Vehicles of tastemaking and precariousness: creative food economy and consumption in foodtrucks

Related to concepts of authenticity and distinction, foodtrucks have undergone a wide transformation from providers of low-quality and dirty food for poor to mobile gourmet restaurants capable to offer a selection of authentic, genuine food. Therefore, also the role of the workers in the sector have changed: high cultural capital became required in order to appear as a tastemaker, a chef capable to assembly raw materials in a distinguished final product capable to transmit not only the taste but also the values and the ethos of consumption putted by the worker. The choice to open a «creative» foodtruck becomes very involved with the passions, the values and the ethos of the worker, also following the luck experienced by food to become a semiotic device of cultural omnivorousness and middle class «hipster» ethos. To be a very mobile, small activity with a particular relationship with consumers gives to foodtruckers some speficities in the more general creative food economy frame. At the same time, foodtruckers normally open such an activity because is cheaper than a restaurant, they are autonomous workers that put every saving and time in this idea and face precariousness, economic difficulties and stress. The present empirical research, composed by an ethnography part of the in progress PhD project of the author, seek to explore thus the cultural and the socio-economic identities of the workers and their potential conflicts, and how the specific ethos of consumption developed by foodtruckers is a mix between the passions they have and the constrictions they suffer.