More brands are choosing a simple way to meet customers in person this summer: a food truck. Mobile trucks are showing up at festivals, waterfront events, and convention-area campaigns across Vancouver, handing out samples and pulling people in who might otherwise scroll past an ad.
Food trucks have always drawn a crowd for the food. What's changed is who's paying for them to show up. Instead of asking people to visit a store or a trade show booth, brands are setting up in parks, event spaces, and neighbourhood festivals where people are already gathered.
A mobile marketing company with campaigns running in cities across Canada has been planning these routes for Food Trucks Vancouver. The planning is mostly logistics: when foot traffic peaks at a given venue, which corner gets the most walk-by attention, how long a line can get before people give up and leave.
"People act differently when a brand shows up in person instead of on a screen," said a company spokesperson. "You get a few seconds to make someone curious. A truck gives you that."
None of it works without permits. Cities require approvals, insurance, and food-safety sign-off before a truck can serve or sample anything in a public space, and the rules shift from one venue to the next. Local logistics teams handle that paperwork so a brand doesn't have to figure out Vancouver's permitting process from scratch.
Vancouver's calendar makes it a workable market for this kind of thing: waterfront festivals through the summer, a busy downtown convention schedule, and neighbourhoods that draw foot traffic on their own. A handful of national brands have booked routes here this year specifically to test experiential campaigns before rolling them out elsewhere.
Whether it beats a digital ad campaign is hard to prove with a number. What the company points to instead is repeat bookings: brands that ran one truck for a single event and came back to book a multi-stop tour the following month.
More trucks are booked through the fall as festival season continues.

About the Company

On The Go Ads provides branded food truck rentals, promotional vehicles, and experiential activations for brands and agencies across Canada and the United States. The company handles vehicle branding, permits, staffing, and event logistics for each campaign.