How Best Food Trucks fed The Laughing Cow Wedgemobile tour

By Matt Geller, CEO and Co-Founder of Best Food Trucks

Best Food Trucks ran the local food operation behind The Laughing Cow's Wedgemobile stops in Minneapolis, Bentonville and the Nashville area. The agency, The Unicorns, brought the campaign and the brand ambassadors. We lined up the kitchens, refrigeration, equipment and culinary crews in each city so those ambassadors had trays of ready to serve samples waiting for them.

A giant cheese wedge on wheels gets people to look. A good bite is what gets them to stop, taste and hang around the brand a little longer. That second part was our job.

It wasn't a typical food truck booking. The Wedgemobile was the star, but it isn't a kitchen. The samples needed their own prep space, cold storage and people, and every stop on the tour had a different site, a different footprint and different local rules. One setup was never going to fit all three cities, so we didn't try to force one.

What was on the sampling menu?

Guests got two ways to try The Laughing Cow: pinwheel bites made with Garlic & Herb cheese, and a street corn dip made with Light cheese, served with tortilla chips.

The pinwheels rolled the cheese up in a tortilla with roasted red peppers, pepperoncini and salami, then chilled before slicing. The dip mixed fire roasted corn with the cheese and a chili lime seasoning. These were real recipes. Nobody was just handing out foil wrapped wedges across a table.

That changed the whole job. Every market needed ingredients sourced, batches prepped, product kept cold and a plan for portioning samples before they ever reached an ambassador's tray. We worked through it with The Unicorns line by line: product quantities, delivery timing, serving containers, how the samples should look when guests picked them up.

The split of responsibilities was simple, and we kept it that way on purpose:

When everybody knows exactly where their part ends, the kitchen crew and the people handing out food stop stepping on each other.

How the food setup changed in each city

Each stop got its own food service plan, built around the site rather than a template.

Minneapolis. This was the biggest build. As the expected sampling numbers went up, the plan grew with them. More prep hours, another culinary manager on site, more gear.

Bentonville. Space was the constraint here. Local trucks and trailers handled cold prep and storage, and we mapped out how finished samples would get to the activation footprint before load in, not during it.

Nashville area. We didn't lock in a format early. Keeping both truck and tent on the table until the layouts were confirmed let us pick the simpler option, and the local vendor worked straight out of a food truck parked nearby.

Food safety and the handoff nobody sees

Across the tour, BFT coordinated health permit paperwork and food safety planning with each local partner. That covered refrigeration, transport between prep and the activation, and the exact moment a finished sample passed from the food crew to a brand ambassador.

That last point is where sampling events tend to go sideways. If nobody owns the handoff, trays sit out, portions drift and the line backs up. We planned it ahead of time in every city instead of figuring it out at load in.

When an agency already has the branded vehicle

A lot of experiential campaigns arrive with most of the pieces in place: a wrapped vehicle, a creative concept, a team of ambassadors. What's missing is the local culinary operation that makes the food actually work in a city the agency has never set up in.

That's the gap BFT filled on the Wedgemobile tour. We connected The Unicorns with food partners in three markets and coordinated the prep, equipment and service handoffs around each activation. The format changed from stop to stop. The goal didn't: make the food a reason to walk over, not an afterthought.

If you're planning a sampling tour or a brand activation and need kitchens, cold storage and culinary crews in cities where you don't have them, talk to the Best Food Trucks team.

FAQ

What is The Laughing Cow Wedgemobile? The Wedgemobile is The Laughing Cow's branded, wedge shaped vehicle used for sampling events. On this tour it stopped in Minneapolis, Bentonville and the Nashville area, where guests tried pinwheel bites and a street corn dip made with Laughing Cow cheese.

What did Best Food Trucks do on the Wedgemobile tour? BFT handled local culinary support and food service logistics for the agency, The Unicorns. That meant sourcing food partners, prep kitchens, refrigeration, equipment and culinary staff in each city, plus health permit and food safety coordination.

Did Best Food Trucks build the Wedgemobile or create the recipes? No. The Wedgemobile, the recipes and the brand ambassadors came from the campaign side. BFT's role was turning the recipes and product deliveries into ready to serve samples in each market.

Can Best Food Trucks support a brand that already has its own activation vehicle? Yes. BFT can coordinate the local food operation around a branded vehicle, including prep space, cold storage, culinary crews and food truck partners, so the agency can focus on the guest experience.

Why use a different food setup in each city? Every venue has its own space, staging and permitting realities. Minneapolis needed a prep kitchen and onsite tent, Bentonville relied on local trucks and trailers, and the Nashville area worked from a single nearby food truck.

About the author

Matt Geller is the CEO and Co-Founder of Best Food Trucks and the founder of the National Food Truck Association. He has spent nearly 17 years working in food trucks and mobile food advocacy, starting in 2010 when he founded the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association. He also founded Revolution Carts, which builds sidewalk vending carts.

Matt holds a JD from UCLA School of Law. He co-authored "The New Food Truck Advocacy" in Nexus at Chapman University School of Law.