Selecting Optimal Locations of Food Trucks: A Case Study for the City of Vancouver
Abstract
Food trucks offer an exciting alternative to eating out while tailoring to the fast-paced lifestyle of city dwellers, but effective methods to implement this form of dining-out alternative are still non-existent to many cities where it is still a new concept. Cannibalism of local restaurants can occur when food trucks are licensed without informal planning. The conflict between local restaurants and food trucks has been a reoccurring theme in the media for the last few months; the city of Vancouver is now seeking better methods to find optimal locations for the food trucks.
In this paper, we developed discrete optimization models for this problem and solve the model using Open-Solver, an Excel-based optimization engine. The data collected for this paper includes pedestrian data, active food trucks in the year 2012, road information, and licensed restaurants in downtown Vancouver. Our study identified optimal locations for summer 2013. Various alternative formulations are also given and comparative study is performed. While our paper concentrates on the city of Vancouver, the model is general enough to be applicable to other cities that are starting to implement food truck alternatives.
References
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