A beginner’s guide to Tassie food trucks

A movable feast

Madi acknowledges a huge shift in Tassie’s mobile food offerings since the early days (“We’ve moved past dagwood dogs and tornado potatoes,” she says), largely driven by the producers themselves. “It’s such a fresh energy,” she shares. “Tasmanians love street-food markets. And with so many more platforms now, if you’re a vendor you can become a true business.”

Seeing a gap in the market for low-and-slow barbecue, long-time brisket fan Scott Halls started Halls Barbeque in 2022. “I had a little backyard smoker, then I went to Texas with the family, which just fuelled the fire. I thought, ‘well Launceston doesn’t have too much barbecue... let’s have a shot and see what we can do,’” Scott says.  

Like many vendors today, Scott sticks to a tent and a trestle table – it’s more a more cost-effective option for those that don’t move around a lot, but the premise is the same. He works the Harvest Market, Evandale Market and World Street Eats circuit each month, dishing up what he calls “Texas-style craft barbecue”.

The signature dish is brisket, which gets a salt-and-pepper rub before 12–16 hours in the smoker, plus pulled pork, jalapeño and cheddar ‘links’ (smoked sausages), and pickles and hot sauces. You can get the meat in a potato roll – in Texas they’d call that a “sandwich” – or by the weight to eat on the spot or take home for later.

He’d love to open a restaurant one day but given that he’s already moving 40kg of brisket a week, it’s not a priority. “People think I am crazy for the hours I put in, but you don’t get into barbecue to make money. You do it because you love doing it,” Scott says.

Keeping it legit

When Matt Hidding’s sunset-hued TacoTaco van — Hobart’s first food truck — hit the road in 2013, he never imagined that his tacos would change legislation. “There was no framework around it at all,” he says. “We went to carpark locations we thought would work, talking to business owners about using their space after hours. We’d rock up on a Friday night, bring them a couple of beers for knock-offs, and that’s how we started.”

Matt worked with Hobart City Council on the city’s first official food-truck guidelines. “They didn’t know what to do either,” he says. “There was nothing to say that we could, but nothing to say that we couldn’t!” Today, most Tassie councils have rules around where and when trucks can operate, including no-go zones (a truck can’t park next to an existing restaurant, for example). Vendors must adhere to health and safety laws, too. 

You don’t see the TacoTaco trucks out on the road much these days, which Matt puts down to the proliferation of food-truck hubs and a solid roster of private functions, but business is still booming. He and his partners have the lease for the Lazenby’s precinct at UTAS Sandy Bay and they’re on the hunt for a new semi-permanent home after recently ending a five-year residency at Hobart Brewing Co.  

While Matt concedes that the industry’s success has made it more cutthroat, he welcomes the competition. “Recently I took my kids to the playground at Kingston. There were six food trucks there and I had never heard of any of them! That’s great for me, because I can try something new.”