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Lower Mainland Food Truck Festivals

Food Truck Festivals

A number of food truck festivals take place in Metro Vancouver each year including in Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, New Westminster and other places.

 

2023 FOOD TRUCK EVENTS

Food truck events coming up this year include Food Truck Wars on March 31st and April 1st & 2nd at KPU Langley. Details about it can be found on the Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival‘s website. There is also the Food Truck Festival at UBC on the Wednesday and Thursday of April 5th & 6th.

Other scheduled events happen on Saturdays and Sundays in April, May and June. The Burnaby Block Party takes place on April 22nd and 23rd, and is followed by the Downtown Chilliwack Block Party on April 29th and 30th. Next up is the Coquitlam Community Block Party on the weekend of May 13th and 14th. In June there’s the Surrey Community Block Party on the 3rd and 4th, Langley Community Day on the 10th and the Mission Community Block Party on the 24th and 25th.

 

Langley Food Truck Wars

 

Vancouver Food Truck Festivals

In addition to all the many general festivals in the region that happen to have food trucks at their events, there are festivals whose primary focus is the food vendors themselves.

In years when there isn’t COVID-19, most Lower Mainland food truck festivals feature free admission, some form of live entertainment and dozens of food truck vendors, not to mention tons of tasty things to eat and sometimes even beer.

 

Fraser Valley Food Truck Festival
Food Truck Festival (pre-COVID)

 

Food Festival Locations

Major food truck festivals in the Lower Mainland most years include the following:

  • Street Food City – a small food truck event featuring about 20 food truck vendors (including about a dozen at a time) in the plaza outside the Vancouver Art Gallery in January as part of the annual Dine Out Vancouver Festival. (This event happened from January 21st until 29th in 2023.)
  • Columbia StrEAT Food Truck Fest – a large street festival in New Westminster that features over a hundred food trucks and two or three live entertainment venues in the summer. Admission to the event is free. The festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021. It took place in 2022, but as New Westminster Car Free Day instead. 2023 details are to be confirmed.
  • Maple Ridge Food Truck Festival – a fair-sized event that has taken place in Maple Ridge. In 2020 it was scheduled to occur on Father’s Day in June but got cancelled due to COVID-19. Fortunately, a smaller drive-thru event took place at the Albion Fairgrounds in April in 2021 even though the big Maple Ridge event didn’t happen. Another event also took place on July 1st to celebrate Canada Day. Details about the event in 2023 are to be confirmed.

 

Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival
Food Truck Event in Maple Ridge

 

Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival Events

Formerly called the Fraser Valley Food Truck Festival, the Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival also hosts a number of other medium-sized food truck events at various times of the year.

2022 events included the following:

  • Cloverdale – on April 8th to 10th at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds in Surrey.
  • Richmond – on April 29th to May 1st at Lansdowne Centre at 5300 No. 3 Road.
  • Coquitlam – on May 7th and 8th at Town Centre Park at 1299 Pinetree Way.
  • Chilliwack – on June 4th and 5th at the Chilliwack Coliseum at 45323 Hodgins Avenue.
  • Langley – on June 18th at Douglas Park at 20550 Douglas Crescent.

2021 events in the winter included the following:

  • SFU – at the Town & Gown Square on November 17th and 24th, and December 1st and 8th.
  • Brentwood Holidays on the Block – in Burnaby on December 9th to 12th, 16th to 19th, and 21st to 24th.

See the Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival website for details about upcoming events.

 

Tokyo Katsu Sand Food Truck

 

Other Past Food Truck Events

For an idea of what else to expect in 2022, the Greater Vancouver Food Truck Festival was going to run the following events in 2020 (although many got cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic):

  • April 11, 2020 – at Inlet Park at 3000 Murray Street in Port Moody from 11 am to 6 pm. (CANCELLED)
  • April 18-18, 2020 – at Guildford Town Centre at 10355 152nd Street in Surrey from 4 to 10 pm on the Friday and 11 am to 6 pm on the Saturday. (CANCELLED)
  • April 25, 2020 – at Chilliwack Coliseum at 45323 Hodgins Avenue in Chilliwack from 11 am to 6 pm. (POSTPONED)
  • May 8-9, 2020 – at Willowbrook Shopping Centre at 19705 Fraser Highway in Langley from 4 to 10 pm on the Friday and 11 am to 6 pm on the Saturday. (CANCELLED)
  • May 23, 2020 – at the Cloverdale Fair Grounds in Surrey from 11 am to 6 pm. (POSTPONED)
  • May 30, 2020–  at the Abbotsford Civic Plaza from 11 am to 6 pm. (CANCELLED)
  • June 6, 2020 – at Town Centre Park in Coquitlam  from 11 am to 6 pm. (POSTPONED)
  • June 13, 2020 – a drive-thru-style event at Christian Life Assembly at 21277 56th Avenue from 11 am until 6 pm. This event did take place. Click Langley Food Truck Event for details.
  • June 20, 2020 – at Douglas Park at 20550 Douglas Crescent in Langley from 11 am to 6 pm. (CANCELLED)
  • June 21, 2020 – at the Maple Ridge Street Festival at Memorial Peace Park in Maple Ridge from 11 am to 6 pm. (CANCELLED)
  • June 28, 2020 – a drive-thru-style event at the Tradex Centre at 1190 Cornell Street in Abbotsford from 11 am until 6 pm. This event took place (and was actually initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic). Click Abbotsford Food Truck Event for details.

As noted in the list, apart from a few exceptions, most of the above food truck festivals ran from 11:00 in the morning until around 5:00 or 6:00 in the afternoon. In most cases, in years when there isn’t a pandemic, between about 20 and 25 food trucks participate as well as 8 to 10 local artisan vendors.

At all of the above Great Vancouver Food Truck Festival events, Pup-Up Entertainment (a.k.a., Paw Patrol) was scheduled to be on-site and provide kid-friendly entertainment in 2019. 2020 was likely going to be similar until the arrival of COVID-19.

 

Paw Patrol in Abbotsford
Paw Patrol at Abbotsford Food Truck Festival

 

Other Major Food Truck Venues

If you love food trucks other events that feature especially numerous food truck and carnival-type food vendors, then you’ll likely also like the following:

  • The Pacific National Exhibition – the PNE features dozens of food truck vendors from mid-August until the beginning of September.
  • Shipyard Night Market – a night market with live music and, on especially busy days, up to a couple of dozen food trucks on Friday evenings in North Vancouver. (This event last happened in 2019 and may or may not happen again.)
  • Richmond Night Market – the Lower Mainland’s largest night market has dozens of food vendors selling all kinds of Asian and other exotic and tasty kinds of festival foods on weekends in the summer.

 

Food Truck Lemonade Stand

 

Vancouver Food Truck Companies

Participants at food truck festivals range from vendors selling curly-fried potatoes on sticks to ice cream, fried octopus, Thai noodles, Indian curries, kettle corn popcorn, pizza and lemonade.

Examples of specific vendors often found on Vancouver’s streets and at Lower Mainland festivals include the following:

  • Corn Dog King – a frequent participant at community fairs that sells corn cogs on sticks. (Part of the locally-based Next Gen Concessions group of food trucks.)
  • Mom’s Grilled Cheese – a popular sandwich food truck.
  • Vij’s Railway Express – an East Indian food truck related to Vancouver’s famous Vij’s restaurant located at 3106 Cambie Street. The food truck menu portions aren’t large, but the food is tasty.
  • Rocky Point Ice Cream – an ice cream company with a home base at Port Moody’s Rocky Point Park that’s a frequent participant at Metro Vancouver festivals.
  • Mr. Shawarma – a vendor selling Middle Eastern cuisine.
  • Roaming Dragon – a street food provider with an Asian-Fusion menu.
  • Street Dogs & Burgers – a food truck specializing in hot dogs and hamburgers. (Part of the locally-based Next Gen Concessions group of food trucks.)
  • Japadog – a Japanese-style hot dog stand that became popular during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. It has a number of semi-permanent on-street locations including near Waterfront Station and on Robson Street. Occasionally you’ll also see them at a festival.
  • Super Foot Long Hot Dogs – a vendor of world-famous hot dogs that’s a regular participant at the PNE. (Part of the locally-based Next Gen Concessions group of food trucks.)

 

Coquitlam Food Truck Vendor

 

Other Information

For a list of other festivals and events in the Lower Mainland, including ones that don’t feature food trucks, check out Vancouver’s Calendar of Events or click Festivals & Events Calendar.

Other articles that might be of interest include the following: