Merchant Cash USA—an alternative lender with 1,234 Facebook “likes” as of this morning and, as best I can tell, no credentials in the food-and-beverage industry at all—has named Raleigh, North Carolina, as the top spot for food trucks in America, just ahead of Portland, San Antonio, Washington, D.C. and, well, everywhere else in the country. The list is getting some media attention, too, with Time Warner Cable News even airing a segment about it.
Slow clap, everyone.
While the Triangle’s food-truck scene has certainly exploded in recent years, and while Raleigh’s downtown food truck rodeos are crowded enough to look like music festivals, the city hasn’t proven exactly hospitable to the enterprise. It’s not that our city council can’t decide where the trucks should be allowed to go, exactly; they can’t even decide when or if they should decide that.
We were going to reach out to Merchant Cash USA about their methodology and results for this truly perplexing list, but we couldn’t get past the organization’s homepage, which we present below with some thoughts from some spokespeople.
