Jamie Derossett, of Bowling Green, prepares the unconventional menu of melts at the Bowling Green Cheese Wagon on Friday outside of Blue Holler Brewery. Aug.11, 2017 (Matt Lunsford/photo@bgdailynews.com)

On a hot August afternoon, Mike Wilson is serving pork barbecue sandwiches, brats and nachos out of a bright-red trailer parked in front of TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital.

Customers, many of them scrubs-clad regulars, bark out their orders to be heard above the hum of a generator that powers the mobile eatery much like the trailer with “Pop’s Street Eats” signs on front and back is helping power the latest dining trend in Bowling Green.

From grandfatherly types like Wilson to millennials and even teenagers, the food truck craze that has been sweeping the nation for years is finally taking hold in a city where the eating-out choices have long been defined by the bevy of casual dining, ethnic and fast-food eateries along Scottsville Road.

That’s changing, thanks to the meals on wheels being served up by the likes of Pop’s Street Eats, the BG Cheese Wagon, Whitdogs and others.

They’re hitching to a fast-moving industry. Roaming Hunger, a website that tracks food trucks, said there are now more than 4,000 such eateries in 289 U.S. cities.

Bowling Green is only now starting to bite off its piece of that moveable feast, with most local trucks only gearing up this year, but trends indicate the city is primed for growth.

“Food trucks are sweeping Bowling Green,” said Jordan Wilson, a partner in Pop’s Street Eats along with his father and his brother Trevor. “It’s crazy how many places welcome us with open arms.”

One such place is The A-Frame, a live music venue on Center Street near Western Kentucky University that sells drinks but not food. A-Frame co-owner Alex Smith helped both Pop’s and the BG Cheese Wagon get established.

“This (food trucks) is something we’ve been pushing for,” Smith said. “I’m hoping it will take off. The food trucks get a lot of business from people drinking at our bar, and it has been great for us. I get hungry, too.”

Pop’s, in fact, piggybacked on The A-Frame’s business license when the food truck was trying to get established.

“The A-Frame was the first place to give us a chance,” Jordan Wilson said. “We branched off of them on our business license, and that lowered our cost.”

The Wilsons bought their 18-foot trailer in February but didn’t start serving food until April.

“It’s such a new thing in Bowling Green that nobody knows all the regulations,” Jordan Wilson said. “We were hoping to get a trailer that was ready to roll and we could start selling. The plumbing was to national standards but not up to Kentucky standards, so we had to re-do our plumbing on a brand-new trailer. We just rolled with the punches and fixed what we had to.”

Once that initial hurdle was cleared, Pop’s has been finding plenty of venues that welcome food trucks. In addition to Greenview, the Wilsons have pulled the trailer to a number of local nightspots and to events such as the Glasgow Highland Games.

“With Western students coming back, business should really pick up,” Jordan Wilson said. “WKU students love it. It’s like they’re attracted to it. They’ll hang out even after they’ve finished eating. A lot of those kids come from larger cities where they’re used to food trucks.”

WKU students are also cited as a business-booster by BG Cheese Wagon co-owner Jamie DeRossett, who operates out of a former school bus that she and her husband Jerrad bought in Indiana and converted into a food truck that specializes in cheese-based sandwiches.

The couple stripped paint off the bus, replaced windows, installed kitchen equipment, and found a painter to decorate the outside.

“It took eight or nine months to build it,” said DeRossett, who works full-time at Spencer’s Coffee in downtown Bowling Green. “We feel good about how we did it.”

Only in business since May, the Cheese Wagon has already established itself as a regular at such night spots as Blue Holler Brewery and The A-Frame.

The bus has also made stops at Phoenix Theater movie nights and at Greenview Hospital.

“I’ve been positively overwhelmed by the response,” DeRossett said. “It has been great, maybe even too much growth too fast. We’re taking steps so we can try to keep up. We get emails and calls all the time asking us to come out or wanting to know where we’ll be next.”

Whitdogs is another new food truck that has found a welcoming community in Bowling Green – so new that its Facebook page still says “Coming soon.”

Whitdogs opened on National Hotdog Day (July 19) and has quickly won customers with its signature bacon-wrapped hot dog and other products.

Operating out of a former uniform truck that was converted for food service, Whitdogs was started by Whitney McCubbin and head chef Brandon Evans. Another regular at Greenview Hospital, Whitdogs has also set up at Aviation Heritage Park, Boyce General Store and at private events.

“We’re doing customer appreciation events, weddings, birthday parties and even a solar eclipse event,” McCubbin said. “We’re pretty booked up on private events through October.”

The food truck craze isn’t limited to start-ups like Whitdogs, Pop’s and BG Cheesewagon. Brick-and-mortar eateries like Steamer Seafood, Chaney’s Dairy Barn and White Squirrel Brewery supplement their traditional business by putting their own trucks on the road.

“We actually had the food truck before we opened the restaurant,” Steamer General Manager Casey Todd said.

The 18-foot truck serves as a rolling marketing and branding device for the downtown eatery.

“It’s a companion to our brick-and-mortar restaurant,” Todd said. “We’re having a lot of fun with it. We can try new menu items on the food truck. We utilize it all over.”

The Steamer truck, decorated to look like a boat, has traveled to Glasgow, Franklin and Owensboro serving food and promoting the Steamer brand.

Todd said the “Friday After 5” street fair in downtown Owensboro opened his eyes to the potential for food-truck growth in this region.

“There are 10 to 12 trucks and trailers there,” Todd said of the Friday-evening festivals in Owensboro. “We use our truck for special events and use it in surrounding counties to get our brand out there.”

One local food truck, PopWorks, actually evolved into a brick-and-mortar store. The frozen popsicle shop started in an Airstream travel trailer that owners Jessica Yonts and Ed and Micha Griffin converted into a mobile popsicle store.

“We started out in the Airstream beside Griff’s Deli,” Yonts said of the 2015 opening. “It was a fun concept to bring to Bowling Green. The Airstream makes you think of summertime.”

PopWorks now does 80 percent of its business out of its store near Griff’s, but the Airstream hasn’t been retired.

In fact, Yonts said she sold 700 popsicles out of the Airstream during a recent event at Bowling Green’s Fruit of the Loom corporate headquarters.

“A lot of people like it because it’s different,” Yonts said of the Airstream. “I hope we continue to grow, and I hope Bowling Green grows in food trucks.”

If teenage entrepreneur Wade Curtis has his way, that will happen. Curtis, a senior at Greenwood High School, has been serving barbecue and other food items he prepares on a large grill since he was 12.

Curtis BBQ is mobile, with the grill being pulled behind a truck to set up at special events such as the Strawberry Festival in Portland, Tenn., and the Catfish Festival in Morgantown. But Curtis wants to graduate from his current grill-and-canopy setup to a full-blown food truck.

His mother and other family members help him now, so Curtis would like to have a truck that they can use.

“I started when I was 12,” Curtis said. “I started cooking some stuff, and I got hooked on it. I’m just hoping to get a food truck for them (his family) to keep so it will be easier on them.”