The restaurant features all the dishes available on the truck, plus a dozen or so toppings that can be mixed in. Demand for her mac-and-cheese creations proved so robust that Lieberman opened her first brick-and-mortar location in Philadelphia last spring.
In addition to her classic seven-cheese mac topped with potato chip panko crunch, there's BBQ in a Bowl (classic mac topped with BBQ chicken chunks, cornbread crunch and a BBQ drizzle) and the Crabby Mac (mac topped with cream cheese and jumbo lump crabmeat dip and Old Bay potato chip panko crunch).įor pure indulgence, Mac Mart also features something called Return of the Mac - a classic mac sandwiched between two buttered slices of Texas toast and melted American cheese. Wanting to be her own boss - and knowing she made a mean mac and cheese - Lieberman started testing out different recipes before buying her truck. Marti Lieberman started her Mac Mart Truck in 2013 on the campus of Drexel University in Philadelphia, where she had graduated two years earlier. And because food trucks run on volume, they can reach $400,000 or more in sales a year pretty quickly.įor pure comfort food, it doesn't get any better than mac and cheese. These mobile restaurants are more affordable than a brick-and-mortar location (a new truck can cost anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000, according to Technomic, versus nearly $1 million to open a stand-alone restaurant). The popularity of food trucks got a big boost after the recession when folks, laid off from corporate jobs, decided to take a risk running their own business, explains Brett Lindenberg, founder of the Food Truck Empire, a site dedicated to the food truck industry. According to Technomic, a research firm specializing in the food-service industry, sales for the food truck segment - comprised predominately by independent operators - are growing about 15 percent annually, compared with around 5 percent a year for the casual dining segment. Today these mobile eateries feature unique offerings of every type - from freshly caught seafood and gourmet burgers to gluten-free and vegan sandwiches, sides and desserts.
Food trucks have come a long way from their early days of selling plastic-wrapped sandwiches and bland coffee to factory workers looking for something cheap and quick.