about the tech side of construction, and while he does want to expand to other areas in the future, he’s starting with the Central Valley.
To help introduce the idea to the larger market, he’s working with Michael Castillo, a food content creator also known as Mikey the Foodie Guy.
Castillo, who grew up in Sanger, creates a lot of content highlighting food trucks in the Central Valley. He sees the app as a great way to help both customers and the families running food trucks.
He’s also been impressed by what he’s seen of the app so far.
“(Rios) is really trying to add a lot more and perfect it,” Castillo said.
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Amber Hair (they/them) is the food and restaurants reporter and influencer. Amber has been in professional journalism for more than a decade, writing for outlets like the Orlando Sentinel, The Villages Daily Sun, the Pacific Coast Business Times and others. In their spare time, they enjoy going to concerts, reading and spending time with their cats.