Best Food Trucks of 2015

FIRST PLACE
Fabricator
Arizona Color Wraps
Phoenix
(623) 580-7386
www.arizonacolor.com
Designer
Adam Wheat
Installers
Sean Fleming
Josh Gillenwater
Jimmy Harmon
Nicholas Wheat
Client
Marcel’s Belgian Waffles

This wrap embodies vehicle wraps’ continuing evolution; more designers are wisely realizing that less is more. Designers that effectively use negative space with concise text and visuals will connect more effectively than a jumbled, dissonant design that looks like it was concocted in a blender. Food trucks often ply their trade at festivals, where they will parked amidst other mobile food vendors; if customers can’t interpret what you’re serving, your bottom line suffers.
Arizona Color designed the graphics using Adobe Creative Suite software, and produced it using Avery Dennison Graphics Solutions’ Supercast MPI 1005 Easy Apply RS air-release media, which it decorated using its HP 260 latex-ink printer. A Seal 54-in. laminator was used to apply Avery’s DOL 1360 glossy laminate to preserve the wrap’s verdant hue.

SECOND PLACE
Fabricator
Palmer Signs
Roseville, CA
(916) 773-5815
www.palmersigns.com
Designers
Justin “Juice” Lee
Tony Palmer
Installers
Chad Compton
Jimmy Mazur
Client
James Wheeler

Even amidst current renewed interest in healthier eating, consumers’ affinity for bacon remains constant – I’ve recently seen it offered as a chocolate-covered, bakery confection, as well as a cotton-candy flavor (excuse me while I grab some antacid). James Wheeler, Bacon Mania’s proprietor, offers a much more appetizing menu – sandwiches, sliders, hot dogs, wraps and the like, draped with succulently sizzling pork. Lee and Palmer went whole hog – bad pun alert – with a supersized porcine figure and the pinkish-red color bacon buffs love to see when preparing to pan fry a few thick-cut slices. They used Adobe Photoshop and CADlink Signlab 9.1 software to digitize an initial, pen-and-paper sketch.
The shop produced the wrap using 3M Controltac IJ180-10Cv3 air-release media imprinted using a Mimaki JV-33 solvent-ink printer, and protected with a 3M Scotchcal 8518 glossy topcoat using a Royal Sovereign 1650 HR pressure laminator. Juice said, “This giant metal pig, tearing itself out of its pink-metal space, was embraced when it was brought to a food-truck event to be a statement piece for the Sacramento food-truck empire – even before it started serving food.”

THIRD PLACE
Fabricator
Creative Color
Burnsville, MN
(952) 746-4164
www.creativecolorstudio.com
Designer
Brent Luther
Installer
Kyle Willemessen
Client
Outlaw Grill

Whatever notion you might have that Minnesota’s harsh, lengthy winters would preclude the food-truck craze from taking off in the Great White North, think again. Stick-to-your-ribs fare, such as the steak, chicken and shrimp flatbread wraps the Outlaw Grill offers, will satisfy hungry crowds anywhere.
Luther designed the graphics using Adobe’s Creative Cloud software service; Onyx Graphics’ ProductionHouse RIP helped perfect the graphics during production. Creative Color produced the wrap with 3M’s Controltac with Comply air-release media on its HP DesignJet L28500 latex-ink printer. The graphics will keep riding high thanks to the application of 3M’s Scotchcal 8518 glossy overlaminate with a Seal 54 EL laminator. Installers applied the graphics with propane torches and 3M Gold nylon squeegees.

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HONORABLE MENTION
Fabricator
Absolute Perfection
Sykesville, MD
(866) 390-6790
www.vehiclewrapping.com
Designer
Brandon Antol
Installer
Mike Lawson
Client
Bill’s Epic Eats