On the Corner food truck app collage.jpg

The On the Corner mobile app, the icon for which is pictured at top left, features such Birmingham food trucks as, clockwise from top right, Cantina on Wheels, Melt and Off the Hook. (Image courtesy of On the Corner; photos by Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com and courtesy of Cantina on Wheels)

A frustrating lunchtime search for a food truck led three Birmingham marketers to develop a new food truck app they call On the Corner.

The app launched last week, and to date, has 21 food trucks, trailers and carts on board.

"How it came about was we wanted to know where a specific food truck was one day, and we couldn't find it," On the Corner co-founder Dave Folk said in an interview with AL.com.

Instead, they found another food truck they liked parked on the corner.

"If we had known it was there, that would have changed our lunch plans altogether," Folk said. "We decided, 'Hey, this (app) is something we should build on the side and see if it takes off. If not, then we'll have fun doing it."

The On the Corner app is available for iPhone users in the App Store, Folk said, and he and his partners hope to have it available for Android users later this summer.

The app lets users tag their favorite food trucks to receive notifications when those trucks are nearby -- anywhere from 300 feet up to two miles.

"For the regular person in Birmingham what it means is, instead of having to scrounge across social media hoping to find your favorite truck or hoping to find a truck nearby, you can see within five seconds who's close and whether it's the truck you liked before or one you haven't had," Folk says.

On the Corner app users receive notifications when their favorite food trucks are within two miles. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

The Birmingham food trucks and carts that have signed on to the On the Corner app so far are Eugene's Hot Chicken, Shindigs, Old Town Pizza, Bendy's Cookies & Cream, Big Spoon Creamery, Cantina on Wheels, Snapper Grabber's Coastal Kitchen, Dreamcakes, Full Moon Bar-B-Que, Greg's Hot Dogs, Heavenly Donut Co., Lazy Boy BBQ, Magic City Sweet Ice, Melt, NOLA Ice, Off the Hook, Repicci's Italian Ice & Gellato, Saw's Street Kitchen, Slice, Taco Morro Loco and Urban Pops.

In addition to Folk, the On the Corner team includes co-founder and lead developer Tony Coleman and co-founder and lead designer Natasha Reshetnikova.

"On the Corner is totally local to Birmingham," Folk says. "All of the co-founders and I are local to Birmingham, and we've been developing it for about the last six months to a year. We are hoping to start here and kind of spread. . . .

"We would like to get in some other cities in Alabama by the end of this year, and we're hoping to be in Atlanta by the end of this year, as well."

The Birmingham talent and creative agency Moxy also introduced its own Birmingham Food Trucks app at Sunday's Summer Food Truck Rally at Regions Field, and that app should be available to users sometime this week.