It’s just after sunset, and you’re en route to an evening class. Everyone around you scuttles to their warm homes in dusk’s amber glow in anticipation of a hearty supper. Your own stomach is sated — not too full, but warmly satisfied from your meal.
Yet after setting foot on one particular block, something happens. Your senses leap to high alert! What could be the cause? The sights haven’t changed, and surrounding murmurs are familiar to your ears…no, it’s your nose.
There’s a food truck. It smells good. Now all you can think about is food truck food.
The cunning scheme that is Food Truck Smell is sensory manipulation at its absolute worst. This isn’t like those supermarket psychology tricks to make you buy more spinach or how Subway’s air is 50 percent oxygen and 50 percent bread. Food Truck Smell is sinister mental anguish. And those trucks know exactly what they’re doing to us.
Food Truck Smell does not discriminate. Korean BBQ trucks smell good. Those oddly specific pie trucks smell good. Even those vegan salad trucks that look like they’re made of wood reek like a spring garden. It doesn’t matter if you’re a casual passerby or a devoted foodie — if you’ve got a niche food truck, you’ve got Food Truck Smell.
And the worst part? You’re not even going to buy anything. You just made dinner, and the only change in your wallet is for that granola bar you’ll buy later from inevitable hunger. Don’t even bother trying to explain to your professor why you were late for class.
“I smelled it,” you announce, food in hand, as your classmates slowly shift away from you.
The envy-inducing scent isn’t limited to the vehicle’s immediate radius, either. On especially windy days, the air in a truck’s general vicinity may be fresh and crisp, but take fifty steps forward, and WHAM! That autumn breeze is slapping you in the face with rotten leaves and the scent of fried chicken. Sometimes you catch a whiff before approaching a truck, leaving you lost and longing for waffles.
Don’t even get me started on those food truck festivals: perfumey cornucopias that will, without a doubt, leave me blubbering amidst a painful bout of olfactory overload.
Is Food Truck Smell even legal? Some of them have to be pumping that scent out of air vents. There’s no way the little kitchen inside that truck can emanate that much smell with all of these car exhaust fumes around. Mark my words, trucks, since soon you’ll get your own personal sphere-invading smell — the smell of justice! Today this rant, tomorrow the FTC.
For a while, I mused on the prospect of working in a food truck. What’s better than bringing delicious treats on the road to hungry customers? While there are few things better than mobile dining, there is little worse than the travesty of Food Truck Smell. From a young age, we’ve been taught the Golden Rule: treat others how you want to be treated. In that case, dearest food trucks, don’t be surprised when you see me wafting the aroma of my loaded burrito right in your smelly face.
Image via.