Hello interwebz…

My name is Andrew Violette and I run The Chicago Food Truck Finder. I created this project over 2 years ago because I wanted the Chicago food trucks’ current and future locations displayed on a map. My mission has always been to do that with the greatest accuracy possible. I really think I’m only about 50% of the way there. My website scans and parses twitter for trucks’ location and time data, scans food trucks’ google calendars and automatically adds events to my site, has a beaconing tool that food trucks can use to update their location, and even automatically crowd-sources tough-to-locate trucks (Thanks @uchinomgo). Every morning, I spend some time manually entering schedule data that falls outside of those automatic ways trucks can add their schedule.

Despite all that, I still have incorrect data show up on my website from time to time. I think I have done everything technically that I can do to have it show up correctly, but need to do a better job informing food trucks how it works and how integration can benefit them.

In addition to my main goal of getting you accurate information about food trucks’ whereabouts, I also want to start blogging a bit more about the food truck scene. I DO NOT plan on reviewing food trucks or posting food pictures. I DO plan on trying to get the word out about events and other things of interest to people who like food trucks.

Other stuff in the Food truck finder pipeline:

  • Improved notifications for the Chicago Food Truck Finder Android application
  • an iOS application (I am currently working on this, dispite my hatred for Objective-C)
  • a visual redesign of the site (I am currently saving some dough to make this happen)

Thanks to everyone who uses my site and thanks to all the food trucks out there for doing what you do!