Snack Signal™

Raise Your Hand. The Treats Come to You: How Snack Signal Works Today

I built Snack Signal because of twenty bad minutes at a curb. This post is the practical companion to that story: exactly what the app does today, how both sides of it work, and — because this blog runs on honesty — a clear list of what it doesn’t do yet.

What is Snack Signal?

Snack Signal connects ice cream trucks (and, eventually, all kinds of mobile food vendors) with the neighborhoods they serve. Vendors broadcast their live location while they’re out. Residents follow the trucks they love, get alerted when one is near, and can raise the snack signal — a request pin at their home that says come here, we’re in. The truck sees every raised hand on a live map and drives to confirmed demand. It’s free for residents.

That’s the whole idea. Here’s each half in detail.

If you’re a resident

1. Follow your favorite trucks. Find the vendors that work your area and follow them. Following is what turns the app on for you — it’s how the truck knows you exist and how you stop depending on your ears.

2. Get alerted at the right moments. Two alerts matter: when a truck you follow goes live for a shift, and when a live truck is near you. That second one is the alert I wanted for years — not “the truck exists somewhere,” but “the truck is close; you have time to put shoes on.” No more diagnosing jingle acoustics through a closed window.

3. Raise the Snack Signal. One tap drops a request pin at your home. This is the part that flips the old model on its head: instead of you chasing the truck, the truck now has a reason to come down your street. You can set your home location once so the pin lands exactly where you want the truck to stop.

4. Watch it come to you. The truck moves on a live map with an ETA. The driver can accept your signal (you’ll know they’re coming) or decline it (you get told right away — no twenty-minute mystery waits). Either way, you have an answer instead of hope.

5. No trucks around? Send a craving. If nothing’s live near you, you can tell us what you’re in the mood for. Cravings help vendors see where unmet demand is — which is exactly how your neighborhood gets on somebody’s route.

If you’re a vendor

1. Go live when your shift starts. One tap broadcasts your position to followers and nearby residents — only while you’re live. End the shift and the broadcasting stops immediately. You control it completely.

2. Your followers hear about it. Going live notifies the people who chose to follow you, and residents near your position get a heads-up as you work. The jingle reaches a block; the notification reaches everyone who ever wanted to find you again.

3. See every raised hand. Your map shows each signal — a real household that explicitly asked you to come — sorted by distance and ETA. Accept the ones you can serve; decline the ones you can’t, and the resident hears immediately instead of waiting at a curb.

4. Drive to confirmed demand. That’s the entire pitch: more sales, less gas. The full economics are in The Cost of Driving Blind.

What Snack Signal does NOT do yet

This list matters as much as the ones above. As of today:

  • No payments. Transactions still happen at the window, however the vendor takes them (usually cash). An account-based, approve-from-your-phone flow is what we’re building toward, but it is not in the app today.
  • No scheduled routes. Vendors go live when they go live; there’s no published “Tuesdays at 6pm” schedule yet. It’s on the roadmap.
  • No order-ahead. You can summon the truck, but you can’t pre-order items for driveway pickup yet. Also roadmap.

When these ship, you’ll read about it here first — in the present tense. Until then, anything you see about them on this blog is vision, and I’ll always label it that way.

The short version

  • Residents: follow → get alerted → raise the signal → watch the truck come to you.
  • Vendors: go live → get found → see raised hands → drive to confirmed demand.
  • Free for residents. Built for ice cream trucks first, with room for every kind of mobile vendor.

Raise your hand. The treats come to you. 🍦

Why does this app exist at all? Start with the origin story. Wondering where it’s all headed? That’s Beyond the Jingle.