Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine millennial customer perceptions of food trucks and to identify factors that can foster their behavioral intentions pertaining to food trucks. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a sample of 247 millennial customers of various food truck vendors in the United States and was assessed using ordinary least squares regression analysis. Findings: Food truck image and employee friendliness were found to impact both customer satisfaction and word of mouth behavior; however, the other hypotheses were not supported. Research limitations/implications: There were two limitations. The first was that one of the constructs did not achieve the minimum average variance extracted. The second was that data collection was done in a single city in the United States; therefore, future research could overcome these limitations through a refinement of the construct’s items and targeting more cities. Originality/value: There has been limited academic research on the millennial customer perceptions of the food truck phenomenon. This research addresses that gap through a field study that examines factors that contributed to the growth and popularity of food trucks among millennials.