6 Food Truck Wraps to Go

ACCORDING TO TONY PALMER, owner of Palmer Signs (Roseville, CA), food truck wraps require equal ingredients: creativity, impact, collaboration and challenge. Palmer, together with four other signmakers, understands the unique marketing potential and demands of the food truck to help the businesses make their meal offerings memorable.

From BBQ to churros, the following shops employed their creativity and expertise to deliver the best in food vehicle wraps.

Hot Diggity Dog

As the times have changed, so have Jeffrey Chudoff’s signmaking skills. As owner of Fastsigns of Maple Shade (Maple Shade, NJ), Chudoff says that although he got his start doing hand lettering on trucks, he was able to pivot and perfect his wrapping skills for the latest in the “rolling billboard” food truck industry. To that end, Fastsigns Maple Shade designed the wrap for Berks in SAi’s FlexiSIGN, touched it up in Adobe Photoshop and printed it on the shop’s Roland VersaEXPRESS RF-640 using 3M 1080 Series Wrap Film. A KALA laminator applied the protective overcoat.

Food 360°

“Vehicle wraps push me as a designer to think outside of a flat panel and make the design flow with the irregular contours that vehicles have,” says Kate Grant, designer for Fox Cities Sign (Appleton, WI). Designed from vehicle photos rather than a template for true custom work, the fleet graphics for local Chubby’s Cravings food trailer were created using 3M IJ180 Graphic Film imaged on a Mimaki CJV150 series printer before incorporating a 3M 8518 Scotchcal Gloss Overlaminate to allow the graphics to remain bright for years to come.

Mouth-to-Mouth

Referrals are at the heart of many a signshop. When the owner of a Teriyaki Madness Catering business needed van graphics, they relied on word of mouth to hire Atchley Graphics (Columbus, OH), owner Derek Atchley says. The shop produced the wrap graphics using Avery Dennison MPI 1105 SuperCast Easy Apply RS LTR and DOL 1060Z Gloss Cast Overlaminate printed on a roll-to-roll HP Latex wide-format printer, run through a GBC Arctic Titan laminator and then finished on a Summa F1832 flatbed cutter before installation.

So Good! So Good!

With a name like Sweet Carolyn’s, it has to be good. For Dennis Schaub, owner of FastTrack Signs (Bellefontaine, OH), the vehicle wrap had to be both good and fast because the client was in a hurry. FastTrack saved time and money by wrapping the whole truck in black film and applying the vector-ready, printed logos separately, primarily using a series of 3M 2080 films. Then they employed a RollePro for the rivets. “Vehicle graphics always make a big impact,” Schaub says. “They are a great value for commercial customers [as] the number of impressions for the amount of money is incredibly high.”

Sweet Indulgence

Tony Palmer, owner of Palmer Signs (Roseville, CA), views every food truck project as an opportunity to elevate a small business and maximize brand impact. The client for the Bangin’ Churro Bar (Sacramento, CA) food truck wrap sought to showcase their brand’s fun personality. Palmer collaborated with the client to create a playful, dynamic design featuring vivid pink accents, detailed churro graphics and dripping-effect elements. The shop used 3M IJ180Cv3 Graphic Film paired with a 3M 8518 Gloss Overlaminate printed in-house using an HP 800 Latex. Palmer’s installation team used OLFA tools to apply the wrap.

BBQ for You

Catering. Corporate Events. Festivals. As luck would have it, any time you need BBQ in or around Middletown, OH, Neal’s Famous BBQ food truck trailer is there. And, “luck” seems to be the name of the game for Joe Allen, owner of local So Easy Signs, who discovered the opportunity to wrap Neal’s food trailer through good old fashioned cold-calling. Neal’s was looking for something clean and impactful, and So Easy delivered with a dimensional flame design on a black background for the towable trailer using ORAFOL vinyl film and laminate printed on an HP Latex 315.

PHOTO GALLERY (26 IMAGES)