Now in its third year (and fifth event), the Black Food Truck Festival (BFTF) has grown into an impressive showing of not only Black food trucks, but of a community hungry for more opportunities to celebrate Black-owned businesses.
The festival takes place April 26 through April 28, with an opening night event held on Friday at The Wonderer downtown; two full days of food truck fun at the Exchange Park in Ladson on Saturday and Sunday; and a Saturday night after party at Music Farm. Tickets to the food truck portion of the festival start at $25 and can be purchased online. Tickets include access to the event as well as all of the festival’s live entertainment during the food truck fest.
BFTF founder Marcus Hammond said that participating food trucks appreciate the environment the festival has created. “They love it because, naturally, they’re part of the community, and it’s kind of cool to be in a safe space in an environment where everybody is welcome and to be able to shine and have a great time.”
As of publication, the festival had over 40 food trucks headed to the Exchange Grounds, with Hammond hoping to add a few more as ticket sales continued to increase.
The food truck lineup is heavily local, with participants like Bert & T’s Desserts, Tater’s Sea and Soul, Chucktown Meatball Co., Fab Sliders and more. The fest is bringing in one particularly big out-of-town name, though — uber-popular, Atlanta-based vegan burger chain, Slutty Vegan — and Hammond and his team are setting up the food truck configuration with lines in mind.
“We put some of our high rollers on different sides of the field so that we can bring the traffic out,” he said. “We’ve got Slutty Vegan coming. So we know she’s gonna bring a lot of traffic.”
In addition to the food trucks, the festival features a number of bars, a kids’ area and live music. The music lineup this year includes Charleston’s Manny Houston, Atlanta’s Trap Jazz All Stars and D.C.’s “premier Go-Go band,” BackYard Band (perhaps best known for its lead performer Anwan ‘Big G’ Glover’s role on The Wire).
The numbers speak for themselves
“When we originally [put on the festival], we wanted to create something that was multi-generational and really spoke to Black culture,” Hammond said. “It gave people a lens of an up close family-friendly event [and served] as a family friendly environment to take a deep dive into Black culture. Especially in Charleston, South Carolina where a lot of the festivals don’t really reflect Black culture in Charleston. So that was very important for us to really highlight that.”
Not only does the festival offer Charlestonians a chance to experience the city’s Black culture, but it also offers quite a few out-of-towners an experience they’re willing to travel far for.
“People come from all over,” Hammond said. “We have people from California, Washington, New Orleans; 84% of our crowd comes from out of town … I did this [created the fest] because of my love for the community and food and music. But I did not know that I would somehow be [affecting] tourism because of how many people we bring in.”
The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the popularity of the event: the first year of the BFTF hosted about 4,000 attendees while the second year hosted approximately 15,000. That’s about a 328 % increase in attendance, according to BFTF’s impact report.
And while Hammond is proud of the numbers, he’s proud of the festival’s spirit, too. He saw a need, met it — and watched it grow. “We’re bringing a unique and niche experience [with] the Black Food Truck festival,” Hammond said. “We don’t have a lot of those. People want that. We started as a need and there’s a demand for it. People really want to be a part of it.”
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