Step Aside, New York - Orlando Is America's Food Truck Capital

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people lining up for food trucks in orlando

LOLren/Flickr

People lining up for some of Orlando, FL's most popular food trucks.

Now that it's almost summer, food trucks are about to start rolling onto streets across America.

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"Food trucks are popular due to their convenience, adaptability, and low barrier of entry," Ross Resnick, founder of Roaming Hunger, a website that keeps tabs on all things street food, told Business Insider. "Although food trucks do not have the décor that a traditional restaurant might have, food trucks make up for it by offering interesting ways to deliver food to people in concentrated areas."

According to Roaming Hunger's database, there has been a 197% increase in number of food trucks nationally from 2011 to 2013. In major markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, food trucks seem to be everywhere. But turns out, some unexpected cities are leading the boom in the mobile restaurant industry.

We asked Resnick and his team to provide us with numbers for each of the 32 U.S. cities he covers for Roaming Hunger, not including street food carts or hot dog stands. And though certain cities like Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Austin lead the pack when it came to the sheer number of food trucks (269, 172, and 156 food trucks, respectively), when we factored in populations, Orlando turned out to have the most food trucks per resident.

FOOD TRUCKS business insider ranking

Megan Willett/Business Insider

Population numbers were determined by the most recent U.S. Census Bureau Data for each city (either 2013 or 2012 where available). Roaming Hunger provided us with their most up-to-date food truck numbers.

Orlando was followed by Miami, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, and Austin to round out the top five.

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New York - the city that Business Insider anticipated to be the mecca for food trucks - not only came in 6th for number of food trucks (110, compared to Los Angeles's 269), but was also the lowest-ranking city on the entire list once its enormous population was factored in. For every 100,000 people, New York only had 1.3 food trucks.