ORLANDO, Fla. — From food to gas prices, Central Florida is certainly feeling the effects of inflation and there’s no exception for food truck owners.
For the past five years, Chau Vo and her husband, Jimmy Nguyen, have supported their family traveling around Central Florida with their food truck, “Hot Asian Buns.”
“We were like you know, let’s do something that we can afford. It’s low overhead,” Vo said.
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Vo told Channel 9 that they pushed through the pandemic by coming up with creative ideas, but new obstacles are making it tough.
High gas prices are impacting the bottom line.
Vo said it used to cost about $50 to fill the food truck up with gas and that’s nearly doubled in the past couple weeks.
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“We have gas and propane. That adds up,” Vo said. “It’s not just gas. It’s inflation in general, so prices of meats have gone up.”
Vo said they were forced to make a difficult decision. “We’ve had to just raise our prices,” she said. “We didn’t want to, but we have to.”
One of the ways Vo said they’ve adapted is doing pop ups.
They’ll be at UCF all this week serving students and leaving the food truck at home.
“We’re not actually physically bringing the truck and using propane. We’re able to use UCF, you know, appliances and kitchen so it it’s helped, it’s helped a lot,” Vo said.
Vo told Channel 9 that despite the challenges, they have exciting plans on the horizon.
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“We did sign just recently signed a lease. So, we are opening up in Sanford. Soon. We don’t have a date yet. But it’s coming soon,” Vo added.
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