Do NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!!!! The owner/sales person Andrew is beyond unprofessional, horrible at responding and communicating. My trailer was painted the incorrect color, the electrical was messed up, it took almost a year for me to have my trailer completed then I received it without the generator, screws missing, paint chipped logo a different color then asked AND confirmed, warming cases inside of trailer were used and did not fit correctly the awning showed up frayed and he blamed it on the truck driver and told me "it doesn't prevent me from using the trailer" completely unprofessional. Please do not use this company it is all made in China and the work is sub par at best. It basically looks used and he is refusing to do anything about it. He told me it was all "aesthetic stuff and can be fixed" out of MY OWN POCKET!!!!! Such a horrible experience! Response to owner Andrew. You are continuing to not tell the truth and I have correspondence to show that you are lying. You only attempted to make things right after you saw my review and have texted me excessively starting on Friday at midnight. I asked for you to cover my out of pocket cost to fix the mistakes pictured below and you said "we will DISCUSS it after you remove you slanderous review" the awning isn't slightly torn and the warming cases you sent me pictures of were not at all what I received. Please spare me and everyone else the bs response. The generator was forgotten and that is in a recorded phone call "they must've forgotten to load it" I received it YESTERDAY NOT TWO DAYS LATER!! You know what you did and how you handled things. I will continue to post reviews and update mine if you continue to lie and you also failed to mention the electrical problems causing delay, the paint color causing delay and the left over paint on the trailer from the initial paint job that was wrong! Please know this could've all been handled differently but you chose to take this route when I initially called you the day I received the trailer. It was yesterday you "wanted to make things right" when you begged me and tried to bribe me with "full refund plus interest" to take my review down. I stand by my review and will continue to make sure shoppers and potential customers know who they are dealing with. Below is the picture of shipping label when it was printed on 1-2-21 I received trailer on the 29th so I did NOT receive it two days later!!!! Also, it was shipped from Home Depot a $700 generator I paid $1500 for! Yet I'm expected to pay MORE out of pocket! Be careful, check prices, ask for pictures! I also attached pictures of the warming cases I got compared to what he sent me to choose from. This is all morally wrong!!!!! Beware!!! This isn't slander these are FACTS with pictures to prove it!! read more

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The nicest and most professional company we have ever dealt with. Simply put. This is our 3rd trailer now and they have never disappointed us with their ability to customize and walk us through in such a simple manner that we are always blown away! Without their help we would have easily been paying triple the cost anywhere else, simply look into it, do your research, see which companies will give you hard #s and guidance and open mindedness like these guys. What I love the most is that they will even tell you all possible options because they are confident in their offerings. The quality is good, despite what some may say, go check out their showroom and see for yourself. It's definitely not American or German quality, but for the price it's definitely unbeatable. We toured a few other dealers in SoCal and the cheapest was $43,000 for a similar build, and it was nicer, but we just weren't ready for that. I would say consider your options and consider your price point, this is your business, not somebody else's. But overall we have nothing but GREAT things to say about Arete! Will definitely be going with them again. read more

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Hate to see these guys with such a poor rating because they really do provide such a great value and just a standup group of guys. Me and my cousin Rey decided to go with them because they were so much cheaper, and so straight fwd with us. Shopping around for a mobile taco stand turned into a crazy mission we had no idea what was involved. We spoke to several builders in CA and didn't realize everything involved with just getting a license. After we wasted about 2 months with another builder in the valley, we decided to hit up these guys. They had the best price by far, and we saw the work on instagram and all the good reviews google and BBB. We saw the other review mentioning the BBB and that was a little alarming but after speaking with them we realized that this person wasn't even a customer. Alot of people these days have no clue the impact they can make on a business...I'd say just speaking with them over the course of a couple weeks working tireless on this really sold me. You can tell just meeting with them that this rating was really unfair, and now that we have been in operation for about 8 months, we've contacted them on a few minor issues with registering it and they have been great about getting us everything we need. We love our trailer and will be purchasing again, the only reason I wouldn't give 5 stars is the lead time, they stay busy and sometimes its hard to get an immediate answer although they always get back to me within a day despite how busy they are. Also, we visited their showroom, its really nice, they had about 6 trailers there last week, all 3 styles to show. 100% do business with Arete, great people and great price. read more

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Have documented complaints with the BBB. Check there first! It's so important to meet the person and see the business in person. 1 month ago I requested a quote online. Left messages for Andrew and he didn't return my call for 1 week. When I finally talked to him I explained my mom would be flying in from Hilo to see the trucks at their location and sign paperwork and finalize details. He was going to check with Matson (shipping company) whether the generator could be shipped to Hilo, HI in the truck and have an answer for me at our meeting. Well, today was the day, drove in from the airport and Andrew had not contacted Matson. He left his computer in his car and showed us 1 food trailer they had in a small space. It's called cubework in Ontario... they rent out cubicles for many businesses and warehouse space. I expected to see more trailers being built or worked on like the online pictures show. He said they don't build there and they ship over from China and just add the appliances and "decals" here. When I asked questions regarding the different appliances and water tanks he looked like a deer in the headlights. Wow. I would not give this guy a single penny of my money. Advice... go there IN PERSON and you will not do business with them. Better off ordering online from eBay and you get the same thing only way cheaper. I'm an attorney and like dealing with people that are prepared and run a reputable business. He is dealing with someone's livelihood, dreams and their business. Run... go elsewhere. read more

These guys have been such a great help and blessing to us. They helped walk us through the entire process from start to final product arriving at our door BETTER than we had envisioned! We weren't expecting much considering the price is a fraction of what you kind find in our area, but to be honest this thing is so damm cool, just the look of it has seemed to draw more people to our business, and what I can say is that we get compliments on the cart daily. The turnaround time is really the only bad thing, it took us around 10 weeks total which was a couple weeks quicker than quoted, but couldn't have nicer things to say about this company, they were very knowledgable, very patient with us in the whole process, and never once tried to oversell us or even sell us for that matter. Everything also has passed regulations for FDA, DMV, for registration in the USA which from what were told is a big issue with other vendors of similar trailers in the USA. read more

I cannot in good conscience recommend this business to anyone looking to purchase a food trailer. The cart is, essentially, purchased and assembled in China (you can cart bodies on Alibaba). You can find import logs via ImportKey for Arete Food Trailer LLC. Many of their shipments come from a Shanghai Silang Industrial Co. and other Chinese-based companies. This isn't necessarily bad; however, during the ordering process, Arete leads you to believe that the materials are sourced from China, but assembled in the U.S. by AFT. This simply isn't the case - the cart is 100% manufactured and shipped from China. For a U.S. food cart, this creates a couple of problems with the electrical work. 1) The wiring is not double-insulated. Standard U.S. wiring will insulate each individual core of a wire and then insulate all of the cores together (if you cut a standard extension cable open, you'll find several individual strands or cores and a whole lot of rubber around them). This isn't unsafe per se, but it does put you at risk of not passing certain permitting requirements in your county - do you research or plan on redoing the electrical wiring yourself; 2) Appliances and water heaters are the wrong voltage. This is, perhaps, the greatest downfall of our cart. Chances are, any generator or power source in the U.S. is going to run off of 110V. This creates a problem when the appliances and water heaters in the cart require 220V. What does that mean? It means anytime you use the appliance or turn on the hot water, it's going to overwhelm the generator and flip the breaker. This basically makes any of the appliances unusable. The Chinese manufacturer tried to remedy this by installing a dinky transformer. The transformer was total junk and did not work so our appliances are now in need of replacement. Aside from the electrical problems, the cart was poorly made and poorly transported. There were dings, nicks, and scratches all over the place. The A/C unit on the cart has a freon leak so it only blows warm air. The flip down legs of the cart are, perhaps, the cheapest and most poorly built legs I have ever seen - after only a few uses we're already beginning to search how to replace them. The hose to the grey water is too short so it doesn't actually reach the grey water tank. None of these compromise the utility of the cart, but do necessitate fixes over time which, for a brand new cart, should not be the case. I won't even go into how the cart was transported to us, which created even further problems - just know, it was not transported properly (or safely for that matter). Now that all of the negatives are out of the way... there are a couple of positives. I do not believe that the people at Arete - who, my best guess is a mother-son duo, are crooks. I don't. I think they are poor business people who don't know how to effectively communicate and treat a customer, but I do not believe that they are crooks. Their business model isn't terrible. Fact of the matter is that the next cheapest cart for us was roughly 2 to 3 times the price. We don't have that kind of money. Yes, I could have ordered the body from Alibaba, but then I'd have to source the appliances and internal materials and then I'd have to find someone who could fabricate it for me. There is a market for people who want a cheap cart that "gets the job done" but don't want to go through the trouble of ordering everything from China and shipping it. Arete Food Trailers is not a food trailer manufacturer, but is a middle-man between you and several Chinese based companies. Again, there is a market for that. The problem is that Arete does not do effective quality control (probably because they don't know what to look for), communication is terrible (I can't tell you how often I had to email and call the sales rep, who shall remain nameless, for very basic updates which should be given without asking) and they are not totally transparent in how the cart is produced. If they had 1) explained how the cart is manufactured and shipped from China, 2) ensured that the electrical work was made to American standards, 3) ensured that the cart had been assembled with a basic-level of attention to detail, and 4) communicated frequently and clearly then I probably would have accepted the lower-quality cart without complaint. Again, the next cheapest trailer was 2 to 3 times the price - you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, instead, I felt misled and now I'm going to have to end up replacing most of the internal pieces of the cart anyways. I should note too that some of the reviews I've seen on Yelp or Facebook are not impartial. I will not name names, but I do frequently see the company owner writing reviews and responding to comments, posing as a customer. I don't want to see Arete Food Trailers lose customers, but that is blatant misdirection and must be pointed out. I hope to see AFT correct some of their practices so that they might have a thriving business. read more

This is my preliminary review, just ordered my trailer from Arete food trailers. Taylor answered all of my questions via email in a timely manner and the whole process was just smooth. I am sure it helped that I knew exactly what I was looking for and what I wanted, but i still had a lot of questions, to be sure, and they made it all very easy. We did the entire transaction via email so I called just to put a voice with the name. Yes, the lead time may be a bit long due to all the congestion at the ports, but its worth the wait. I have looked at so many trailers and just felt many of them were way over priced for what you get. I am using this trailer to formulate skin care, so basically its my clean room, space to create amazing things before going to mass production. When I outgrow it, I will just turn it into an RV. Love the look of the Streamliner. Will update when my trailer arrives. read more

It has been such a pleasure working with the people of Arete. This being our very first business and 2020 has been such a scary year in itself, they made the entire process seem so simple and welcoming. I know they have been busy this year and like almost everything there has been delays this season because of the shipping, but our trailer arrived in great working condition and we absolutely LOVE IT! So many compliments just towing it home!! I cannot speak for anyone else on here, but the quality really exceeded our expectations, considering the price we are paying vs what others charge, we were kind of expecting just a beginners type of trailer, but to be honest we would certainly order again from them in the future once our business is off the ground. I have to give a hugeeee thanks to Andrew, from our experience he was so on it and such a genuine individual. We are thoroughly impressed and very happy with this business. read more

We are so very pleased with our concession trailer that we will be order 2 more in the near future once the lockdown lets up. John & Andrew were amazing in walking us through the whole process and making it as simple as possible. When I was dealing with a few other builders, the whole thing seemed impossible, and not to mention the price was about 5X more expensive, we would have definitely needed a much larger loan if we didn't go with these guys. Of course you are paying for what you get, its really as they describe a "No frills" style of cart not made in America, but really after inspecting both American made steel and then this value based company, I would say we are very pleased and nor us or our customers can really notice a difference, its really just small things like attention to detail, but that is also what you get with such a quick lead time as well. I give these guys 10/10 stars! Highly recommend there services. read more