2025 Flathead Food Truck Festival to Bring More Than 30 Trucks to Flathead County Fairgrounds
Entry this year is free, but the festival, which is now a nonprofit, will be accepting donations for a new scholarship fund to send local high school grads to FVCC's culinary program
By Mike Kordenbrock
Now in its sixth year, the basic, underlying idea of the Flathead Food Truck Festival has remained the same. Dozens of owner-operator-chefs in the Flathead’s ever-growing food truck scene gather together in one place, essentially creating a food festival on wheels.
When it’s in full effect, attendees can, for example, grab some Baltazar’s tamales, wash them down with a non-alcoholic cocktail from Hold My Bar, and then indulge in a little deep-fried dessert courtesy of Frey Guys Funnels & More. Of course, with 33 food trucks on board for this year’s festival, and small portions available, the choices are seemingly endless.
Even with that food truck component holding steady, the festival has undergone various changes since its debut in 2020, when it launched just as the food truck business struggled during the first pandemic summer.
The location has changed a couple times (Flathead County Fairgrounds to Sunrift Brewing and back again to the Flathead County Fairgrounds), and there have been efforts at times to turn the festival into something more closely resembling a music and food truck festival, including with ticketed entry.
This year, the music component has been scaled back, but with it, the ticketed entry has been waived. The food truck festival is also no longer coinciding with the Artist and Craftsmen of the Flathead’s (ACF) big start of summer show, but there will still be about 20 vendors from ACF on location. And there’s another new wrinkle of significance. Last spring, the festival officially received its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
Ryan Garnache, who helps organize the festival and has been running the Kalispell-based KncklHed BBQ food truck since 2018, said that they joined the nonprofit ranks too late last year to incorporate it into the festival plans. This time around they will be accepting donations at the gate and using the festival as a fundraiser for a new scholarship program to pay for local high school grads to attend FVCC’s Culinary Institute of Montana.
Garnache said that he’s worked with high school culinary students in the past, and knows that while some are just trying to fulfill elective requirements, others have a very serious interest in the culinary arts.
“But there are a lot of underserved kids in our area too, so we hope to make that a possibility for them,” Garnache said.
Festival attendance over the years has fluctuated, but it’s still a draw for thousands of people. The first year the festival returned to the county fairgrounds, attendance peaked at an estimated 14,000 people over the course of two days. In recent years attendance has been closer to around 8,000 people over the festival’s two-day span.
Garnache said that the continued support of people will continue to determine the future of the festival, adding that although it’s free for attendees, it isn’t actually free to put on.
Garnache said that the food truck scene in the Flathead continues to grow, to the point where he can’t always keep up with all the trucks that pop up with each passing year.
Although in some cases trucks are in direct competition, Garnache said it’s generally a good community in which truck owners share a sense of camaraderie and in some cases will go out of their way to help each other.
“There’s a lot of us here in the valley, it’s awesome to see,” he said. “Honestly, it’s a family.”
Food trucks at this year’s festival include 406 Taco Nite, Baltazar’s Home Made Tamales, Brown Gringo, Bombshell Sweets, Copacabana Grill, The Corndog House, D & T BBQ, Farm to Table Ice Cream, Flathead Bubbles and Boba, Flathead Mini Donuts, Food Dudes, Frey Guys Funnel & More, G.O.A.T. Ice Cream, Glacier Shave Ice, Hell on Wheels, Hold My Bar, KJ’s Chicken Chariot, Kuncklhed BBQ, Moody’s, Mountain Berry Bowls, Piroshki Palace, Sausage Queen, Sodalightful, The Sugarhouse, Sweet Pickins Kettle Corn, Sweet Retreat Creamery, That One Guy’s BBQ, Tico’s Truck and Zapo Taco.
The Flathead Food Truck Festival will run from June 20 through June 21 at the Flathead County Fairgrounds. On Friday, June 20, the festival will go from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. On Saturday, June 21, the festival will go from noon to 9 p.m.