Why Every Food Truck Should Be Playing Pokemon Go

I’m sure that you have heard of Pokemon Go by now. If not, it’s basically an augmented reality game in which you walk around in the world with your smartphone and “catch” Pokemon out on the street and get cool items and power-ups at real life landmarks. The crazy thing is that it is seriously working. I went out with my wife today to the mall and we spent 30 minutes just walking around collecting Pokemon and items at “Pokestops.” And we weren’t the only ones. Every other group of people that we saw walking around with their phones in hand gave us knowing looks and a little nod as if to say “yup.”

Okay, so wtf does this have to do with food trucks? Hear me out. Not only did we spend some time at the mall today but we spent some time at the hospital. Don’t worry — it wasn’t health related. There is a hospital across the street with a bunch of Pokestops at it. One of the items that you can purchase (yes purchase with real life money) is called a “lure module.” This attracts Pokemon to that location for 30 minutes and anyone can catch them. So when the hospital across the street started popping off with pink confetti, which is the sign of an active lure module, you bet your ass we packed up the kid and the dog and went for a nice little walk.

When we got there, we encountered a literal mob of other people there. LIKE 20 PEOPLE LOITERING AT A RANDOM HOSPITAL COURTYARD JUST TO CATCH POKEMON. I hope you can see where I’m going with this. Imagine if there was something else there to catch their eye while they were waiting for Pokemon to be loitered to their location. Something like… food? Ice cream on a hot day? Yeah.

Now the hospital across the street from my place is not exactly an exciting location, but imagine popping a lure module at a public park, at an outdoor mall, etc. For food trucks, it can really suck to be at the mercy of the crowd, so in addition to your existing social media presence, consider capitalizing on the newest craze by investing 10 bucks on 4 hours of crowd attracting power. I’m sure this trick won’t work forever, but I’d be willing to bet my Raichu that it will work right now.