Have you ever been hungry and couldn’t decide what to eat? Bored of your usual fair and unable to describe what you are craving? Have you ever tried Malaysian food? Malaysia is a unique cultural melting pot not unlike the United States. Malaysian cuisine has developed into a distinct blend of traditional Malay, Indonesian, Cantonese, Indian, Thai, and Arabic cuisines. Many of the most iconic Malaysian food dishes can only be found at hawker stalls. Hawkers are street vendors who set up small, open-air restaurants to cook and share their food. Many hawkers are famous throughout Malaysia for having the best version of a specific dish, and can often be found with a line down the street with people waiting patiently for their chance to eat.
Hawker stalls are the Asian version of American food trucks. Seeing a lack of Malaysian restaurants in the Tampa Bay area, we have combined the street hawker with the food truck to create: Harimau Asian Street Food. With Malaysian food being an amalgamation of other cuisines from Asia, we are free to explore Asian inspired hawker fare through a weekly rotated menu. Our dishes will showcase locally sourced ingredients blended with robust and authentic Malaysian flavor profiles, sure to excite your taste buds and fulfill your cravings!
We will provide authentic Malaysian hawker inspired Asian street food dishes. These dishes will rotate on a weekly basis based on locally available ingredients. Operating out of a food truck allows us to be mobile and maintain a lower overhead than a traditional brick and mortar style restaurant. Being located in Florida, we have access to many tropical ingredients that are unable to be grown in other states, fresh local seafood, and local farms that further drives down our overhead cost.
Our lower operating cost allows us to maintain high profit margins while passing on savings to consumers.Food trucks are often difficult to find, so our personalized app lets our customers track our daily location with Google Maps and what is currently on the menu. Our menu changes often with the availability of ingredients, so we also implemented a digital on-site menu accessed via QR code to help reduce waste created by printed menus.
Our target audience is anyone who enjoys bold flavors, and is ready to explore a new type of cuisine. They are adventurous, willing to try new dishes every week and are interested in exploring an under-represented type of Asian food. Our audience is comfortable with ordering from a food truck or are interested in trying it for the first time. They take into consideration where their food is sourced, and are interested in tasting authentic Malaysian dishes.
Our research has found that the food truck market is becoming increasingly more and more saturated with many wonderful and unique food truck concepts. Many of these food trucks excel in developing innovative and exciting dishes. Unfortunately these dishes generally lack authenticity and execution. Customers are often left with underwhelming dishes that fail to execute on flavor or stray too far from the original dish it is emulating.
Hawker food by design is able to be cooked quickly with limited resources. This style of cooking easily lends itself to dealing with the large rushes of customers that can be experienced by food trucks at events. The authenticity and uniqueness of our dishes will prove successful in standing out in the crowed food truck marketplace of the Tampa Bay area.
Harimau means tiger in Malay. Tigers are considered voracious eaters, and we hope our customers plan to bring their appetites when visiting the food truck. Harimau is also a fun word to say and allows our name to stand out in the over-saturated food truck market of the Tampa Bay area.
Our symbol is comprised of a tiger carrying an empty bowl. The tiger is left open to convey a sense of approachability. The bowl is empty to symbolize customers coming hungry, and leaving after finishing their meal. We have two individual combination marks that are application dependent. The first is our primary circular mark which is anchored by our symbol, surrounded by type, and is flanked by chopsticks on the left and the right. The second mark is our horizontal mark which has the symbol to the left of the wordmark. The primary mark is used for the majority of applications. The secondary mark is intended to be used in exchange of the primary mark on smaller and condensed applications and applications with limited vertical space compared to horizontal, such as banners.
Our color palette is loosely inspired by the colors of the Malaysian flag; red, white, blue, and yellow. Red and blue are our primary colors with yellow being used with white for our Knock out logo intended to be used on dark colored backgrounds.
Have you ever shown up to a food truck and had to wait in line for 15 to 30 minutes for your food? With the Harimau mobile ordering application, customers can see where the truck is currently located, as well as the current menu items. Customers can order menu items for pickup, pay, and receive an estimate for when their food items will be ready.
Food from hawker stalls is often wrapped in banana leaves or newspaper. Our packaging is inspired by these traditional types of packaging used by hawkers in Malaysia. Our packaging maintains the recycle-ability of the original hawker packaging but is tailored for the American consumer.
Our tagline is a combination of two words with the same meaning: The Malay word “sedap” and the English word “delicious.” This tagline highlights the marrying of the Malaysian roots of our food and our location here in the United States. We will showcase this tagline on our merchandise.
