Food trucks and carts are finding their home downtown for the Big 12 Championship this year.
A Kansas City ordinance sets perimeters for street food vendors in entertainment districts. This year, though, carts and trucks are able to position themselves much closer to Sprint Center, where all of the action is.
One of those vendors is Charles White. He started his cart, Charley's All-Star Dogs, about 15 years ago.
"When I went to the health department I failed three times before I got it right," White said. "The roughest part of getting into it was failing so many times."
White told 41 Action News he used that as inspiration to begin his business. "I saw the need for the help so that was my turning point in it," White said.
Now clients bring him a shell and he fully outfits a food truck for about $25,000 total, a fraction of the $50,000 to $75,000 he estimates a brand new truck would cost.
White said minus the plumbing, "Everything that's required in a restaurant is going to be required in a truck." After a four-to-six week construction process, the finished product is ready to roll. That's when a new job starts all over again.
"There's no straight formula to these trucks. Every truck is different, every person is different," he said.
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Dia Wall can be reached at dia.wall@kshb.com.
